1. 1932-1963 “The blood jet is poetry / there is no stopping it.”
Sylvia Plath
“The blood jet is poetry / there is no stopping it.”

3. A brief biography: childhood
After discovering poetry, Sylvia said I “had fallen into a new way of being happy.”
Born in Boston on October 27, 1932, to Aurelia Schober and Otto Plath
Idolised her father and longed to please him
In 1940, when Sylvia was 8, her father died and she published her first poem.
Her mother introduced her to poetry which she loved

4. Sylvia Plath as a young woman
“I still do not know myself. Perhaps I never will. I am afraid of getting older. I am afraid of getting married…I want, I think, to be omniscient…I think I would like to call myself the girl who wanted to be God Never, never, will I reach the perfection I long for with all my soul ” (diary, age 17)
At school she was a top student, excelling in English
Suffers mental & emotional exhaustion
Is rejected for a Harvard writing course
First suicide attempt –overdose. Receives electric shock treatment.
She writes about these experiences in her semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar

5. Sylvia goes to England Wins a Fulbright Scholarship to England
1956 She met Ted Hughes, a poet, at a Cambridge University party
According to her journal, at this meeting he kissed her and she bit him on the cheek, drawing blood.
It was an intense courtship and they were married within months.
He was “very simply the only man I’ve ever met whom I could never boss.” (Sylvia to friends)

6. Motherhood & Writing
Her and her husband return to England and begin writing full-time
In 1960 Plath had her first child, Frieda, and published her first book of poetry, ‘The Colossus’.
In 1962, following a traumatic appendix operation and the birth of their son Nicholas, Plath's writing became more frantic.

7. Sylvia Plath & Ted Hughes
1962 – the beginning of the end
June: 2nd suicide attempt – driving car off the road
July: Discovers Ted’s affair with Assia Weevill.
Sept: They separate
Oct: She writes 26 poems in one month
Dec: She takes her 2 children and moves into a maisonette in London
She prepares Ariel, a collection of 41 poems
Sylvia & Ted’s relationship was passionate and tumultuous
She was attracted to his physical power, his way with animals esp owls, his reputation as a poet, and appreciated his encouragement of her poetry
She feared losing him

8. The End: 1963
The Bell Jar is published under a pseudonym and receives good reviews
She is depressed, isolated and mentally unstable
February 1963, in one of the coldest winters in English history, she succeeded in taking her life
Her body was discovered the following morning.
She was survived by her 2 children.
1965: Ariel was published.
1982 she is posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Literature.

9. “MIRROR”
Literary Device: Personification
Poem Type: Lyric
Written in 1961 but published after her death by her husband 10 years later.
It deals with the fear of age and self-reflection