short autobiography of Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath - Introduction

1. writer Oct. 27, 1932 - Feb. 11, 1963

2. Biographical Information - Born in Massachusetts to European immigrant parents - Suffered from depression and made several suicide attempts, finally succeeding (failing?) in 1963 when she was 30. - In 1983, she posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for her poetry.

3. what's Plath famous for? Her semi-autobiographical novel, The protective covering, depicts a talented woman slowly descending into insanity. it's also a typical for feminist literature. Quotes from the novel: - “If you expect nothing from anybody you won’t ever be disappointed.” - “The silence depressed me. It wasn’t the silence of silence. it absolutely was my very own silence.” - “If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things and just one occasion and also the same time, then I’m neurotic as hell.” - “The trouble was, I had been inadequate right along, I simply hadn’t thought of it.”

4. While The protective covering is an American literary classic, Plath is understood more for her poetry.

5. Plath’s struggle with depression Throughout her life, Plath struggled with depression. thanks to her spirit, Plath was institutionalized and underwent therapy, which drove her to greater emotional strife. additionally to her alleged suicide attempt when she was 10, she tried to kill herself when she was 19.

6. Recurring Themes While Plath’s many poems focused on different topics, there are three themes that recur throughout her work, often in conjunction with one another: 1. She used her poems to confess 2. She often wrote of overwhelming male (father/husband) figures 3. Birth is additionally a theme common to her works.

7. 7. Confessional Poetry

8. 8. what's Confessional Poetry? Confessional poetry uses the “I.” It often deals with subjects seldom written about publicly: death, trauma, depression.* * from “A Brief Guide to Confessional Poetry.” Poets.org

9. 9. Plath on confessional poetry "I think my poems immediately kick off of the sensuous and emotional experiences i've got, but i have to say I cannot pity these cries from the guts that are informed by nothing except a needle or a knife, or whatever it's. i think that one should be able to control and manipulate experiences, even the foremost terrifying, like madness, being tortured, this type of experience, and one should be able to manipulate these experiences with an informed and intelligent mind."* * from “Sylvia Plath and Confessional Poetry: A Reconsideration.”

10. 10. samples of Plath’s confessional poetry Daddy, i've got had to kill you. You died before I had time-Marble-heavy, a bag stuffed with God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe Big as a Frisco seal - from “Daddy” * from “Sylvia Plath and Confessional Poetry: A Reconsideration.”

11. 11. Watch the subsequent video and answer these questions: 1. What form of poems did Plath begin writing? 2. Explain why Plath believes confessional poetry is very important. (She begins speaking about it when she begins speaking about Lowell.) 3. Why does Plath consider say the difference between American and British literature is?

12. 12. Father/Husband Overwhelming Influence

13. 13. Otto Plath ●  Born in Glabow, Germany and immigrated to the us in 1900, when he was 15. ●  He worked as a biology and German professor at Boston University. ●  After incorrectly self-diagnosing himself with carcinoma, Otto Plath died in 1940 because of complications from diabetes. (Sylvia Plath was 8.) ●  FBI files revealed that Otto Plath had pro-Hitler leanings, which show up in Sylvia Plath’s poetry.* *“FBI files on Sylvia Plath’s father shed new light on poet.” The Guardian.

14. 14. “I’ll never speak to God again—” ●  Plath was devastated by her father’s death believing that he could have prevented his death if he actually seeked treatment. She often compared his death to suicide. ●  When she was 10 years old, Plath allegedly tried to chop her own throat and engaged in what's now called “cutting.”* ●  In her poem “Daddy,” Plath wrote, “At twenty, i attempted to die / and obtain back, back, back to you.” *” writer tried to slit her own throat after the death of her father, claims new book.” The Daily Mail.

15. 15. poet reads “Daddy”

16. 16. Ted Hughes ●  Born in 1930 and died in 1998. ●  Became British Poet Laureate in 1984 and remained so until his death and is continually called one in every of the foremost influential British writers of the 20th Century. ●  Early in his career, Hughes focused on nature and also the violence of it, and shortly in his career became a modernist poet and sometimes focused on mythological archetypes. ●  He and author married in 1956 and had two children.

17. 17. “That big, dark, hunky boy…” ''Then the worst thing happened, that big, dark, hunky boy, the sole one there huge enough on behalf of me, who had been hunching around over women, and whose name I had asked the minute I had acquire the area, but nobody told me, came visiting and was looking hard in my eyes and it absolutely was poet. I started yelling again about his poems and quoting: ''most dear unscratchable diamond'' and he yelled back, colossal, in a very voice that ought to have come from a Pole, 'You like?' and asking me if I wanted brandy, and me yelling yes and backing into the subsequent room ... and bang the door was shut and he was sloshing brandy into a glass and that i was sloshing it at the place where my mouth was after I last knew about it. ''We shouted as if in a very current of air ... and that i was stamping and he was stamping on the ground, then he kissed me bang smash on the mouth (omission). ... And when he kissed my neck I bit him long and hard on the cheek, and when he came out of the area, blood was running down his face. (Omission.) and that i screamed in myself, thinking: oh, to allow myself crashing, fighting, to you.'' - from The Journals of author Click here to read more about their first meeting.

18. 18. Hughes v. Sylvia Plath ●  After their marriage, Hughes, then an up-and-coming poet, began receiving publication and significant success. At one point, he was compared to Modernist giant T.S. Eliot. ●  Plath wondered why her husband had such success, while her collections had been rejected for publication several times. ●  Finally, in 1960, Plath signed a contract with the celebrated The American magazine for first rights to all or any of her future works.

19. 19. poet and also the other woman ●  During the ultimate years of their marriage, Hughes began having an affair with a girl in London, leaving Plath and her children in their countryside home. ●  After five months of separation, Plath killed herself through monoxide poisoning by inhaling gas through a kitchen oven. ● during a letter after her death, Hughes wrote: “That’s the top of my life. the remainder is posthumous.” ●  Still, many feminists have blamed Hughes for driving Plath to suicide.

20. 20. “For a Fatherless Son” you'll remember of an absence, presently, Growing beside you, sort of a tree, A death tree, color gone, an Australian tree --Balding, gelded by lightning--an illusion, And a sky sort of a pig's backside, an utter lack of attention. But straight away you're dumb. and that i love your stupidity, The blind mirror of it. I look in And find no face but my very own, and you think that that's funny. it's good on behalf of me to possess you grab my nose, a ladder rung. in the future you will touch what is wrong --The small skulls, the smashed blue hills, the godawful hush. Till then your smiles are found money.

21. 21. Birth/Motherhood one in all Plath’s great fears came from the concept of her possibly being barren: “I would bear children until my change of life if that were possible. i need a house of our youngsters, little animals, flowers, vegetables, fruits. i would like to be an Earth-Mother within the deepest richest sense. ... And what do I meet in myself? Ash. Ash and more ash. ... Ted should be a patriarch. I a mother.''

22. 22. Plath had two children: 1. Frieda Hughes (B. 1960) 2. Nicholas Hughes (1960-2009) Plath also miscarried once and wrote several poems about the event. When Plath killed herself, she locked her children during a room and stuffed the door to stay the carbon monoxide gas from killing them further.

23. 23. Aurelia Plath ●  Born in 1906 and married Otto Plath, who was 21 years her senior, in 1932. ● the link between her and her daughter, Sylvia, could be a complicated one. While they were close, Sylvia often said she “hated” her mother. ●  Plath wrote the poem “Medusa” about her mother