PLATH & HUGHES

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Sylvia Plath & Ted Hughes:

Sylvia Plath [1932 – 1963] was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to academically gifted, Austrian-German, parents. Her literary career began when her first poem was published in the Boston Herald's children's section in 1940, when she was eight years old – tragically it was also the same year in which the first major blow to a child of unstable and over-sensitive temperament with the death of her father.

She was subsequently awarded first prize in a fiction contest by the magazine “Mademoiselle” for her story “Sunday at the Mintons” and went on to collect a number awards for her poetry from Smith College. Life appeared rosy for a young writer, at a time when her written works, both in poetry and prose, were being well received and was interviewing celebrities for a top flight New York magazine.

However her tragic undercurrents of neurosis and depression that were to dog her existence were beginning to manifest them selves and this was made apparent on the publication of her poem “A Mad Girl’s Love Song”. Shortly after writing this she left her job and returned to New England where she was apparently overcome by depression and tried for the first time to take her life. With the support of her mother and therapy she managed to resume her studies at Smith and hence graduated in 1955 with the highest honors, securing a scholarship to Cambridge University. It was here that she met the aspiring young poet Ted Hughes and after a whirlwind courtship they were married in 1956.

Ted Hughes [1930 – 1998] was born in Yorkshire, son of a carpenter and sergeant of the Lancashire Fusiliers in the Great War, his youth was spent in the countryside and was greatly influenced by his time spent fishing and hunting with his brother and the impact upon his father of the bloody landings at Gallipoli, 1915.

"Portrait of me, made by Sylvia Plath, circa 1957, Ted Hughes"

The early years of their life together were spent in Spain, Cambridge and Boston – where Ted Hughes had accepted a lectureship in creative writing – they greatly inspired and encouraged one another to write profusely and submitted numerous works to magazines and journals, Plath saw to it that Hughes early poems appeared in prestigious magazines such as The New Yorker. Sylvia dazzled fellow students with her conversation and depth of knowledge, yet her increasing interest in depression and suicide were very apparent, it was at this time that she took up temporary employment with a psychiatrist.

In 1959 they returned to London at which point Sylvia was expecting her first child, Frieda; both Plath and Hughes had now had published works and things looked rosy, although beneath the surface all was far from well and much of this stemmed from Hughes affairs with other women. They both had continuing success with published works and on the eve of the birth of their son Nicholas, 1961, they moved to a house in Devon, where Sylvia, it seemed, embraced motherhood and ran a highly organized household. The affairs continued and their relations broke down to the point that Hughes left his wife and Sylvia moved out of the family home and took rooms in London with her children, shortly after this on 11th February 1963 she was found dead, with her head in the gas oven. Ted Hughes has since been cast as the guilty party for leaving his unstable wife for another woman, Assia Wevill, he subsequently refused to talk or write about his personal relationship with his wife.

The tragic early death of Sylvia Plath, at the age of 30, meant that only three of her works had been published in her lifetime: “A Winter Ship”, “The Colossus”, and the semi autobiographical work “The Bell Jar" [published under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas]. Ted Hughes having been the most staunch supporter of Plath’s writings throughout her career saw to it that her other works were hence published, between 1963 and 1981 eighteen further works were published posthumously, many of them in deluxe private editions which are of particular rarity today, the most recognized of her posthumous works were “Ariel”, “Crossing the Water” and “Winter Trees”.

Ted Hughes writing career continued and he has subsequently published a great number of books of poetry and prose for both adults and children and was poet Laureate from 1984 until his death. His relationship continued with Assia Wevill for a further 6 years after the death of Plath, when in 1969 having murdered their daughter, committed suicide in the same way as Plath. Hughes broke his silence on his relationship with Plath on the publication of “Birthday Letters” in 1998, in which he details his feelings and their life together, the cover design of this book was done by their daughter Frieda.

Ted Hughes was much loved for his contributions to literature and poetry, and surely one of the greatest imaginative English writers, a natural successor to W. B. Yeats, D. H. Lawrence and T. S. Eliot. His works have been prolific and many of them have appeared only in obscure periodicals and anthologies, or in limited editions long unobtainable. Those poems which are available in trade editions usually differ from earlier forms in which they appeared, since Hughes rarely missed the opportunity to revise at every stage. At his funeral he was described by his great friend Seamus Heaney with glowing tones:

“No death outside my immediate family has left me feeling more bereft. No death in my lifetime has hurt poets more. He was a tower of tenderness and strength, a great arch under which the least of poetry's children could enter and feel secure. His creative powers were, as Shakespeare said, still crescent. By his death, the veil of poetry is rent and the walls of learning broken.”