Sylvia Plath: Life, works, and literary legacy

¶ … Plath as well as an examination of two of her poems. There were three sources used to complete this paper.

Her Life

Sylvia Plath spent her short adult life as a writer. Her works are held up today as classic pieces of poetry and literature and examined for their undercurrents as well as their meanings. Plath was born in 1932 to a professor father of German descent and an American mother whose parents were of Austria. Her father had migrated to the states when he was 15 years old and he met her mother at a German class that she took in later years. He was the teacher, she was the student and their union ended in marriage and the birth of Sylvia (Sylvia Plath (http://victorian.fortunecity.com/plath/500/bio2.htm).

Plath was an overachiever her entire life. She skipped grades in school and won honors both academically and socially in her high school ventures. She often felt so torn between the academic and the social obligations that often clashed she became very hard on herself to succeed at both. "In her Letters Home, she wrote, "I think I would like to call myself 'the girl who wanted to be God.' Yet if I were not in this body, where would I be- perhaps I am destined to be classified and qualified. But, oh, I cry out against it." Plath obviously had a perfectionist attitude which drove her to succeed at the same time that it insured failure. This created a kind of destructive energy, which presents itself in her later writings."

She went to Smith College and she continued to write stories and poems throughout these years. Plath's mother was her manager and Plath pursued a writing career her entire adult life. She married a poet and during their marriage she worked part time jobs to help pay the bills as they struggled to get their writing careers launched. Plath wrote stories, an autobiographical novel called The Bell Jar, and poems. She and her husband lived in England as well as the states. Her husband gained fame as a writer while Plath was still struggling to launch herself. Her husband supported her writing career however and worked with her to divide the day so that they both could write while caring for their children. Plath had miscarriages, an appendectomy and other health problems but she wrote during all the troubles. She and her husband eventually separated and she was left to raise their two children alone. She moved them to London which was where their father had moved. Plath was waiting for her novel to be published and she had begun work on her second novel as well. She also was working on a collection of poems called Ariel (Sylvia Plath (http://victorian.fortunecity.com/plath/500/bio2.htm).

Things seemed to being going well for Plath. However, the odds against her must have seemed too great. On the morning of February 11, 1963, she ended her life (Sylvia Plath (http://victorian.fortunecity.com/plath/500/bio2.htm)."

Since her self-induced death there have been many admirers of her work. Two of her poems are classic examples of the deep and complicated mind that penned her poems. Mirror and In Plaster are two such examples. In Mirror the reader is treated to the complex nature of Plath's mind. The poem shares with the world the anger or vunerability Plath saw in herself. The first stanza describes the gullible fashion she felt she was made of because of her naivety. The metaphoric example of being a mirror further explores the ease with which she believes what she is told.

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.

What ever you see I swallow immediately

Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.

I am not cruel, only truthful- (Plath, 1990)."

Plath's poem called In Plaster is another example of how she believed the world treated her and how she believed she was complex in ways that are not easily understood. Her poem discusses her desire to reconcile the other side of herself. While the mirror portrays the vulnerable and gullible side of her, In Plaster shows the world her shattered mind from being too trusting.

She wanted to leave me, she thought she was superior,