In progress.
An advance copy from the Amazon Vine program.
No index.
Marilyn Monroe
Published her first verse, simply titled "Poem," in the Boston Herald on August 10, 1941. -- p. 15
Favorite novels: Jane Eyre, Gone With The Wind; -- p.15
Sketched a map of Massachusetts, stretching from Salem to Winthrop to Boston, Cambridge, Wellesley, and Boston Bay -- p. 21
"Bitter Strawberries," published on August 11, 1950, Christian Science Monitor; -- p. 24
Smith College; Eddie Cantor, Dick Norton,
Jane Eyre/Thornfield Hall -- p. 38
Bill Buckley, Jr, Sharon, Connecticut, -- p. 39
Philip Wylie's influential Generation of Vipers -- p. 41, emasculation of men; pacification of women which would become dominant themes in books about the American family in the 1950's (and sitcoms)
Reference to Samuel Richardson's unreal gentleman, Sir Charles Grandison -- p. 40
Spent time with Dick on Cape Cod -- p. 45
Nanny for two children, company of Cantor's teenage daughter; Chatham, Massachusetts -- p. 45
"Sunday at the Mintons," Mademoiselle's $500 fiction prize;
"Initiation," $100 price, Seventeen, published January, 1953; -- p. 48
November 3, 1952: journal; first mention of thoughts of suicide -- p.49
"In effect, Eddie diagnosed Sylvia as a Henry James narrator -- p. 53 -- she wanted to be near the action, while never fully committing herself to it."
Liked Modigliani paintings -- p. 55
Chose James Joyce as the subject of her senior thesis -- p. 56
A Farewell to Arms reference -- p. 57, which must have impressed Sylvia
Myron Klotz during this period; a baseball player; escorted her to plays in NYC: Arthur Miler's The Crucible; Tennessee Williams' Camino Real; -- p. 58
A collection of poems rejected by The New Yorker but accepted by Harper's -- p. 58
At the home of Elizabeth Drew, one of Sylvia's teachers and one of the country's distinguished literary critics, Sylvia watched WH Auden sip beer and smoke Lucky Strikes while discussing The Tempest, commenting that Ariel embodied the creative imagination -- p. 58
May 12, 1953: accepted to Harvard University -- p. 59
Early May, 1953: awarded the Mademoiselle guest editorship; -- p. 60
Catcher in the Rye would later serve as a model for The Bell Jar -- p. 61
Robert Coover's The Public Burning -- p. 64
Rebecca West, in her prologue to her masterpiece, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon - p. 64
The events of June 1953 became the basis of The Bell Jar -- p. 64 -- in which Plath transmogrified her traumatic month into a fable, a Catcher in the Rye-style story that captures all the glitter and gore of New York City, the abode of the brilliant and the phone, the predatory and the pretentious.
Three days missing; near-suicide, p. 66
November, 1953, ECT shock treatment, p. 69
April 19, 1954, meets Richard Sassoon, whose father was a cousin of the British poet Siegfried Sassoon; -- p. 76; Richard was a Yale student; Sylvia still at Smith; Richard was a kind of literary dream for Sylvia -- p. 77;
The story of the math professor who raped Sylvia, p.83
Edmund Spenser poetry, p. 83
Family home in Wellesley, p. 83
Marilyn Martin remembers a conversation with Sylvia about Henry James' novel The Portrait of a Lady -- p. 85
Sylvia was beginning to meet major contemporary poets like Marianne Moore and John Ciardi -- p. 89
Awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study at Cambridge -- p. 90
The apotheosis of Sylvia Plath seemed perfected in June, 1954, ... p. 90
Graduates summa cum laude, 1955; -- p 90
Meets another of her lovers, Peter Davison, p. 91, in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Because they shared a certain "mutuality," only Richard Sassoo seemed to have satisfied her sexually -- p. 91
1955, arrives in Cambridge, England; p. 95
Missed Sassoon, now at the Sorbonne, p. 98
Sylvia enjoyed Paris and Nice, p. 99
Ted, p. 101
"Pursuit," the poem dedicated to Ted Hughes, sets out in one astonishing burst of insight all Plath needed to know about the love of her life - p. 103
Discusses DH Lawrence's "The Man Who Died" in her journal, March 8, 1956 -- p. 105
"Isis bereaved, Isis in search." -- p. 109
Imagined herself as Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire -- p. 110
Sassoon, not Hughes, had Plath's full attention -- p. 111
Ted and Sylvia coming together -- p 110 and following
Struggling with her novel, "Falcon Yard." -- p. 132; turned to Virginia Woolf, whose diary comforted Sylvia because Woolf, too, got depressed. Indeed, Sylvia though that in the dark summer of 1953 she had been channeling Woolf and emulating her suicide by drowning. But Sylvia had been reilient and had bobbed to the surface. -- p. 133
Considered a style resembling Joyce Cary's, The Horse's Mouth -- p. 134
Back to Massachusetts; Sylvia to teach at Smith; Ted with a part-time teaching position at Amherst, p. 138
Vacationed at Cape Cod before beginning their jobs; biking; Sylvia reading Virginia Woolf's novels; -- p. 141
Socialized with the poet WS Merwin and his British wife, Dido, then living in Boston -- p. 150
Sought inspiration in Paul Klee, Henri Rousseau, Gauguin, and De Chirico, p. 151
Talk of another woman, Shiela, while at Amherst, p. 155; "... Hughes was constitutionally incapable of fidelity."
Move to Beacon Hill, Boston, in September, 1958 -- p. 155
By June 20, 1958 (?) -- journal records her battle with depression -- p. 156
June 25, a miracle. After years and years of rejections, the New Yorker had accepted two of her poems, "Mussel-Hunter at Rock Harbor" and "Nocturne." -- p. 156. Rock Harbor is in Orleans, just a few miles from Chatham where Sylvia had roots
Talk of children, p. 158
A good view of the Charles River, when they moved to Boston, p. 158
Shortly after moving there, Sylvia had a job at Mass General Hospital typing up records, etc., in the psychiatric clinic, p. 159. Resulted in her best work of short fiction, "Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams." Compares/contrasts with Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962). -- p. 160
See a psychiatrist Dr Beuscher during this period, p.158 and following; depressed over concerns that Ted would leave her, p. 163
Sylvia was not paying her therapist and was relieved when Dr Beuscher said $5/session was adequate. "Like Marilyn Monroe, who also was undergoing psychiatric treatment at the same time, Sylvia Plat wondered why she could not count on even those closest to her, why she suspected their motives .... p. 164
Attended Robert Lowell's poetry class; students included Anne Sexton, and another well-known poet -- George Starbuck, p 165
Visited her dad's gravesite, in Winthrop -- p. 165
Her first book of poetry just missed winning the Yale Younger Poets prize that went to George Starbuck, whom Sylvia dismisssed as a light verse writer. -- p. 167. Plath was well-known in her circle by this time.
To Yaddo, p. 167
Sylvia pregnant; would have child in England; where they arrived in December, p. 169
1960: rent a London flat, p. 170; on Chalcot Square near Primrose Hill; the place needed a lot of work; p. 171
Natural childbirth at home planned (she arrived too late in England to register and thus get hospital approval for birthing; had to birth at home with midwife, but that's probably what she wanted anyway; common in England at the time); -- p. 172
Hints that things were not going well at home, per Ted, p. 172
First baby, on/about due date; March 31 -- p. 173
Dinner with T. S. Eliot, p. 175
Visited by Stephen Spender and his wife, p. 175. Gossip ensued about WH Auden, DH Lawrence, Virginia Woolf -- all of Sylvia's old favorites
During this period, Sylvia met A. Alvarez for the first time -- p. 175; he was mentioned above when he said Ted was constitutionally incapable of fidelity. He was poetry editor of the Observer.
Huge success with The Colossus. -- p. 179; growing resentment with Ted's sister Olwyn
Sylvia was pregnant again, p. 180
Sylvia gets the "much-coveted New Yorker first reading contract" -- p. 180
Miscarriage; later appendectomy, p. 180
About a third of the way through The Bell Jar, p. 183
Move to a more luxurious home in Devon, p. 185; sublet their London apt to a young Canadian poet, David Wevill, and his German-Russian-Jewish wife, Assia
Church, p. 186
March, 1961, had begun writing The Bell Jar; by November, 1961, the draft was complete -- p. 187; about a college girl suffering nervous breakdown; characters based on easily-identifiably people; publisher worried about libel;
Pregnant again, second child born January 17, 1962 -- p. 189; a little boy; midwife at home
Chapter 7: Queen Also of the Immortals -- p. 194
July 1962: the call that kills a marriage; Plath discovers her husband's infidelity;
The "other woman" -- Assia Wevill -- p. 195
Ted moves out -- p. 196; marriage is disintegrating
Plath was referring, of course, to the attempt to kill herself after her traumatic stint at Mademoiselle. Suicide was always a genuine option. She had said as much to Anne Sexton during some of her happiest days with Ted Hughes. The two women poets discussed their suicide attempts with aplomb. -- p. 201
Several pages on her poetry during this time -- p. 201 and following
Sylvia took to beekeeping --- p. 204
And so Sylvia regrouped, three days writing later her most famous poem, "Daddy." -- p. 205
Plath's identification with victims of the Holocaust has offended some readers. -- p. 206
Goes to London to meet with Al Alvarez -- p. 212
In The Savage God: A Study of Suicide, Alvarez mentions that in June, 1962, even before Assia's call to Ted at Court Green, the balance of power had shifted to Sylvia...p. 212
November: Ted meets anthropologist and poet Susan Alliston - p. 213
New home for Sylvia: her dream home -- 23 Fitzroy Road in Primrose Hill, not far from Dr John Horder, who was treating her infected thumb; -- p. 214
Reviewing Malcolm Elwin's Lord Byron's Wife, p. 216
Very interesting vignette, p. 219 -- the devastating Christmas Eve visit with Al Alvarez; he thinks she wanted an affair; but suggests she wanted "more."
Alvarez could not sleep with Sylvia because he was then involved with Anne, his future wife....Alvarez regarded Ted as a friend he would not betray...p. 220
Page 220 and following ... leading up to the end -- perhaps the most interesting part of the book; a postmortem on suicide;
The last wracking weekend, begins on page 228 --
Page 230 -- the story of Sylvia ringing Trevor Thomas' doorbell to ask for some stamps...
Page 231 -- February 11 ... Sylvia Plath prepared to die -- left food and drink for her children in their room and opened a window.... she sealed the kitchen as best she could ... turned on the gas....at 9:30 a.m. she was found ...
Page 231: ... but she knew that no human being cold sustain such a peak of perfection and perform all the normal functions of existence in the "kitchen of life," as Martha Gellhorn used to call day-to-day experience (note: just the other day I was trying to recall the name of Hemingway's second or third wife)
Chapter 8: In the Temple of Isis: Among the Hierophants (1963 --), p. 232
Skipping ahead...
p. 241 .... 1970, Hughes married Carol Orchard, the daughter of a Devon farmer Hughes had befriended. Like certain other women who enter during the latter stages of a famous writer's career -- Elaine Steinbeck and Mary Hemingway come to mind -- Carol became the ideal consort.
Other biographies --- The Death and Life of Sylvia Plath, Ronald Hayman, 1991, p. 258.
The Silent Woman, Janet Malcolm, 1994, p. 259.
Birthday Letters, Ted Hughes, 1998, p. 260.
Ted's daughter, Sylvia Plath's sole surviving child (Nicholas committed suicide on March 16, 2009, after struggling with periodic depression), has adopted her father's attitude, accusing the BBC producers of the film Sylvia (2003) of voyeuristic motivations, creating a "Sylvia suicide doll" for the peanut eaters." --- p. 267
Appendix A: Sylvia Plath and Carl Jung
Undated pages of notes Plath took while reading Carl Jung's The Development of Personality.
Appendix B: Sylvia Plath's Library
Passages that Plath underlined, starred, and annotated in books that are now part of her collection at Smith College.
My favorite: "It was her deep distrust of her husband -- this was what darkened the world." -- Henry James, Portrait of a Lady
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