Sylvia Plath- A tale of literary courage
An exemplary poet and writer whose life sung of death and pain
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I remember reading The Bell Jar at a very dark time of my life. I can never forget the morbid days that surrounded those few months. It was almost me living the tale to the T. Plath was unapologetic in her fervour to give me a tour through her mind. A mind that was trapped within itself. A mind where freedom was an unwelcomed guest.
Plath lived a life of tragedy. A stellar student during her time, she won many laurels to her name but found herself a stranger to happiness. What she knew as joy was just a word the poets sang of. What she knew as peace was an unattainable mystery.
Plath was born in Boston to Otto Plath, a German immigrant and Aurelia Schober Plath, a second generation American of Austrian descent. From a young age, the young poet publised poetry and won many literary competitions. Her defining success was her 1951 scholarship at Smith College and consequently becoming a cowinner of the Mademoiselle magazine fiction contest in 1952.
The prolific writer suffered throughout her literary career. She went through extreme periods of darkness and elation, and suffered through these unstoppable and intense moods. She went on to describe it in her journal in June 20, 1958. In it she wrote: “It is as if my life were magically run by two electric currents: joyous positive and despairing negative—whichever is running at the moment dominates my life, floods it.” Now, better understood as bipolar depression or manic depression, Plath suffered through lack of treatment and understanding of her condition at that time.
Her book ‘The Bell Jar’ though a work of fiction, is semi-autobiographical. Throughout the book, we meet Esther (the protagonist) as an ambitious student, struggling to find meaning and purpose in her life. It describes her life as an intern as Ladies’ Day, a magazine in New York City. She slips into a bleak period of her life where she eventually seeks psychiatric treatment and hospitalization.
Plath’s own journey through depression intermingled with Esther’s from The Bell Jar. Both were young women living trapped within their own ambitions and desires. Both endured patriachy, authocratic fathers and inability to meet society’s expectations. Sadly, both experienced long period of mental illness and suffered through lack of appropriate treatment in the 1950’s.
Sylvia’s story moved me to be unashamed of my own. She helped me grow as a writer. Her unapologetic approach to writing helped me to train my writing to be unfiltered. Plath took the creative approach and turned her trauma into beautiful and laborious pieces of work. Plath forged a path for herself despite what life threw at her. She wrote about things writers were afraid to speak about.
The thing that haunted me most about her writing was her experience with electroconvulsive therapy. It was painful to read about the harshness of the treatment. I remember feeling numb and gutted and I couldn’t read past the page until I recovered from its shock the next day.
But that is exactly what great and honest writing does. It makes writing move from a passive experience to an active experience. The writer plunges the reader into their forbidden world. We get a glimpse of the writer’s thoughts, experiences and feelings. We are no longer mere spectators of the author’s life. We are co-collaborators and our own experiences as readers make the writer feel validated and understood.
Like Plath, I aspire to use the good and bitter moments into my writing and let the audience into my heart and mind. There is no shame in vulnerability because writing is the only way writers show readers their truest self. May we like Plath strive to be bold and courageous because the past won’t save us and the future will eventually know what the present could endure.