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SYLVIA PLATH Women Writers General Editors: Eva Figes and Adele King Published tides: Charlotte Bronte, Pauline Nestor Fanny Burney, Judy Simons Sylvia Plath, Susan Bassnett Jean Rhys, Carol Rumens Christina Stead, Diana Brydon Forthcoming: Margaret Atwood, Barbara Rigney Jane Austen, Meenakshi Mukherjee Anne Bronte, Elizabeth Langland Willa Cather, Susie Thomas Emily Dickinson, Joan Kirkby George Eliot, Kristin Brady Mrs Gaskell, Jane Spencer Katherine Mansfield, Diane DeBell Muriel Spark, Judith Sproxton Edith Wharton, Katherine Joslin-Jeske Women in Romanticism: Dorothy Wordsworth, Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley, Meena Alexander Further tides are in preparation Women Writers SYLVIA PLATH Susan Bassnett M MACMILLAN ©Susan Bassnett 1987 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1987 978-0-333-36780-3 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1987 Published by MACMILLAN EDUCATION LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world Typeset by Wessex Typesetters (Division of The Eastern Press Ltd) Frome, Somerset British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Bassnett, Susan Sylvia Plath.-(Women writers) 1. Plath, Sylvia-Criticism and interpretation I. Title II. Series 811 .54 PS3566.L272/ ISBN 978-0-333-36781-0 ISBN 978-1-349-18600-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-18600-6 Contents Editor's Preface vii AcknO'Wledgements Vlll 1 The Many Sylvia Plaths 1 2 God, Nature and Writing 34 3 Writing the Family 63 4 Writing out Love 93 5 The Struggle to Survive through Writing 120 6 Sylvia as Muse 148 Notes 154 Bibliography 159 Index 161 v For Clive vi Editors' Preface The study of women's writing has been long neglected by a male critical establishment both in academic circles and beyond. As a result, many women writers have either been unfairly neglected or have been marginalised in some way, so that their true influence and importance has been ignored. Other women writers have been accepted by male critics and academics, but on terms which seem, to many women readers of this generation, to be false or simplistic. In the past the internal conflicts involved in being a woman in a male-dominated society have been largely ignored by readers of both sexes, and this has affected our reading of women's work. The time has come for a serious reassessment of women's writing in the light of what we understand today. This series is designed to help in that reassessment. All the books are written by women because we believe that men's understanding of feminist critique is only, at best, partial. And besides, men have held the floor quite long enough. EVA FIGES ADELE KING Vll Acknowledgements I should like to thank Eva Figes and Adele King for sensitive thoughtful editing, also Vanessa Peerless for her invaluable help. In the writing of this book, many people have contributed in many different ways. I should like to single out Anne Cluysenaar for her wisdom and unique knowledge of the processes of making poetry, also Renate Becker, Barrie Hinksman, Susan Melrose and Nilda Pettenuzzo who set me on the road to writing again. Irene Pearson typed the manuscript, correcting any spelling and syntax and offering positive encouragement and feedback. Finally, as ever, my thanks are due to those people whose practical help gives me the necessary time in which to write at all - Stella Dixon, my mother Eileen, my husband and my two eldest daughters, Lucy and Vanessa. Vlll 1 The Many Sylvia Plaths One of the most powerfully persistent myths of western culture is the myth of the Doomed Poet, the figure touched by greatness that causes poetry to be written but that brings about the death of the writer, often at his (usually his) own hand. The canon of great poets is littered with the bodies of those who died tragically before their time - poets such as Chatterton, Shelley, Keats and Byron, names which sum mon up the image even for people who have never read any of the poems. The myth of the Doomed Poet takes on another aspect where women writers are concerned, because here it clashes with the myth of the Frustrated Female - poor lovelorn Christina Rossetti for example, or Emily Bronte in wind swept Yorkshire, Marina Tsvetayova whose suffering proved too great to endure any longer, and, in recent times, Sylvia Plath, the woman whose broken marriage led her to suicide in a cold London flat in 1963, despite the presence of two small children and despite being in the midst of a mighty flow of creative energy in her writing. Critics have tended to read Sylvia Plath's work through lenses in which the two myths are reflected, seeing her as part of the line running through history which decrees that great poetry cannot be written without the poet paying the price of happiness and also as part of the line that decrees that women writers are unfulfilled human beings. Since the rebirth of the feminist movement in the early seventies, another myth has also begun to circulate, the myth of the Deprived Woman, 1
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