I didn’t think I would like this book, but Sylvia Plath surprised me. Her writing was so vivid and the details so interesting and original that I really enjoyed spending time on the page.

Sylvia Plath was famous for her poetry, but ended her life at the age of 30. At the time, she was divorced (or separated?) and had guardianship of her two small children. She was becoming a successful writer, but was suffering from depression or possibly schizophrenia.

I found her writing very accessible and her personality very likable and easy to relate to, at least in the beginning of the story. In the introduction, it says she includes a lot of roman-a-clef elements, which was a new term for me, basically the story is semi-autobiographical. I related strongly to her protagonist’s reactions to her trip to New York, the structured events she had to attend there, and her social group.

From Sylvia’s description of what it was like for a woman to live and work in the late 1950s and early 1960s, I found it understandable that an intelligent woman especially with Sylvia’s drive and ambition would be depressed.

Ester, the protagonist, was the semiautobiographical representation of Sylvia. Ester’s depression begins with a rejection letter from a writing program she had wanted to attend. It was a big let down that seemed to spark something in Ester’s biochemistry, that when compounded with her intelligence and drive, sent her into a downward spiral.

The way Sylvia eased her story from the tale of a young twenty-something experiencing New York to her rapid decline into fantasies of suicide, unemotionally considering and discarding each method was masterful. So much so that psychologists have coined the term “Sylvia Plath syndrome” to describe the high incidence of suicides among female poets.

After reading the book, I watched the movie, Sylvia, and it occurs to me that as much as Sylvia railed against the male-dominated culture of that time, in the end she succumbed. The social programming of her time proved to be too much. Even her high ideals and ambition couldn’t withstand the strong pull of a society that only rewarded women for childbirth. In the end, she ended her life over the loss of a man, Ted Hughes. At the bottom of her tailspin and depression, neither her love nor her sense of responsibility for her children could see her through the dangerous moments. She ended her life while her children were sleeping in the next room. A spark by those entering the next day to find her could have sent the whole apartment in flames.

When I first read this, it was before my experience with my ex-husband’s mental illness. I was upset with Sylvia for failing to think of her children, for failing to think rationally. But now, I understand. It it is fruitless to expect someone in this kind of mental condition to think rationally. That’s the whole point. She didn’t think to leave the children with friends. She didn’t think of the danger of locking the them in their bedroom.

Ironically, in the end, Ted Hughes retained publishing rights over Sylvia Plath’s writing and profited from it. Her tragic suicide seems to have reinforced the ideals of her society at that time, that women were inherently worth less.