Biography Of Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath was a well-known American poet. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, she grew up to be a straight-A student in school and published her first poem at the age of eight. Sylvia was a very bright student growing up and she was very popular. “I think I would like to call myself ‘the girl who wanted to be God’” (Barnard 15). Sylvia set such high goals for herself because she wanted to accomplish the “impossible” (Barnard 15). Although Sylvia seemed like the perfect poster child, she had many demons hiding inside of her. Her father, Otto Plath, passed away when she was eight years old due to diabetes. During the time she had growing up with her father, Sylvia felt as if she were so trapped and scared to be in his presence that she didn’t …show more content…
Plath went on to study at the University of Cambridge which during the time, she had published her book, The Colossus, and married her husband Ted Hughes, an English poet (sylviaplath.de). About two years after the birth of their first child, their marriage went downhill due to affairs on both sides. She then had her second child was living in London writing as many poems as she could, nearly one every day, because she was low on money and needed a form of support. One of Sylvia Plath’s most famous poems, Lady Lazarus, tells the true story of her struggle with depression and her eagerness to die. She uses the name Lazarus in references to a biblical being. Lazarus was resurrected from the dead, just as Plath herself survived many suicide attempts which are her coming back from the dead. She adds the title “lady” to make it known that she is a woman. It is believed that Sylvia had a hard time digesting sexism and she would end her life just to get away from the thought of …show more content…
“There are those who pathologise Plath, freely diagnose her as schizophrenic or psychotic, read her writings as symptoms or warning, something we should both admire and avoid” (Jacqueline Rose). According to Marjorie Perloff, Jacqueline Rose writes that it doesn’t matter what the artist is saying but more of who they are saying it to or who they are speaking of (648). Her husband Ted Hughes destroyed some of her poems and changed the order of some in order to save her reputation as well as their children. Her mother, Aurelia Plath, censored the writing in her Letters Home. Because of this, Rose argues that we will never get to really know Sylvia (649). She stated “I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want” (Brown and