Biography
American poet and novelist known for her exquisite poetry and her
autobiographical novel, "The Bell Jar," published in 1963. The novel
centers on a young woman with a fragile hold on life. Plath committed
suicide shortly after its publication.
Plath was a sensitive, studious child, born to a college professor and
his educated, cultured wife. In November 1940, when Sylvia was just 8 years
old, her father died from complications of diabetes. An intense student,
she worked hard to achieve good grades. The following year, in August 1941,
one of Plath's poems was published in a Boston, MA newspaper. By age 18,
she had won awards for her poetry and, with her excellent grades and obvious
talent, she won a scholarship to Smith College. During her junior year, she
spent the summer in New York as a guest editor for Mademoiselle, a fashion
magazine. While still a student at Smith, she had a nervous breakdown,
attempted suicide by swallowing sleeping pills and was given shock
treatments. Despite such upheaval, she graduated in 1955 and went to
Cambridge, England on a Fulbright scholarship.
One night at a party in Cambridge, February 25, 1956, she met Ted Hughes,
and their romance began in a blaze of passion. She wrote, "He kissed me bang
smash on the mouth, And when he kissed my neck, I bit him long and hard on
the cheek and, when we came out of the room, Blood was running down his
face." The handsome gifted pair married four months later, on June 16, 1956.
The couple had two children, Frieda in 1961 and Nicholas in 1962. During
their time together, the brilliant and tortured Plath mined her own anguish,
writing obsessively of her depression, her jealousy, her marriage and her
father, the strict, formal professor who had abandoned her by his premature
death. Her first book, "The Colossus" was released in 1960. "The Bell Jar"
achieved critical acclaim in 1963 for its moving portrayal of a young woman's
life including her emotional breakdown, suicide attempts, psychological
treatment and relationships.
During the course of her marriage, Plath's behavior became increasingly more
erratic and obsessive. Beset by worry over money, insecurity over her worth as
a writer, jealousy over her husband's friendships with other women, she wrote
furiously in her torment. Their relationship suffered tremendously from her
fragility and his inability to deal with her roller-coaster emotions. Suspecting
her husband of an affair, she gathered all of his papers she could find and burned
them in the garden. In 1962, he left her for another woman, Assia Wevill. Just one
month after the publication of "The Bell Jar," on a frigid wintry day in England,
she tucked her two small children safely away in their room, set out milk and
cookies for them, and put her head in their London flat's gas oven, ending her life
on February 11, 1963. She was just 30 years old. Her last-written poems appeared
two years later in "Ariel." In a twist of irony, the poems established Plath as a
fiercely original poet who exceeded her husband as an icon in the world of
literature. Other collections of her poetry followed, with one in 1981 edited by
her husband, Ted Hughes.
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What Do You Think?
Valentine's Day seems like a good time to do some synastry. Let's examine
the charts of a famous pair of modern star-crossed lovers, Sylvia Plath and
Ted Hughes, whose poems often speak of their love and their torment. Plath's
life ended in suicide, with a silent Hughes looking like the villain for many
years. A critique of his "Birthday Letters" by Katha Pollitt in the March 1,
1998 edition of the New York Times
(http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/01/reviews/980301.01pollitt.html)
sums up last book this way: "Here, we are to believe, is The Truth About Sylvia, which can be
summarized as: she was beautiful, brilliant, violent, crazy, doomed; I loved her, I
did my best to make her happy, but she was obsessed with her dead father, and it
killed her." From examining their charts, we might be able to get a glimpse of some
of the complex needs that drove them to act as they did.
In order to do a complete synastry reading, we must first examine the
charts individually. You might want to keep these questions in mind when you
interpret their charts:
- What does each chart tell us about the kind of relationship each poet
would be drawn to? What does each person need and want in a partner? In
some of Plath's poetry she depicts her husband as cold and domineering man
who stifled her creativity. Does this view of her husband show up in her
natal chart?
- Where in Plath's chart might you see the astrological indicator of her
suicide at a young age? From an astrological point of view, what might have
driven her to attempt suicide and ultimately take her own life? Where does
the death of her father and its impact on her show up in her chart?
- What in their charts speaks of their passionate love and her mournful
death? Where in his chart might you see the feminist outcry accusing him
of contributing to her suicide? Where in the chart might you see his long
silence on his relationships and his ultimate need to offer his perspective
late in his life?
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