“Sylvia”: A Personal Memoir and a Review
I first began to read Sylvia Plath in the
late 1970’s. I found her poems riveting, immensely strong, vibrant, and
commanding. I read the volumes Ariel, Winter Trees, and
Crossing the Water, largely comprising later poems that Plath wrote
before she took her own life on February 11, 1963 in a cold upstairs flat
in Belsize Park, London, at the scant age of 30. The poet killed herself
by putting her head in a gas oven, leaving two young children, Frieda and
Nicholas, for her estranged husband, Ted Hughes, to raise.
I had been
seriously writing poetry since I had taken poetry classes at the College
of Notre Dame, Baltimore, in 1971–1972. Now reading Plath on a trip to
Bermuda, her works had a galvanizing effect on my own writing. Two of the
poems I wrote under her influence immediately won first prizes in
Maryland. I say this not to brag but just to try to give an idea of the
quantum leap that I believe her poetry gave to my writing. One of the
prizewinning poems, “Sylvia Plath,” was on Sylvia’s life, and the other,
called “Blizzard” was on the death of my father.
“The
Golden Lotus”
I have since written a number of other
poems about Plath and her husband, the late British Poet Laureate Ted
Hughes, and their story and their writings continue to fascinate and
inspire me. The most recent poem was “In Search of the Golden Lotus”
which derives its title from a quotation on Plath’s tombstone in
Heptonstall Graveyard, Yorkshire, in the north of England. The wording
reads, “Even amidst fierce flames - the golden lotus can be planted,” a
quote from 16th century Chinese poet Wu Ch’Eng-En.
Supporters of Plath, who since her suicide
has achieved myth-like status as a symbol for the feminist movement,
probably bridle that the name on her tombstone is “Sylvia Plath Hughes
(1932–1963)” or even that the New England-born poet is buried, so to
speak, on Ted Hughes’s home turf, he having been a Yorkshireman, though
the couple lived in the south of England and partly in the United States
while they were together during the years 1956 to 1962. To me, the
inscription resonates with two themes. First, the personal search of the
two poets for success and excellence in literature. Second, that you
simply cannot separate Sylvia Plath from Ted Hughes, as much as anyone may
wish, given his known infidelity and his supposed neglect that led to her
suicide.
Her “Dark Marauder”
What to make of “Sylvia,” the new movie on
the couple from BBC Films and the British Film Council? It stars Gwyneth
Paltrow as Plath and Daniel Craig as “Edward Hughes.” This was the name he
first went under when he wrote a slashing review of one her poems in a
Cambridge University literary magazine that first draws them together at a
boozy literary gathering. First to say is that Paltrow is much better
than Craig in this memoir that is sympathetic most to its eponymous
subject. Craig is adequate in the part of her “dark marauder” as she
calls him in the first flush of meeting. However, Craig has neither the
rugged good looks nor the physical height of Hughes. The poet Philip
Larkin remarked that Hughes reminded him of “a Christmas present from
Easter Island.” After a while in “Sylvia” Hughes, as played by Craig,
comes across as a cypher, the cheating husband and insensitive brute.
Whether this view is exact is for the viewer to decide. Of course, all
movies on historical topics take liberties with the facts to a lesser or
greater degree.
A recent movie that I thought somewhat
akin to the present effort was “Tom and Viv” on T. S. Eliot and his first
wife, another film involving the marriage of a Briton and American, though
there the roles were reversed, with St. Louis-born Eliot hitching up with
British socialite Vivien Haigh-Wood. An additional similarity is that
like “Sylvia,” “Tom and Viv” involved mental instability, where Mrs. Eliot
becomes unbalanced, some would say because of Eliot’s inattention and cold
manner to her. On a less controversial level, it also had the same
conundrum of the impecunious writer-suiter presenting themselves to their
counterpart’s parents, in that case Tom Eliot meeting the stuffy Haigh-Woods.
In “Sylvia,” the comparable scene is where
the struggling Hughes meets Sylvia’s mother, Aurelia Plath, widow of
college professor Otto Plath, in her comfortable Wellesley, Massachusetts,
home. Mrs. Plath is played sympathetically by veteran actress Blythe
Danner, who happens to be Gwyneth Paltrow’s mother, a nice choice on the
part of New Zealand-born director Christine Jeffs. Mrs. Plath takes an
askance view of the young poet and he looks ill at ease among the society
matrons at the welcome party for the couple. She callously indicates a
spot below the bookcase. There, she tells Hughes, with a warning to him
to take care of her daughter, is where Sylvia had been found in the crawl
space after a suicide attempt, when she took an overdose of pills and was
not found for days.
The couple are shown summering on Cape
Cod, a time that should have been a time of creativity for both of them.
However, Sylvia is finding it hard to write and spends her time baking
cakes while Hughes goes off fishing or walking. When he comes back with
another poem written, she shows him her cakes. On going out in a rowboat,
she tells him that she has not found a subject for her poetry. He tells
her that the subject of her works is herself. Possibly making her realize
that fact was one of the major contributions that Hughes made to Plath’s
verse, as well as to show her the discipline needed to write and make it
in the literary world. At one point, Plath is shown putting poems in an
envelope as soon as she has received one of many rejections, and that is
one of the things I have learned as a writing practice from the way Plath
and Hughes worked—to keep sending out poems to be published, despite the
rejections.
Cape Cod does not turn out to be the boon
for writing for either one of them, and they decide to return to England.
We see them next in the flat in London, with the birth of their first
child, Frieda, April 1, 1960, to be followed by the birth of their son
Nicholas on January 17, 1962, by which time the couple had moved to Devon.
Falling Leaves
Sylvia is portrayed as almost gloating
when, during their early lovemaking, Hughes asks her about a scar on her
cheek, and she tells him that it occurred when her cheek tore on the
cement as she was dragged from the crawlspace. She also tells him that
she has not been happy since the death of her father Otto when she was
aged nine. Despite her apparent early happiness when she and Hughes get
together, we sense that the happiness will not last, and that she is
basically an unstable young woman.
The film begins with a close-up side view
of Plath lying on her back and we hear her ethereal voice reciting from
“Lady Lazarus”: “Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it
exceptionally well.” We also see in these opening scenes a tree shedding
its leaves, which fades into the damp streets of Cambridge and Sylvia
cycling in her black, flying student’s gown. The quotation from “Lady
Lazarus” appears to set up the inevitability of her self-destruction, and
Sylvia herself, as excellently portrayed as she is in this movie by
Gwyneth Paltrow, seems as insubstantial as one of those falling leaves.
In a sense, the film lacks dramatic power because the end is foretold—or
does it seem that way to me rather than to the casual viewer who might not
know the whole story because I know what the ending will be?
It might also be mentioned that one of the
disappointments of the film is that apart from the quotation from “Lady
Lazarus,” we are exposed to little of her poetry, and the film is
noticeably devoid of Hughes’s works. Possibly the Hughes estate would not
allow his works to be used, and if so that’s a pity. Ted Hughes’s success
with his first collection, Hawk in the Rain is noted in
conversation, and we quickly see that Plath is in the shadow of the then
more famous poet. Sylvia tries to impress her mother by telling her that
W. H. Auden had judged the prize won by Hughes for this first book. Later
on, weighed down by babies and the domestic life, when asked if she is
still writing, Sylvia tells the enquirer that she is not and that the real
writer is Ted, and that is all that matters.
Rabid Jealousy
To get away from London and better
facilitate their writing, Sylvia and Ted decide to relocate to the
countryside of Devon. Poet David Wevill (played by Andrew Havill) and his
wife (Amira Casar), a young Jewish woman, move into the Hughes’s London
flat. On first meeting the couple, Sylvia is flattered when Assia remarks
that she has read Sylvia’s book, The Colossus, and that she is
impressed with the power of her writing. This strikes a rare false note
in the movie since the remark seems to reflect more a view of Plath’s
later work than the more mannered verse of The Colossus. Another
wrong note may be where Plath makes the remark that she does not care
about magazine writing, a comment shown not to be true by her posthumous
short story collection, Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams, which
is clear evidence that she made serious efforts to become a commercially
successful writer for magazines.
Plath issues an impromptu invitation to
the Wevills to visit them in Devon. It turns out to be the visit from
hell, as Sylvia serves dinner in a vicious mood, plunking the dinner on
the table, suspicious that Ted is beginning an affair with Assia. Of
course, she is shown to be correct in her suspicions, although the viewer
gets the impression that it is as much Sylvia’s rabid jealousy as Ted’s
waywardness that drives him away.
There is happiness in Devon with the birth
of Nicholas, and daffodils and beekeeping prove to be diversions. Her
father Otto had been an expert on bees and the activity brought her closer
to him, as reflected in several of her later poems. However, Plath by now
is mired in the tasks of changing diapers and pegging washing on the
clothes line. Hughes is driven from the house by her moods and his
admission that he could not give up his affair. The couple would separate
in the late summer of 1962 and Plath is shown gathering up the children
from the Devon cottage and driving precipitously to London in her Morris
Minor.
By October
1962, Plath was writing her Ariel poems, and in one of the best
scenes in the movie, she is shown reading “Daddy” to the critic Al
Alvarez, who would later champion her works. Alvarez is played well by
Jared Harris, who played John Lennon in the TV movie “The Two of Us”
opposite Aidan Quinn’s Paul McCartney.
The winter of
1962–1963 was a harsh one in Britain, with snowdrifts
sealing off country roads and many farms cut off. To give Sylvia credit,
she probably was not prepared for the hard conditions of a cold English
flat, trying to care for two small children alone, in a country much
different to the world in which she grew up. Having been born myself in
England and having come at age seven to the United States in 1955 where I
found myself very homesick I can testify to the then vast differences
between the two countries in the late Fifties and early Sixties, with many
more conveniences in the United States, a gap that has narrowed in the
last fifty years. Having been allowed to go back to England to live with
my grandparents and attend school in Liverpool in early 1961, I recall that hard winter, with snow playing havoc with
the English road system that had few snowploughs and with few houses
having central heating, leading to burst pipes and further hardship.
Plath receives some
kindness from her downstairs neighbor, nicely played by veteran British
actor Michael Gambon, who does good work in a cameo role. When the
electricity goes out, she comes downstairs to ask for help and is supplied
with candles by the sympathetic neighbor. In one light-hearted moment,
she tells him, “You must think I’m a stupid American bitch,” to which the
character played by Gambon replies, “Not at all, my dear. I assumed you
were Canadian.”
At Christmas, Hughes
comes round to see the children and bring presents. The couple make love
and Sylvia has hopes of a reconciliation. She asks him if he loves her
and he replies “Yes” but when he is asked if he will leave Assia and be
coming back, he says no he will not as Assia is pregnant. At this point,
the viewer wants to scream at the screen and get the man to live up to his
responsibilities to the two young children he has already fathered. His
refusal to return seemingly seals Sylvia’s fate and within just over six
weeks she is dead from gassing herself in the gas oven, for which she
prepares methodically, sealing off windows and doors with tape and leaving
food for her small children. She also lodges a letter with her downstairs
neighbor to send to her mother in the United States, telling him she has
to leave early in the morning and cannot post the letter herself.
Ironically, and not shown of course in the movie, Assia Wevill, who became
obsessed with Plath after her death, would kill herself in an identical
manner in 1969. The emotional scars on Ted Hughes from the tragedies that
he underwent are hard to gauge in this production, and when we see him
gazing out of the window of the flat where his wife committed suicide, the
scene lacks impact because of the one-dimensional quality of the Hughes
character through most of the film.
Is “Sylvia” worth
seeing? Most definitely. Many of the scenes are sumptuous and shot on
location in Cape Cod and England by cinematographer John Toon, though the
end credits do say that some of the filming was done in New Zealand, home
of director Jeffs, and I have to wonder which parts were shot in New
Zealand, never visited by Plath and Hughes together to my knowledge, and
which in the U.S. and England. The music by Gabriel Yared is moody and in
the English pastoral school. As noted, the character of Plath is plumbed
more deeply than that of Hughes, who comes across as more of a stereotype
of the rugged and silent man. Hughes apparently was an intensely private
man, and perhaps the filmmakers’ inability to fully penetrate his
character might have led to this portrayal. As a portrait of the last
years of the life of Sylvia Plath, the film does a good job even if the
part Hughes played could have been further fleshed out. Gwyneth Paltrow
gives an Oscar-worthy portrayal of the doomed poet. Perhaps alarming to
me even though I knew the story was to see the gradual decline of Plath
and to realize that the strong voice present in her poems was not apparent
in the rather confused and naïve woman portrayed on screen, for surely the
strength of character evident in that voice would enable her to survive.
Unless, as seems also evident in this movie, she was doomed anyway, with
her poems about self-destruction becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy.
(This memoir and
movie review originally appeared in “Moon Notes,” No. 1, September 2003)