-
7/30/2019 A new biography of Sylvia Plath: MAD GIRL'S LOVE SONG
1/23
-
7/30/2019 A new biography of Sylvia Plath: MAD GIRL'S LOVE SONG
2/23
vii
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
-
7/30/2019 A new biography of Sylvia Plath: MAD GIRL'S LOVE SONG
3/23
13
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-
-
7/30/2019 A new biography of Sylvia Plath: MAD GIRL'S LOVE SONG
4/23
MAD G IRLS LOVE SONG
14
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
-
7/30/2019 A new biography of Sylvia Plath: MAD GIRL'S LOVE SONG
5/23
This haunting nameless pain
15
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
-
7/30/2019 A new biography of Sylvia Plath: MAD GIRL'S LOVE SONG
6/23
MAD G IRLS LOVE SONG
16
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
-
7/30/2019 A new biography of Sylvia Plath: MAD GIRL'S LOVE SONG
7/23
This haunting nameless pain
17
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
-
7/30/2019 A new biography of Sylvia Plath: MAD GIRL'S LOVE SONG
8/23
MAD G IRLS LOVE SONG
18
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
-
7/30/2019 A new biography of Sylvia Plath: MAD GIRL'S LOVE SONG
9/23
This haunting nameless pain
19
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
-
7/30/2019 A new biography of Sylvia Plath: MAD GIRL'S LOVE SONG
10/23
MAD G IRLS LOVE SONG
20
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
-
7/30/2019 A new biography of Sylvia Plath: MAD GIRL'S LOVE SONG
11/23
This haunting nameless pain
21
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
-
7/30/2019 A new biography of Sylvia Plath: MAD GIRL'S LOVE SONG
12/23
MAD G IRLS LOVE SONG
22
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-
-
7/30/2019 A new biography of Sylvia Plath: MAD GIRL'S LOVE SONG
13/23
This haunting nameless pain
23
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
-
7/30/2019 A new biography of Sylvia Plath: MAD GIRL'S LOVE SONG
14/23
MAD G IRLS LOVE SONG
24
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-
-
7/30/2019 A new biography of Sylvia Plath: MAD GIRL'S LOVE SONG
15/23
This haunting nameless pain
25
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
-
7/30/2019 A new biography of Sylvia Plath: MAD GIRL'S LOVE SONG
16/23
MAD G IRLS LOVE SONG
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
-
7/30/2019 A new biography of Sylvia Plath: MAD GIRL'S LOVE SONG
17/23
This haunting nameless pain
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
-
7/30/2019 A new biography of Sylvia Plath: MAD GIRL'S LOVE SONG
18/23
MAD G IRLS LOVE SONG
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
-
7/30/2019 A new biography of Sylvia Plath: MAD GIRL'S LOVE SONG
19/23
This haunting nameless pain
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
-
7/30/2019 A new biography of Sylvia Plath: MAD GIRL'S LOVE SONG
20/23
MAD G IRLS LOVE SONG
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
-
7/30/2019 A new biography of Sylvia Plath: MAD GIRL'S LOVE SONG
21/23
This haunting nameless pain
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
-
7/30/2019 A new biography of Sylvia Plath: MAD GIRL'S LOVE SONG
22/23
MAD G IRLS LOVE SONG
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
-
7/30/2019 A new biography of Sylvia Plath: MAD GIRL'S LOVE SONG
23/23
SCRIBNER
A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Copyright 2013 by Andrew Wilson
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof
in any form whatsoever. For information address Scribner Subsidiary Rights Department,
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Scribner hardcover edition February 2013
SCRIBNERand design are registered trademarks of Te Gale Group, Inc.,
used under license by Simon & Schuster, Inc., the publisher of this work.
For information about special discounts for bulk purchases,
please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949or [email protected].
Te Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event.
For more information or to book an event contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau
at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.
Manufactured in the United States of America
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
ISBN 978-1-4767-1031-0
ISBN 978-1-4767-1464-6 (ebook)
Photo credits appear on page 369.