Sylvia Plath

1932 Born in a suburb of Boston.
1940 Her father dies.
1950 First story published.
1951 Wins a scholarship to Smith College for women.
1953 Wins guest editorship in a magazine; attempts suicide for the first time.
1954 Graduates with distinction from Smith College.
1955 Wins Fulbright scholarship; meets the poet Ted Hughes.
1956 Marries Hughes.
1958 Quits her teaching position at Smith College.
1960 Her daughter is born; her first collection The Colossus is published.
1961 Moves to Devon; concerned by talk of nuclear warfare.
1962 Her son is born; separates from Hughes; moves to London.
1963 The Bell Jar is published; takes her own life in February.
1965 Ariel is published posthumously.

Five key points to remember

1) In Plath’s time, a woman was expected to a wife, a homemaker and a mother – she was not expected to be a professional or to have her own career. Plath struggled to escape this ideal of perfection throughout her life.

2) Much of Plath’s poetry can be seen as a struggle to create a new identity for herself that transcended the cultural limitations imposed upon women.

3) In her lifetime, Plath’s work won serious admiration from only a small number of people. She was more famous for being the wife of the poet Ted Hughes than for being a poet, novelist and short story writer in her own right.

4) Plath was aware of the major historical issues of her time, such as the Cold War and the threat of nuclear warfare between America and Russia and her own German ancestry.

5) From England Plath could view the consumerism and militarism of American culture with clarity, but she did not always feel at home in England and disliked the shabby inefficiency that she saw in English life.

A. Plath is often remembered as a poet of despair and torment. Would you agree having studied her work?
B. List Plath’s first lines and last lines from the poems you have studied. Compare them. Do you notice anything?

This is a recording of Sylvia reading one of her most famous poems, Daddy.


A film adaptation of her life has also been released.