Reading module 9

Women and men. Are we really so different?
 
 Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) published her first poem when he was just eight years old. She 
married to an English poet in 1956, Ted Hughes. She published her first book in 1960, ‘The 
Colossus’. 
After the birth of their first child they broke their marriage. In the winter of 1962 Sylvia situation was 
sad, she was ill with flu, she had two children and almost no money. ‘The hardness of her life 
 seemed to increase her need to write’ (Sylvia Plath Homepage, Bill Gilson, 2004, 
http://www.sylviaplath.de/. Day of access: May 23, 2006). She committed suicide when she was just 
30. In 1981 it was published ‘The Collected Poems’, edited by Ted Hughes.
 
 
 Ted Hughes (1930 – 1968) was an English poet, dramatis, critic and short story writer. He 
married Sylvia Plath. In his early works Hughes ‘questioned man's function in the universal scheme. 
Seriously interested in shamanism, hermeticism, astrology, and the Ouija board, Hughes examined 
in several of his later animal poems the themes of survival and the mystery and destructiveness of 
the cosmos’ (Ted Hughes, 2003, http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/thughes.htm. Day of access: May 23, 
2006). When Plath killed herself he stopped writing for almost three years while editing and 
publishing his wife’s poems. In 1998 he published ‘Birthday Letters’, a study of Sylvia Plath’s life. 
 
 
From The City
 
 
Your poems are like a dark city centre.
Your novel, your stories, your journals, your letters, are suburbs
Of this big city.
The hotels are lit like office blocks all night
With scholars, priests, pilgrims. It's at night
Sometimes I drive through. I just find
Myself driving through, going slow, simply
Roaming in my own darkness, pondering
What you did. Nearly always
I glimpse you - at some crossing,
Staring upwards, lost, sixty year old.
 
Ted Hughes,The London Sunday Times (international edition), October 26, 1997.
Source: http://www.sylviaplath.de/ 
 
 
 
 This is a poem written by Ted Hughes that talks about Sylvia Plath. When Sylvia killed herself, 
she and Ted were already divorced, but we can see that she is still on Ted’s mind, as this poem 
reflects. Many feminists and admirers of Plath thought Ted Hughes was responsible for his wife's 
dead, but his poem shows how he admired her and her work, and how he misses her, ‘Nearly 
always I glimpse you’ (line 10).
 
 Sylvia poems describe in a brilliant way her feelings. Here is an extract of a poem called 
‘Daddy’ that transmits the reader how she felt about her father. 
 
 
 
 
Daddy
 
 
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
 
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time--
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal
 
And a head in the freakish Atlantic
 Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
 (…)
If I've killed one man, I've killed two--
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.
 
There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.




 
 
 
 Daddy. Sylvia Plath

Source: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15291

 
 
 We can see in the poem that Sylvia felt hate towards her father. The first stanza let us know that 
Sylvia’s father did not treat her well, ‘Barely daring to breathe’ (line 5); these words show how afraid
 she was of him.

This is a confessional poem, since she is confessing her true feelings towards her father. She was influenced by the death of his father and by the breaking of her marriage with Ted Hughes. So this poem shows the problems she had to face during her life, problems caused by her father and her husband.

Since she had to face lots of struggles because of those two significant men in her life, her feelings toward men changed. She felt indifferent about men. She did not care about them. This is a clear consequence of the way she was treated by these two men.

In the last collection of Ted Hugues, Birthday Letters, he ‘broke his silence about Plath (…)While critics initially responded favorably to Plath's first book, The Colossus, it has also been described as conventional and lacking the drama of her later works. The extent of Hughes' influence has been a topic of great debate. Plath's poems are in her own voice and the similarities between the two poets' works are slight’ (Sylvia Plath - Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia, http://sylviaplath.de, last modified 28 May 2006. Day of access: 28 May 2006). So n this collection we find poems that talk about his true relationship with Sylvia Plath. A relationship he had not talked about since her wife’s death.

In one of the poems of this collection, ‘A visit’, we find the essential meaning of these poems, which is a remembrance of his wife, despite the hard moments this complex couple had to live. Every single word in this poem is significant, but I think the most impacting words are found in the last two lines, ‘ You are ten years dead. It is only a story. Your story. My story’ (lines 11, 12).

All around me that midnight's

Giant clock of frost. And somewhere

Inside it, wanting to feel nothing,

A pulse of fever.

Somewhere
Inside that numbness of earth

Our future trying to happen.

I look up – as if to meet your voice

With all its urgent future

That has burst in on me. Then look back

At the book of printed words.

You are ten years dead. It is only a story.

Your story. My story.

Source: http://www.earth-moon.org/crit_bere.html

The feeling I get after reading the works of this couple is that both agree in that their relationship was a difficult one. But the way they express their feelings about it is different. Sylvia feelings show more clearly the hate and regrets she had to experience during her life, and she reflects in her poems that it was all due to the fact that she had to share her life with two men that did not make her happy at all. On the other hand, Ted, also shows he lived a difficult love relationship with Sylvia. But they way he writes about her is more polite. The feeling I get is that Sylvia feelings are more true expressed in her poems that Ted’s feelings are in his works.

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