Sylvia PlathThe Comparison And Contrast Of Her

Sylvia Plath-The Comparison And Contrast Of Her Life And Her Works Essay, Research Paper

Sylvia Plath was born October 27, 1932 in Boston Massachusetts. She was the first child of Dr. Emil Otto Plath and Aurelia Schober Plath. Otto was a German who came to study ministry and Northwestern University, but wound up as a biology professor at Boston University, after attaining a Master s Degree in the arts from Washington University and a Ph.D. in science from Harvard, who specialized in bees. Aurelia Schober Plath was a German and English teacher at Brookline High School, until she married Otto and became a homemaker (Alexander 20-30).

Sylvia s brother, Warren Joseph Plath, was born April 27, 1935, The Plaths resided in Boston until the fall of 1936, when they moved to Winthrop, Massachusetts, a town near Boston. The Plath household was very conservative, and Otto and Aurelia s relationship was very stable. Their Family, including extended family was a very tight unit. Sylvia s childhood was a blissful one and was instrumental in developing Sylvia as a writer (Barnard chronology).

Shortly after Warren s birth in 1935, Otto began to show signs of incipient illness: slight weight loss, hacking cough, and an uncharacteristically low threshold for anger. Otto suspected that he had cancer because a friend of his with similar symptoms had recently died due to lung cancer. On November 6, 1940, Otto Plath lost his battle with diabetes mellitus, when an embolus dislodged from somewhere in his bloodstream and struck his lung killing him instantly. Sylvia and Warren did not attend the funeral because Aurelia believed that they were too young to witness an event as traumatic as the funeral of their father (Alexander 28-60).

In 1942, Aurelia moved the family to Wellesley, Massachusetts. While living in this house, Sylvia s first poem was published at the young age of only eight years old. Sylvia was a star student, and made straight A s throughout high school. She excelled in English, particularly creative writing. During the fall of 1950 Sylvia won a scholarship to attend Smith College, an all girls school in Northampton, Massachusetts. At this point in her life, the early Smith years, she was writing very measured, pretty poems (Hughes, McCullough 3-25).

Sylvia s short story, Sunday at the Mintons, won first prize in a Mademoiselle contest. From this story, she also won a Guest Editorship at the Mademoiselle headquarters in 1953. She was sent to write editorials for the magazine in New York. This is where Sylvia developed most of her ideas for her future novel, The Bell Jar. Also, while in New York, Sylvia fell into a deep depression. She began experimenting with the idea of suicide. After the job in New York was over, Sylvia returned home to Wellesley. Sylvia was different after her trip to New York; she would question friends about the best way to commit suicide. Aurelia began to worry about Sylvia and sent her to a psychiatrist. At this time, Sylvia began electroshock therapy. Then, on August 24, 1953, Sylvia took forty-eight sleeping pills and his herself in the tiny two-and-a-half-foot crawl space under her porch. The police did not find Sylvia s body until several days after Sylvia had been reported as missing. Sylvia recovered in the hospital and was transferred to Massachusetts General Hospital s Psychiatric Ward. While there, Sylvia continued shock treatments. In January of 1954 Sylvia was released to return to Smith College for her senior year (Alexander 110-131).

After graduating from Smith College, Sylvia was accepted into Cambridge University in England. While at Cambridge, Sylvia met her future husband, Ted Hughes, who was also a poet. Sylvia began dating Ted, and they were eventually married on June 16, 1956. They kept their marriage hidden due to the publicity that it would have drawn to them. Later, Sylvia and Ted moved to the United States, and Sylvia pursued a teaching job at Smith College. This is when Sylvia began hearing rumors about Ted s infidelity (190-200).

In July of 1959 Sylvia became pregnant with their first child. After the news of the pregnancy, Ted and Sylvia moved back to England. Then, on April 1, 1960, Sylvia gave birth to Freida Rebecca Hughes. Not even a year later, Sylvia became pregnant with her son, Nicholas Farrar Hughes. Between these two births, Sylvia had also endured a miscarriage due to stress (Barnard chronology).

In the summer of 1962, Ted and Assia, a close friend of the family, began showing signs of an attraction to each other. Sylvia did not think anything of it until Ted admitted to her that he was having an affair. Sylvia was enraged but still wanted to stay together for the children. Ted and Sylvia tried to reconcile on a trip to Ireland, but Ted was not in love with Sylvia; he was now in love with Assia. After the trip to Ireland, Sylvia filed for legal separation (Alexander 280-300).

After the separation, Sylvia was penniless and lived in a London flat with her two children. During her times of hardship, she wrote heavily at four o clock in the morning, inspired by the stillness of the early morning and the silence of the city. During this time, Sylvia wrote her most famous work, The Bell Jar. The Bell Jar was a piece of autobiographical fiction about a young writer named Esther Greenwood, a guest editor for a women s magazine during the summer. She had many psych