2. Early Life Otto Plath died on November
5, 1940, a week and a half
after Plath's eighth
birthday.
Plath experienced a loss of
faith after her father's
death, and remained undecided
about religion throughout her
life.
Born October 27th, 1932 in
Boston
Her mother was Aurelia Aurelia Plath moved her
Schober Plath and her father children and her parents to
Otto Emile Plath. 26 Elmwood Road, Wellesley,
Massachusetts in 1942.
In 1936 the family moved to
Winthrop, Massachusetts.
While living in Winthrop, Plath attended Bradford
eight-year-old Plath Senior High School in
published her first poem in Wellesley, graduating in
the Boston Herald's 1950.
children's section.
3. College
In 1950, Plath attended Smith She was rejected for
College. admission to the Harvard
writing seminar.
She edited The Smith Review
and during the summer after
Made her first medically
her third year of college.
documented suicide attempt in
late August, 1953.
Awarded the coveted position
of guest editor at
She spent the next six months
Mademoiselle magazine, and
in psychiatric care.
spent a month in NYC.
The experience was her She spent the next six months
inspiration for The Bell Jar. in psychiatric care.
4. Plath seemed to make a good
recovery and returned to She obtained a Fulbright
college and in June, 1955, scholarship to Newnham
she graduated from Smith with College, Cambridge.
highest class honors.
At Newnham, she studied with
Dorothea Krook.
She continued actively She spent her first year
writing poetry and publishing winter and spring holidays
her work in the student travelling around the
newspaper Varsity. continent.
5. Marriage
Plath met Ted Hughes in The couple moved back to the
Cambridge at a party. United Kingdom in December
1959 and lived in London.
A few months later the couple
were married on June 16, 1956 Their daughter Frieda was
at St George the Martyr born on 1st April, 1960.
Holborn in the London Borough
of Camden. In February 1961, Plath's
second pregnancy ended in
They both became deeply miscarriage.
interested in astrology and
the supernatural, using Ouija In that August that family
boards. moved to Court Green in the
town of North Tawton in
Plath and Hughes traveled Devon.
across Canada and the US,
staying at the Yaddo artist Her son Nicholas was born in
colony in New York State in January 1962.
the Autumn of 1959.
6. In 1961, the couple rented In December 1962, she
their flat in Chalcot Square returned alone to London with
to Assia and David Wevill. their children, and rented a
Hughes was immediately struck flat on a five year lease in
with the beautiful Assia. a house where William Butler
Yeats once lived.
In June Plath had had a car
accident which she described
as one of many suicide The winter of 1962 was one of
attempts. the coldest in 100 years; the
pipes froze, the children—now
In July 1962, Plath two years old and nine
discovered Hughes had been months—were often sick, and
having an affair with Wevill the house had no telephone;
and in September the couple her depression returned.
separated.
7. Career
In 1957 Plath taught at Smith During the summer of 1962,
College, her alma mater. Hughes began to keep bees,
which would be the subject of
In 1958 Plath took a job as a many Plath poems.
receptionist in the
Beginning in October 1962,
psychiatric unit of
Plath wrote most of her poems
Massachusetts General
for the collection Ariel,
Hospital and in the evening
which her reputation now
took creative writing
rests upon.
seminars given by poet Robert
Lowell. Her depression returned but
she completed the rest of her
In October, 1960, Plath poetry collection which would
published her first be published after her death
collection of poetry, The in 1965. The Bell Jar came
Colossus and in August she out in January 1963,
finished the Bell Jar. published under the pen name
Victoria Lucas.
8. Style
Her works weren’t really Her earlier poems were
appreciated until after her composed slowly and with The controlled
death. great care, while her later flow of images
poems were written at a combined with the
Unique uses of rhythm and structure of these
greater and increasing speed.
meter. poems successfully
Themes of feminist criticism. Plath would speak these poems draws the reader
in "her own voice" as she into that
She uses the technique of wrote them. suffering.
"doubling," and has
distinctive approach to She handled very painful and The use of parody
characterization. intense subjects such as and black humor
suicide, self-loathing, rescues her
The syntactic and visual Nazis, shock treatment, poetry from total
irregularities together dysfunctional relationships, pathos.
create an unsettling and homicidal iron tanks.
experience.
9. FREAK
She was obsessed with death. She dealt with ongoing
depression and was checked
Her first suicide attempt was into hospitals and seeing
at the age of 20 while she psychiatrists on and off
was attending school in throughout her life.
Cambridge by sleeping pills.
Her son committed suicide in
Her 2nd suicide attempt was 2009, which suggests that
right before she found out their depression was
Hughes was having an affair genetically based.
with Assia, by auto crash.
Her poems deal with heavy
Her 3rd, and successful, subjects like suicide, self
suicide attempt was by CO dissatisfaction, and
poisoning, dying with her unhappiness in relationships.
head in the oven.
10. The Mirror
I am silver and exact. I have no
preconceptions.
What ever you see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful---
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite
wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it
so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and
over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really
is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles
or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an
agitation of hands.
11. The Mirror is a poem about the difficulty of
accepting the truth, especially the inevitable
process of age and time. The poem is
characterized from the perspective of the mirror
itself with the relationship of one specific woman.
When the mirror describes itself as “a little god” it
personifies its powerful ego and also like it enjoys
the power if has over the woman. In the second
stanza the mirror transforms into a lake and the
importance of this transformation is that a lake
isn’t as exact as mirror; a lake involves more
depth. She refers to the candles and moon as
liars because they do not give off enough light to
reveal a true reflection. The woman feels as
though she has been lied to by the lake when the
last two lines of the poem. The woman is afraid
that one day the lake and the mirror will one day
reflect the exact same image; the mirror reflects a
physical appearance of the girl with her beauty
and the because you have to look deeper into the
lake, it reflects who the girl really is on the inside.
By this the girl feels conflicted and confused
about who she really is. One of the most
important messages that Sylvia Plath is trying to
get across is that beauty is nice, but superficial.
She is sending a message to the growing
superficiality of today’s society and tells us that
beauty is nice but soon fades and the only thing
you have left to yourself is your character. This
poem was written in 1961, not too long after she
found out that her husband, Ted Hughes, was
having an affair on her with Assia Wevill, who
caught Ted’s attention by her beauty. I believe this
poem reflects the despair of Sylvia and how much
