a new biography of sylvia plath: mad girl's love song

7/30/2019 A new biography of Sylvia Plath: MAD GIRL'S LOVE SONG

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Contents

Introduction 1

1. Tis haunting nameless pain 13

2. My thoughts to shining ame aspire 33

3. Te ghost o somebody else 59

4. I I rest, i I think inward, I go mad 91

5. Who is Sylvia? 113

6. I mysel am Heaven and Hell 145

7. Drowning in sel-hate, doubt, madness 171

8. Te beginnings oTe Bell Jar 197

9. I am chained to you as you are to your dreams 233

10. Now, Voyager 259

11. In the depths o the orest your image ollows me 287

Aerword 313

Acknowledgments 315

Notes 319

Index 345


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1.

This haunting nameless pain

When Sylvia Plath was a child, her mother would sit down at the amily

piano and play the plaintive nineteenth-century German song Te

Legend o the Lorelei. Te balladwritten by Clemens von Brentanoin 1801tells the story o a beautiul sorceress, Lore Lay, whose gazeprompts men to all immediately in love with her. A bishop sends or

the woman to be judged, but even he cannot resist her, and the Lore

Lay pleads with him to end her lie. Instead o condemning her to

death, he pledges three knights to accompany the young woman to aconvent, but on the way the group passes a steep rock on the east bank

o the Rhine, and the woman asks the knights i they would grant her

permission to climb up to the viewpoint to see the majestic river or

the last time. At the top o the precipice, the Lore Lay throws hersel

to her death.

Te poem proved so popular that it was rewritten by various authors

during the nineteenth century, with the Lore Lay variously represented

as a witch, a mermaid who lures sailors to their deaths, and a virginwith golden hair. Te version that Plath heard as a child was Hein-

rich Heines 1823 poem Lorelei, which was set to music by Friedrich

Silcher and later translated by Mark wain inA ramp Abroad. Its sig-

nicant that Plath associated the legend with her early years; in July

1958, as she was composing her poem Lorelei, she outlined in her

journal the appeal o the story: not only had it originated in Germany,

but it illustrated perectly one o Plaths recurring themes, that o the

death wish.1 She described how the Rhine sirens were her Own Kin

and, indeed, she came to see hersel as a modern-day Lorelei, a sorcer-


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MAD G IRLS LOVE SONG

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ess who had the power to attract men with a fash o her intense eyes, a

tortured soul whose only destiny was death by her own hand.

Te song that echoed through the Plath household can also be used

to interpret Sylvias childhood and the various problems it presents to

a biographer:

I cannot divine what it meaneth,

Tis haunting nameless pain:

A tale o the bygone ages

Keeps brooding through my brain.

By virtue o her mothers obsessive curatorial zeal, we know a great

deal about the acts o Plaths early yearsor instance, Aurelia wentso ar as to document her daughters weight (at birth, two weeks,

one month, six months, eight months, nine months, one year, eigh-

teen months, two years, twenty-six and a hal months, two years and

nine months, and three years). Yet despite this excess o inormation,

there is an absence, a haunting nameless pain that even Plath hersel

acknowledged. Reading the poets journals, we get the sense that shespent much o her adult lie trying to make sense o what she described

as the complex mosaic o my childhood2; no matter how hard she

looked, or how much she wrote, she was destined to ail. Determined

to try and chronicle her experience in an attempt to impose some kind

o order on the chaos that raged inside her, Sylvia oen looked back on

her childhood in the hopes o nding the answer to her problems. But,

as she writes in her poem Te Ghosts Leavetaking, she encountered

nothing but a mass o unreadable hieroglyphs, unknowable beings thatspoke in a lost language.3

Sylvia Plath was born at the Robinson Memorial Hospital, Boston, Mas-

sachusetts, at 2:10 p.m. on October 27, 1932, the rst child o Otto Emil

Plath and Aurelia Frances Schober. Te couple had married on January

4, 1932he was orty-six, a proessor o biology at Boston University,

and she was a twenty-ve-year-old ormer student o his whom he had

met in 1929. In an unpublished letter, Aureliawho had studied or a

masters degree in English and German at Boston Universitys College

o Practical Arts and Lettersdescribed the encounter. I wanted to


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read the great German poem on which Wagner based his operas (some

o them) called Das Nibelungen Lied . . . , she wrote. Well, I went to

the head o the German department and asked i anyone taught this

and was advised to take the course in Middle-High German which was

taught, strangely enough, by a proessor o biology . . . I was his [Otto

Plaths] prize student, but he very properly did not ask me out socially

until the day when I handed in my nal examination to him, because

in those days socializing between proessors and students was orbid-

den. He was tall, rosy-cheeked, with the bluest eyes I have ever seen. I

thought he was an awul poke, because every time he called on me to

recite, he looked down at his shoesnever directly at me!

4

Otto Plathwhom his daughter would later immortalize in herpoem Daddywas born on April 13, 1885, in Grabow, Germany, aplace that Plath would reer to in Te Bell Jaras a manic-depressive

hamlet in the black heart o Prussia.5 He was the eldest o six, the

son o Ernestine Kottke and Teodore Platt, who had immigrated to

America in 1901. He and his amily lived in the countryside, grew all

their own ruit and vegetables, Aurelia wrote to her grandson Nicho-

las Hughes. His [Ottos] ather was a blacksmith and a very skilledmechanicso skilled that when he came to the United States, heinvented an improvement or the amous McCormick reaper, which

was a harvesting machine.6

In August 1900, Ottos grandather, Johnwho had immigratedto Watertown, Wisconsin, in 1885paid or passage or his grand-son on theAuguste Victoria, which sailed rom Hamburg to New York.

Records show that the een-year-old boy described himsel as a

bootmaker and that he arrived in New York on September 8. Johnhad heard o Ottos brilliant academic record and had oered to pay his

way through Northwestern College, Wisconsin, on the condition that

aer graduation his grandson would enter the Lutheran ministry. Te

opportunity appeared dazzling, said Aurelia. Not only would he have

the higher education which in Germany would be unobtainable or

a boy in his circumstances, but he would escape military service, the

thought o which he dreaded, or he was already a conrmed pacist.7

On arriving in Manhattan, Otto lived with an uncle, who ran a

liquor and ood store, or a year. So determined was he to master Eng-

lish that he gained permission to audit classes in a grade schoolhe


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could attend lessons but not take them or creditand would sit at theback o the classroom, taking a large quantity o notes, making sure he

practiced his conversational skills with pupils and teachers alike. As

soon as he elt comortable with his level, he promoted himsel to the

next class, and during the course o a year he had managed to work his

way through all eight grades and could speak English with no trace o

a oreign accent. By 1903, Otto was living in Watertown, Wisconsin,

where he had enrolled at the Northwestern Preparatory School, and

aer graduation in June 1906, he entered Northwestern College, where

he studied classical languages and where he stayed until 1910. Te

college was really a classic German Gymnasium, recalls Max Gaebler,whose ather, Hans, was a ellow student and close riend o Ottos. It

was called a preparatory school and college, but the eight classes went

by the old Latin names: sexta, quinta, quarta, tertia, unter und ober

secunda, unter und ober prima. All instruction was in the German

language.8

Otto built up a glittering academic record, something that pleased

his grandparents, but in his spare time he had started to become asci-

nated by the writings o Charles Darwin. Darwin had become his heroand when Otto entered the Lutheran seminary . . . he was shocked to

nd all Darwins writings among the proscribed books.9 Otto tried his

best to conorm, but aer a number o miserable months o agoniz-

ing doubt and sel-evaluation he decided to leave the seminary and

abandon all plans to enter the ministry.10 When he told his grandpar-

ents o his change o careerhe now planned to become a teacherhewas inormed in no uncertain terms that he would have to do it with-

out their support. I he adhered to this inamous decision, he wouldno longer be a part o the amily, said Aurelia, his name would be

stricken rom the amily Bible. And so it was done. He was on his own

or the rest o his lie.11 Plath would rework this amily history into her

novel Te Bell Jar, whose heroine, Esther, describes her ather as being

a Lutheran living in Wisconsin beore ending up a cynical atheist.12

Otto moved rst to Seattle, where in February 1911 he enrolled at

the University o Washington, and in June o the ollowing year, he

received a master o arts degree. On August 7, 1912, in Spokane, he

married Lydia Clara Bartz, the twenty-three-year-old sister o his

riend Rupert Bartz, rom Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Te marriage proved


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to be a disaster rom the very beginning. In those days when litera-

ture was more circumspect and less realistic and there was no radio or

television, it was possible (and, hard as it is or young people today to

believe) or people to get married without knowing very much about

marriage itsel . . . , Aurelia wrote to her granddaughter Frieda. Well,

Lydia had been what was then termed delicately raised and educated

along very idealistic lines. She was not prepared or the physical side o

marriage at all. So when she and Otto were married, the two ound they

had decidedly dierent attitudes (too bad they didnt discuss all this

beore!) and the upshot was that Lydia le Otto aer three weeks and

returned to her amily. Te two people never saw each other againever!13 For the rest o her lie, Lydia, who worked as a nurse, neverremarried, and she died, apparently without having said a word about

either Otto or his amous daughter, in Eau Claire on February 22, 1988.

Otto carried his own secret to the grave. In October 1918, while living

in Berkeley, Caliornia, Plath had been investigated by the FBI or sus-

pected pro-German leanings. Te allegations had their root in Plaths

status as a registered alien enemy, the act that he had not bought Lib-

erty Bonds to help the war eort, and his supposed antipathy towardsAmerica on account . . . he lost a position teaching school in the State

o Washington, and another position at the University o Caliornia.

Although the recently released FBI les show that Plath was eventually

cleared o any pro-German sympathies, the records reveal that the inves-

tigator regarded him as a man who makes no riends and with whom

no one is really well acquainted and someone possessed o a nervous

and morbid disposition.

Otto explained himsel as best he couldhe didnt buy Liberty Bondsbecause, at the time, he was $1,400 in debt, on which he was paying 5

and 6 % interest, and that he was attempting to earn a living and do work

at the University at the same time and did not eel that he could aord to

do so. He told the agent that his grandparents had emigrated to Amer-

ica because o the better conditions here and that some things are rot-

ten in Germany, but not all; that the German people and their character

is not altogether rotten, but that they are mislead. Te investigator also

interviewed Plaths supervisor at Berkeley, who explained that Otto had

not been given an assistantship at the university because he has not the

personality that is required o an instructor being very nervous and


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not able to interest students; second, because the Regents o the Univer-

sity have made a rule prohibiting the hiring o Germans on the aculty.

According to the source, whatever indiscreet remarks [the] subject has

made at times is probably due to this brooding over the bad luck he is

having making a living on account o his nationality. In addition to his

studies at the university, Otto was orced to work at the Lincoln market

or several hours each day, and, in the evenings, he operated an eleva-

tor; his pay or both jobs was 20 cents an hour.14 Ottos work ethic was

unremitting. Aer Berkeley, he attended the Massachusetts Institute o

echnology (as an instructor o modern languages rom 1915 to 1918).

Between 1921 and 1925, he studied zoology at Harvard, which alsoemployed him as an assistant in entomology, and in 1928 the university

awarded him a doctorate in applied biology. By the time he met Aurelia

Schober in 1929, he had been an assistant proessor o biology at Boston

University or a year. Te university also engaged him to teach a course

in Middle High German, and on the last day o class, while nervously

playing with a pen on his desk, he asked his avorite student whether she

would like to join him as his guest at the country home o another pro-

essor and his wie. Tat weekend, Otto told Aurelia about his brie mar-riage and inormed her that were he to orm a serious relationship with

a young woman now, o course he would obtain a divorce. 15 He also

told her o his love o bees, a passion that had its roots in his boyhood

in Grabow. Having repeatedly observed the activities o a neighboring

beekeeper, I thought it might be possible to transer bumblebee colo-

nies to articial domiciles, and thus have honey available at all times,

Otto wrote. Te method employed in transplanting these colonies was

rather crude, and so it happened that I was sometimes severely punishedby the more vindictive species.16

Ottos interest in bees grew into a scientic obsession, and by the

time he had met Aurelia he had collected a mass o data gathered rom

years o study. As soon as the couple marriedin Carson City, Nevada,on January 4, 1932, the same day that Otto divorced Lydiatheir liveswere taken over by Ottos work on his book Bumblebees and Teir

Ways, which was based on his doctoral thesis. During the rst year o

our married lie all had to be given up or HE BOOK, Aurelia wrote

years later.17 Although Otto acknowledged the help o his new wiewriting in the preace o the service o my wie, Aurelia S. Plath, who


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has aided me greatly in editing the manuscript and prooreadingrom reading certain sections o the resulting 1934 book it looks as

though Aurelias infuence extended beyond the secretarial. Te rst

chapter opens with the words, I one takes a walk on a clear, sunny

day in middle April, when the rst willows are in bloom, one may oen

see young bumblebee queens eagerly sipping nectar rom the catkins.

It is a delightul thing to pause and watch these queens, clad in their

costumes o rich velvet, their wings not yet torn by the long oraging

fights which they will be obliged to take later.18

Aurelia had always wanted to be writer, but, as she told one inter-

viewer, I didnt eel that I could expose my children to the uncertaintyo a writers success or ailure.19 Aurelia was born into a hardworking,

immigrant amilyher ather, Franz Schober, was an Austrian whogrew up in Bad Aussee, near Salzburg, and who sailed rom Bremen

on the Kronprinz Wilhelm, arriving in America in March 1903 while

her mother, Aurelia Grunwald (later Greenwood), had been born in

Vienna and arrived in the United States a year later. Te couple mar-

ried in Boston in July 1905, and on April 26 o the ollowing year their

daughter, whom they named Aurelia Frances, was born.Sylvias mother grew up by the ocean, at 892 Shirley Street, Point

Shirley, in a household that spoke German; although Frank (as he now

called himsel) had spent two years in England, where he had worked

as a waiter, the amily communicated using their mother tongue. Aure-

lia oen elt isolated at school, as she later related in the introduction to

Letters Home. Te two words I heard most requently were Shut up!,

so when I went home at the end o the school day and met my ather, I

answered his greeting proudly and loudly with Shut up!, she wrote. Istill remember how his ace reddened. Frank took his daughter across

his knee and spanked her, only or her to plead, Aber was bedeutet

das, Papa? (What does that mean, Papa?) When Frank realized that

Aurelia did not understand the words she had used, he hugged her and

asked her to orgive him; rom that time on we always spoke English,

she said.20 Years later Plath would write that her grandparents always

spoke with a heavy accent, saying cholly or jolly and ven instead

o when.21 Growing up in the Italian-Irish neighborhood o Win-

throp, Aurelia oen suered prejudice, especially during the years o

the First World War. She was oen called spy-ace and, one day, she


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was pushed o the steps o the school bus by another child, while the

driver kept his eyes straight ahead and drove away.

As a child, Aurelialike her daughter aerwardound her escapein reading, working her way through Louisa May Alcott, Horatio Alger,

Harold Bell Wright, Gene Stratton-Porter, and every romantic historical

novel she ound in her local library, beore moving on, in high school, to

the novels o Scott, Tackeray, Dickens, George Eliot, Jane Austen, the

Bronts, Hardy, Hawthorne, Melville, and Henry James, and the poetry

o Emily Dickinson. I lived in a dream world, said Aurelia, a book

tucked under every mattress o the beds it was my chore to make up

daily; a book in the bathroom hamper, and the amilys stock answerto Whats RiRi [my nickname] doing? was Oh, shes reading again.22

In the summer aer graduating rom high school, she took a ull-time

job with an insurance company, typing letters or eight hours a day,

which she later described as a grim experience, something that she

vowed no child o mine would ever have to endure.23 She had always

dreamed o going to Wellesley College, but such an expensive education

was out o her reach, as my parents could not aord to send me there

and as I knew nothing about scholarships thenwhich perhaps I couldhave won, or I was second in my graduating class.24 Instead, in 1924

Aurelia enrolled in a two-year course at Boston Universitys College o

Practical Arts and Letters, helping with expenses by taking a series o

part-time jobs. Aer this, she took another two-year course that would

enable her to qualiy as a teacher o English and German at high school.

In 1925, when she was nineteen, Aurelia ell in lovenot with Otto,but another, unnamed man, an engineer and artist, whom she met

in her junior year. I recall the thrill, the excitement and wonder obecoming the most important person in anothers lie, she wrote to her

granddaughter Frieda in 1978. For the rst time, I elt transgured,

beautiul; all was possible. Indeed . . . or a time, it was almost impossi-

ble or me to concentrate on anything elsethat beloved ace appearedbetween me and anything I was trying to read or study. I elt I spilled

joy rom every pore; the whole world and everyone in it were beautiul.

We shared it all thenor a little over two yearsthe music, the arts,books, our ideas on every possible subject, the earth, the sky, the sea;

our hopes and dreams or ourselves and each other. Ten, in 1927, her

lover was sent on a work project to Brazil and rom there to Russia


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and we never met again, wrote Aurelia. (I dont want to recall the

hurt that remained in lessening degrees until your mother was born.)

However, the memory o that exhilarating joy is still precious to recall;

it changed my thinking, thereore, my lie in many ways.25

It was in this rather dejected state that Aurelia met Otto, a man whom

she admired or his brilliant mind rather than the warmth o his person-

ality. From the autumn o 1930 onward, the couple spent an increasing

amount o time together, hiking in the Blue Hills and walking through

the Arnold Arboretum and the Fells Reservation. ogether they mapped

out their uture together: a amily o at least two children and a book that

they could work on together, which they provisionally titled Te Evolu-tion o Parental Care in the Animal Kingdom. While waiting or Ottos

divorce to come through, Aurelia took a job teaching English and Ger-

man at Brookline High School and, aer their marriage in January 1932,

she yielded to her husbands wish that she retire rom work to take on the

role o housewie. By all accounts, Otto was something o a tyrant in the

home. When he was writing a chapter on insect societies or the 1935

bookA Handbook of Social Psychology, he worked in the dining room

o their apartment at 24 Prince Street, Jamaica Plain. Te table served ashis desk while the sideboard became a depository or the seventy reer-

ence books that he regularly needed to consult and he orbade Aurelia

rom moving a single paper or book. I drew a plan o the arrangement

and managed to have riends in occasionally or dinner the one evening

a week that my husband gave a course at Harvard night school, always

replacing every item correctly beore his return, she said.26

A stickler or order and a lover o logic, Otto rather admired the regi-

mented nature o insect societies; human nature was rather messy incomparison. He did his best to rule his household according to his strict

requirements, edicts that Aurelia ound dicult to live with. At the end

o their rst year o marriage, she realized that i she wanted her chil-

dren to grow up in a peaceul home she would have to become more

submissive, although this was against her nature. As a result, Otto took

on the role o der Herr des Hauses (head o the house) and Aurelia

oen had to remain silent.27 Aureliawho was intelligent and imagina-tive but obviously intellectually and creatively repressedneeded a proj-ect, something that could contain and channel her energies. Te birth

o her daughter Sylvia in October 1932 presented her with the perect


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opportunity: the chance to document and shape the growth o another

human being. Te budding writer now came into her own. Most theo-

ries o development assume that mothers dont write, they are written,

observes the proessor o English, Anita Helle, Sylvias cousin. Yet in

Aurelia Plath we have quite the opposite case, a mother whose energies

so readily transormed themselves into verbal expression that she writes

her daughter, rames her rites o passage with verbal rituals, colonizes her

world with words. One only has to recall that at the amily dinner table,

Aurelia and Sylvia Plath buried messages to each other under the table

napkins, in order to understand how emale attachment appeared quite

literally as subrosal, subtextual language within the amily system.

28

rained by Otto in the methodology o scientic classication, Aure-

lia began to record, in minute detail, the key moments o her daughters

lie in a baby book. Te record o Sylvia Plath by her mummy, reads

the inscription in Aurelias neat handwriting on the inside o the book.

At birth, Sylvia measured twenty-two inches; at six months, twenty-

eight inches; at eight months, twenty-nine inches; at sixteen months

she was thirty-two and a hal inches, and at two years she stood thirty-

six and a hal inches. Aurelia regularly snipped o locks o Sylvias hairand kept them preserved: in the archive at the Lilly Library, Indiana,

one can see not only the lock taken on Plaths rst birthday, but also

samples rom 1938 and 1941, a tress rom 1942, and a couple o light

brown braids wrapped in white muslin, together with an accompany-

ing note rom Aurelia that reads, At the age o 12 yrs 10 m Ss braids

were cut.29 At six weeks, Sylvia imitated vowel sounds; at eight weeks,

she could say ga and goo; and would utter gully gully whenever

Aurelia oered her a bottle, an echo o the words goody goody, whichshe would say to her daughter when giving her milk. At eight months,

Sylvia could say the words mama, dada, and bye bye and, Aure-

lia noted, the little girl took delight in the world around her, particu-

larly birds, squirrels, chipmunks, automobiles, and other babies. She

wants to touch other babies and stretches out her arms to them, shout-

ing with excitement, her mother said. In September 1933, Aurelia

observed that one day when the rag man passed down the street, her

daughter shouted out ags, her version o rags; on November 1, the

one-year-old girl said I tee (I see), haw (hot), and ba (bath);

and on December 19, Sylvia shouted out Daddy, which Aurelia com-


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mented was said specially when someone shakes the urnace.30 At

the end o the baby book, Aurelia listed Sylvias sayings and antics,

observing that on February 3, 1934, When placed on the pottie, she

immediately calls outAw-done! Aw-done! (She bs already!)31

Its obvious rom reading Aurelias notes that Sylvia was a child bathed

in love. For her rst birthday, her parents presented her with a cake, and

aer the little makeshi party, Aurelia noted in the baby book that her

daddy and I agree that the whole world doesnt hold another one year

old as wonderul and so sweetat least it doesnt or us!32 One gets theimpression that Otto was also able to gain pleasure rom his daughters

development rom a scientic perspective: when Sylvia was six monthsold he held her against a rope that was attached to a bamboo shade and,

as Aurelia writes, He was delighted by the act that her eet grasped

the rope in the same manner as her handsto him proo o mans evo-lutionary process as well as the gradual loss o fexibility when man

started to wear shoes and used his eet only or walking.33

In the winter o 1934 to 1935, when Aurelia was pregnant with her

second child, she told Sylvia that soon she would have a brother or sister,

a Warren or an Evelyn, and that she would need to call on her daughterto help prepare or the new arrival. One day, when Sylvia leaned her head

against Aurelias stomach, she heard the baby moving. I can hearhim!

she cried out. He is saying, H da! H da! Tat means, I love you; I

love you!34 Te week beore the birth, Aurelia took her daughter to stay

at her parents house, not leaving until April 27, the day o the delivery.

Apparently, when Sylvia was inormed that she now had a baby brother,

she pulled a ace and said, pointedly, I wanted an Evelyn, nota War-

ren.35 In her autobiographical essay Ocean 1212-Wnamed aer hergrandparents telephone numberPlath writes that Warrens appear-ance resulted in a kind o existential crisis: beore his birth, Sylvia had

believed that she enjoyed a beautiul usion with the world; now she

elt separated, no longer special.36 Yet rom Aurelias perspective, Sylvias

childhood was overwhelmingly laughter-shared37; indeed, the girls

original sense o humor was evident at a young age. One day in October

1935, aer a doctor had treated Aurelia or an abscess on her breast, Syl-

via said, Youre a good Mummy, you are! You know what Im going to

give you? wo new breastswithout holes in them!38

Aurelia ound nursing her new baby dicult because whenever she


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brought Warren toward her breast, Sylvia wanted to crawl up into her

mothers lap. Fortunately, around this time she discovered the alpha-

bet rom the capital letters on packaged goods on the pantry shelves,

said Aurelia.39 From the beginning o her development, SylviaorSivvy, as her amily called hercame to associate words as a substituteor love. Each time when Aurelia took up Warren to nurse him, Sylvia

would grab a newspaper, sit on the foor in ront o her mother, and

proceed to pick out the capital letters. I read and sang to them [her

children] or hours and hours, said Aurelia, and I encouraged them

rom their very rst steps to be aware o all things about themshades

o color, shadows, colors within shadowsto have a painters eye aswell as a writers eye.40 Plath identied with the physicality o wordsto such an extent that she oen wished, as she says in Te Bell Jar, that

she could return to the womblike space o the printed page. 41 Later,

Plath would recall the memory o her mother reading to her Matthew

Arnolds poem Te Forsaken MermanSand-strewn caverns, cooland deep, / Where the winds are all asleep . . .and seeing the goose-fesh rise on her skin. I did not know what made it, she wrote. I was

not cold. Had a ghost passed over me? No, it was the poetry . . . I hadallen into a new way o being happy.42 When Sylvia was eight and a

hal years old, she wrote a letter to the Boston Sunday Herald, enclos-

ing a poem about her impressions o a warm summer night. Te edi-

tor was so impressed by her our-line stanza that they published it.43

Aurelia remembered one occasionSylvia was about eight yearsoldwhen she took the two children down to the beach to watch thespectacle o the new moon. I carried my son and she stood by my

side, she said. And she more or less drew away, stood apart and gazedat the moon. And then quietly I heard her start to say very slowly,

Te moon is a lock o witchs hair

awny and golden and red.

And the night winds pause and stare at the

Strand rom a witchs head.44

In 1936, a year aer Warren was born, Otto began to lose weight and

was wracked by an awul cough and plagued by sinusitisan ailmentthat would aect Sylvia throughout her lieand seemed constantly irri-


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table and short-tempered. During that hot summer, Aurelia took her-

sel and the two children to live with her parents at their home in Point

Shirley, and in the autumn the amily made the decision to move rom

their cramped apartment to a spacious seven-room house at 92 Johnson

Avenue, Winthrop, situated three miles rom the Schobers. My husband

was ailing in health and that was the real main reason [or the move]

and I wanted to be near my parents, Aurelia said later. We loved the

shore, we loved the house and I hoped, o course, that hed recover.45

Otto had a riend who had died rom lung cancer and he eared that

he too was suering rom the disease. He told me that he had diagnosed

his own case and that he would never submit to surgery, said Aurelia.46

Although Aurelia tried to persuade her husband to seek medical atten-

tion, whenever the subject was mentioned he became consumed by

explosive outbursts o anger.47 Aurelia did all she could to protect Sylvia

and Warren, keeping the children upstairs away rom the wrath o Otto,

who spent the majority o his time in his large study. Otto also suered

rom spasms in his legs, which would cause him to moan in pain, and

when he returned rom work he was invariably exhausted and on edge.

Later Plath would write in her journal o how Otto became ill the sec-ond he married Aurelia and the extent to which her mother loathed her

husband.48

At the time, however, Sylvia enjoyed what she described as an idyllic

childhood. In the spring o 1937, she became ast riends with our-year-

old Ruth Freeman who had moved to nearby Somerset errace, with her

parents, William and Marion, and her elder brother, David. One day,

our mothers were out walking to the beach with their children when

they met and rom that moment onwards we spent hundreds and hun-dreds o hours together, says Ruth. Sylvias house was on the water and

I was hal a block rom it. Her home was a typical New England house,

and I lived there or several months because my mother became seri-

ously ill with what then was called a nervous breakdown; now I know

that my mother suered rom bipolar disorder, but nobody dened it in

those terms back then. Sylvia and I would go down to the ocean early in

the morning with a picnic lunch, and when the tide went out we would

play on the mudfats, where we would dig or clams. I remember that

Otto would go to the beach each day toohe was not a terribly pleasantman. He used to sunbathe and would always say that he was storing up


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26

his health or the winter. I remember that i I ever went back to Sylvias

house I would have to be extremely quietthere was an atmosphere, itwas all very controlledand I realized that the household was run onvery Germanic lines. Both o us went to the nearby Sunshine School, a

private nursery school, and although our parents had to pay or it, Im

sure it was very reasonable as nobody really had any money in those

days. It was a nice, cheery place, like its name suggests. When people ask

whether Sylvia was depressed as a child, I can only say that she wasnt:

rom what I saw, Sylvia was a bright, un person.49

Aurelia converted the largest bedroom into a playroom or the

children. Each night Sylvia and Warren would have their supper sit-ting at a small maple table by a large window, aer which they would

amuse themselves while Aurelia and Otto had dinner. For hal an hour

beore bed, the children would be allowed downstairs, time when Syl-

via might dance or her atherwho was usually lying prostrate on theliving room couchor Warren might show his ather the drawingshe had done during the day. Sylvia lived, she later said, in a antastical

world populated by airies, imps, and spirits50 and her imagination was

so vivid that she dreamed ully ormed narratives in echnicolor.51

Hermother read to her poems by Eugene Field, A. A. Milne, and Robert

Louis Stevenson, practically everything rom the childrens anthology

Sung Under the Silver Umbrella, Dr. Seusss Horton Hatches an Egg, and

olkiens Te Hobbit, and she also invented a number o stories that ea-

tured Warrens avorite teddy bear, Mixie Blackshort, a character that

makes an appearance in Plaths poem Te Disquieting Muses.

Sylvia and Warren enjoyed a close, but at times competitive, rela-

tionship. Aurelia recalled that her daughter would monopolize thelunch table conversation aer school and would oen try and dazzle

and outsmart her younger brother with her ever-expanding vocab-

ulary.52 Warren tried to emulate Sylvias already heightened sense o

creativity: when he was only two and a hal he dreamed up a series

o stories called Te Other Side o the Moon, the rst tale o which

began, On the other side o the moon, where I was nine years old and

lived beore I met you, Mother.53

Later in lie, Plath would write in her journal o a memory rom her

childhood involving the east, the beast, and the jelly-bean.54 Accord-

ing to Warrens daughter, Susan Plath Winston, when he and Sylvia


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27

were quite young and still living in Winthrop, they would get a little

spookedor at least pretend to be spookedwhen it was time or themto walk up the darkened staircase to their rooms to get ready or bed.

On one such occasion, when Sylvia asked Warren what he thought they

would nd at the top o the stairs, my ather [Warren] replied, A east . .

. and a beast . . . and a jellybean! A t o giggles reportedly ensued, and

the saying became amily lore.55 Occasionally Sylvia bullied Warrenshe ought with him, threw tin soldiers at his head, and once accidentally

cut his neck with a fick o the blade on her ice skate. She grew up resent-

ul o the act that Warren, by the mere act o his maleness, could shape

a lie or himsel without all the constrictions and conventionalities thatcircumscribed a young womans independence and growth. In her jour-

nal, Plath would write o the sibling rivalry that existed between her and

Warren and how this was symbolic o the larger battle she had to ght

with men or independence and recognition.56 When Plath was an adult,

she became ascinated by Freud, and in her own copy o the Modern

Librarys edition oTe Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud, she underlined

the section dealing with the relationship between brothers and sisters:

I do not know why we presuppose that it must be a loving one, sinceexamples o enmity among adult brothers and sisters are requent . . .

Children at this time o lie are capable o jealousy that is perectly evi-

dent and extremely intense.57

As a child, Sylvia developed an irrational ear o bobby pins and but-

tons to such an extent that one day when she heard a woman, bend-

ing over her baby carriage, comment on her inants button nose, the

girl ran away screaming.58 When Sylvia was in high school, she wrote

an essay titled Childhood Fears, in which she described the rightshe elt when her mother produced the vacuum cleaner or the sense

o delicious terror shared between her and her riend Ruth Freeman

when the other girl stayed overnight in her bed. One night, unable to

sleep, Ruth told Sylvia that she was sure she could see a gorilla standing

in ront o the closet door; in the morning, the gorilla was revealed

to be an old coat fung over the door, but the image stayed with Plath

and later, in an unpublished poem, Te Desperate Hours, she wrote

o the memory. In Childhood Fears, Sylvia also described her terror

o subwaysthe eeling that she might stand too close to the edge othe platorm and either all or get pushed into the path o an oncoming


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28

trainand also the thought that a burglar might have stolen into herroom and be hiding in a closet or cupboard.

Plath, as a child, as a woman, and as a poet, was constantly in search

o an overarching metaphor that would perectly capture her strange

complexity. In her journal, Plath wrote o the potently rich sea o my

subconscious and oen associated its murky origins with the dark

ocean foor o her childhood, a place that she elt she needed to return

to i she ever wanted to nd success as a writer. Its intriguing that Plath

came to associate her ather with the sea, casting and recasting him in

her poetry as a Neptune-like character that served as a ather-sea-

god muse.59

Her poem Full Fathom Fivea reerence to Ariels songin Shakespeares Te empestdescribes her ambiguous relationshipwith this powerul man turned myth, a white-haired gure who sur-

aces rom deep within Plaths subconscious to haunt her. Te poem

ends with Sylvias recollection o her athers shelled bed and a sug-

gestion that she would rather drown than share his murderous air.60

Plath was ascinated by Hawthornes short story Rappaccinis

Daughter, a tale o a young scholar, Giovanni Guasconti who, while

in Padua, is entranced by the sight o a beautiul young woman, Bea-trice Rappaccini, who tends a garden ull o exotic plants. During the

course o the story, Guasconti learns that Beatrice, with whom he alls

in love, is the subject o a scientic experiment overseen by her ather.

She has the power, in the words o Signor Rappaccini, to be as terrible

as thou art beautiul; having been brought up on poisons, her pres-

ence is so deadly it can kill. Te image is an apt metaphor or Plaths

view o her relationship with her own ather: she too elt as though she

had been poisoned by Otto, or at least le contaminated by a antasyversion o him. Otto haunts Plaths work like a corpse that reuses to

sink, making ghostly appearances in poems such as Lament, On

the Decline o Oracles, Electra on Azalea Path, Te Beekeepers

Daughter, Te Colossus, Little Fugue, Berck-Plage, Daddy, and

Lady Lazarus.

In the short story Among the Bumblebees (which had the origi-

nal title Te wo Gods o Alice Denway) Plath wrote that Otto was

a giant o a man, a personication o the glories and power o nature

itsel. 61 In the story, Alicea barely ctionalized Sylviais her athersavorite, his pet. Ever since she was small she could remember people


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29

telling her how much she resembled her daddy; her younger brother,

Warren, who was oen sickly, took aer their mothers side o the am-

ily. Alices ather eared nothing, Plath wrote. One day, in August 1937,

when Winthrop was hit by a dramatic summer storm, Otto taught his

daughter to sing the Tunder Song:

Tor is angry

Tor is angry

Boom boom boom.

We dont care

We dont careBoom boom boom.62

Plath took the incident straight rom lie and used the lyrics o the

song rst in the storyshe wrote o how her athers voice drowned outthe thunder63and again in her 1957 poem Te Disquieting Muses. Inthe story, Plath also relates Ottos talent or handling bees: as a little girl

she remembered being amazed that her ather could hold a bee in his

hand, close his st, and not be stung. One summer, however, her atherell ill and he could no longer take his daughter outside to play with the

bees. Plath describes a poignant last scene between ather and daughter:

although the girl repeatedly says, ather, ather, the ill man does not

respond to her calls, and she turns rom him eeling lost and betrayed.

Te story ends with a comment about the girls uture, how there would

never be another man to compare to her ather, a man who had walked

with her, proud and arrogant among the bumblebees.64

One morning in mid-August 1940, Otto stubbed his little toe againstthe base o his bureau while rushing out o his study on the way to sum-

mer school. Later that day, he returned home limping, and when Aurelia

asked him to take o his shoes and socks, it was obvious that his problem

was serious, as the toes were black and red streaks ran up his ankle.65

Aurelia called the doctor who, aer taking blood and urine samples,

diagnosed diabetes mellitus. From that day on lie was an alternation o

hope and ear; crises were interspersed with amazing recoveries only to

give way to crises again, said Aurelia.66 Otto developed pneumonia and

had to be admitted to Winthrop Hospital, where he stayed or two weeks.

On his return to Johnson Avenue, Aurelia arranged or Warren to go


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30

and stay with his grandparents, while Sylvia remained at home, where

the nurse who attended Otto tried to involve the girl in her athers care;

an old uniorm was used to ashion a nurses outt or Sylvia, and she was

given duties such as bringing her ather ruit or cool drinks. On the nurses

rst day o, Otto suggested to Aurelia that she take Sylvia out or an hour;

aer all, he had everything he needed on the table by his bed. Aer an

hour at the beach, Aurelia dropped by the Freemans house, where Sylvia

stayed or supper, but on her return to Johnson Avenue she discovered

Otto lying prostrate on the staircase. He had le his bed to go downstairs

into the garden to look at his fowers, recalled Aurelia.67 She dragged him

back to his bed and repeatedly tried calling the doctor, who could not bereached. Tat night, Otto developed a ever, and at one point, as Aurelia

was sponging his ace, he took hold o her hands and said to her, God

knows, why have I been so cussed! In her head, Aurelia said to hersel,

All this neednt have happened; it neednt have happened.68

Te next day, the doctor arrived with a specialist, Dr. Harvey Loder

rom the New England Deaconess Hospital, who inormed Aurelia that

in order to save Ottos lie he would have to amputate the leg. As Aure-

lia handed the doctor his hat, he turned to her and said, How couldsuch a brilliant man be so stupid. Te operation was carried out on

October 12, and the couple started to make plans or the uture. Te

president o Boston University, where Otto worked, wrote him a note

that read, We d rather have you back at your desk with one leg than

any other man with two.69 Aurelia also took it upon hersel to break

the news o the operation to the children: while Warren seemed to

accept the news quietly, Sylvia said, When he buys shoes, will he have

to buy apair, Mummy?70 Aer the amputation, however, Otto ell intoa depression; the operation had, to some extent, already sucked the lie

out o him, and on November 5, 1940, while asleep in the hospital, he

suered a pulmonary embolism and died. He was y-ve years old.

Aurelia decided to wait until the morning to tell the children o their

athers death. She walked into Warrens room rst; he was still sleep-

ing, and she gently woke him and told him that Daddys suerings were

at an end and that he was now at rest. Oh, Mummy, Im so gladyou are

young and healthy! he said. Te reaction rom Sylvia, who was awake

and reading, was rather dierent. Aer hearing the news, the girl, who

had just turned eight, turned to her mother and said, Ill never speak


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31

to God again!71 According to Aurelia, Sylvia had been praying every

night that her ather would be well and would come home. She loved

his praiseat that time she was beginning piano lessons and she wouldplay or him and he would tap her on the head and praise her.72

Te next day, Sylvia returned rom school and handed her mother a

piece o paper that read, I PROMISE NEVER O MARRY AGAIN.

Ruth Freeman remembers what had happened that day at school. Te

kids had been mean to her and told her that she was going to have a

stepather, she says. Sylvia stopped by at my house on the way home.

She was crying, and my mother assured her that would not happen.

Later, at Sylvias home, she handed her mother that note and orcedher to sign it while we were sitting at the dining room table. From that

point on, Sylvia kept that note olded up in the back o her diary. Im

sure Sylvia thought that she had resolved her issues by making her

mother sign that bit o paper, but o course it didnt resolve anything.

Te Otto she wrote about later was not a daddy she ever really knewthat gure was very much a antasy.73

Later, aer time spent in therapy, Plath would write in her journal

about this traumatic time, blaming her mother or what she saw as themurder o her ather. She outlined how she hated Aurelia because o

her lack o tenderness or Otto. O course, he was something o a tyrant,

she added, but she did not miss him any the less. Why had Aurelia mar-

ried a relatively old man? Damn her eyes, she wrote.74 From her point

o view, Aurelia did everything in her power to love and protect her two

young children. She decided not to let them attend Ottos uneralsomething Plath would use later to rail against her motherand tried

not to let her children see her cry, which was interpreted by Sylvia asindierence. Aer her husbands death, Aurelia became the amilys sole

breadwinner, because Otto, like Aurelias ather beore him, had lost a

great deal o money in the stock market.75

In January 1941, Aurelia secured a job as a teaching substitute at

Braintree High School, earning $25 a week or teaching three classes o

German and two o Spanish a day. She le home at 5:30 each morning

and le the care o Sylvia and Warren to her parents. At the end o that

spring term, she managed to get another job at the junior high school

in Winthrop, which would start in September, but she soon ound the

heavy work load too much. Te combination o ull-time teaching plus


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32

the extra responsibility o looking aer the schools nances le her

exhausted and suering rom the rst symptoms o a duodenal ulcer, a

condition that would fare up at particularly stressul moments or the

rest o her lie. Sylvia would later eel resentul o what she saw as her

mothers attitude o noble martyrdom, writing in her journal o how

her mother had to work around the clock and how she had to scrimp

and save. While Aurelia had to make do with the same old clothes, she

was proud to be able to buy new outts or Sylvia and Warren. It was

Aurelias mission, wrote her daughter, to give her children the things

that she had never been able to enjoy hersel.76

Later in lie, Plath would become ascinated by the work o Carl Jung,particularly his book Te Development of Personality. In every adult

there lurks a childan eternal child, something that is always becom-ing, is never completed, and calls or unceasing care, attention and edu-

cation, she wrote, transcribing rom the book. Tere is no human

horror or airground reak that has not lain in the womb o a loving

mother, she continued. As she read the section on parental expecta-

tions and sel-sacrice, Plath must have elt an uncanny sense that the

Swiss psychiatrist was writing about her own amily. It was, stated Jung,wrong or parents to try and shape a childs personality; the worst thing

they could do, he said, was to try and do their best or their ospring,

living only or them. Tis ideal eectively prevents the parents rom

doing anything about their own development and allows them to thrust

their best down their childrens throats. Tis so-called best turns out to

be the very things the parents have most badly neglected in themselves.

In this way the children are goaded on to achieve their parents most dis-

mal ailures, and are loaded with ambitions that are never ullled. Suchmethods and ideals only engender educational monstrosities.77


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a new biography of sylvia plath: mad girl's love song

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