The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath And Ted Hughes

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The widely accepted narrative is that Plath, a tortured, unhappy artist, was pushed over the edge by Hughes's extra-curricular activities outside their marriage and opted out of life itself. Thus Hughes is the adulterous villain who was indirectly responsible for the loss of the supremely talented Plath. Without having really deep-dived into the whole Plath/Hughes debacle, I haven't been above the odd lurid article either, and I've always come out of them feeling immensely sorry for Ted Hughes. I enjoy the work of both poets, having read the usual stuff from Plath (The Bell Jar and the Ariel poems) and not the usual stuff from Hughes (a wonderful little collection called Season Songs). In any case, I don't think it's necessary to be a Plath or Hughes fan to enjoy this; to me it read almost like a literary thriller, where journals, letters, drafts, witnesses are brought forward to give evidence and yet there is no final truth, truth itself is being interrogated, and we always keenly feel the absence of other, lost journals, letters, drafts, witnesses.

The Haunting of Sylvia Plath відчитала в одному з віршів плат андрогінні мотиви, тед вимагав цей аналіз із книжки усунути, обґрунтовуючи це потребою подумати про дітей, яким боляче буде чути таке про свою матір; вік дітей на той час – 31 і 29. And Ted, yes, he's had a horrible time of it but how much of it has been his own making? He hid behind Olwyn, berated people for putting their story about her "out there" (because he chose not to does this mean no one else should've publicly discussed their relationship with her either?), he burnt her diary and "lost" another. Poets, like politicians it seems, have partisans. And while such folks allow themselves to have a personal investment in the writer, an opinion that is not entirely subject to reason, the biographer should not. Or at least that is the prevailing assumption that Malcolm pokes and prods. She does this in the context of controversy over a new Plath biography written by an old classmate of hers. If he did hate all the hoop-la why didn't he and O bundle up all of Plath's writing, hire an academic who could be trusted to preserve and manage her estate, and tell everyone to bugger off?Not since Virginia Woolf has anyone thought so trenchantly about the strange art of biography.”–Christopher Benfey, Newsday Honestly, I could give two shits about Sylvia Plath & Ted Hughes. I've never read The Bell Jar, although I've heard it's quite good. My interest is in Janet Malcolm, the way she has insinuated herself into one of the great battles of modern literature, taking as her subject not so much Plath or Hughes or Plath & Hughes, but their memories, the way they are written about and argued about. Malcolm goes on to say Plath herself could be mean. Well, darn, how mean was she? I've read lots of her work and don't see it as any worse than the rubbish you read in today's bitchy women's mags and we gobble them up.

Janet Malcolm, who died on June 16, 2021, typically referred to herself as a journalist. While that’s certainly an honorable occupation — and working for The New Yorker, she often kept up a journalist’s pace of publication — what she’s been writing since her first book, 1980’s Diana and Nikon: Essays on the Aesthetics of Photography, can more properly be called creative nonfiction. In that field, she was one of the greatest authors of the last forty years. Psychology, art, literature, and crime were all favorite subjects of Malcolm’s, and she investigated them to get at something close to the ever-shifting “truth.” I admit to being somewhat disappointed with her most recent collection of essays, Nobody’s Looking at You, but mostly her writing was nothing short of riveting.

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The Silent Woman is a compelling look at love vs obsession and control, speaking to an important issue for women today. My favorite thing about this book was that I sensed definite Rebecca vibes, mysterious and enigmatic in setting with both the current and former Mrs. Westmore living on the property. In a work of nonfiction we almost never know the truth of what happened. The ideal of unmediated reporting is regularly achieved only in fiction … only in nonfiction does the question of what happened and how people thought and felt remain open.”