A respected critic called
Aurelia Plath “a manipulatively controlling mother” without stating any facts to back that up. [1] That Sylvia Plath had good reasons to hate her mother is something fans seem to “know” and accept without question. Here are their primary proofs that Sylvia hated her mother: one long, searing journal entry dated 12 December 1958; the assertion that priggish Mrs. Greenwood in the novel The Bell Jar is exactly what Aurelia was like; and the poem “Medusa” (originally titled “Mum”) that portrays Mum as a monster.
It turns out, however, that Sylvia in 1953, after her suicide attempt, spent her first month in the mental hospital telling her psychiatrist she loved her mother, and had to be talked into hating her. This is what the psychiatrist said in papers in a new Sylvia Plath archive opened to the public in January 2020. See what those papers say here.
Almost all of what biographers and critics write about Aurelia Plath is negative, as if facts were few and scanty. They aren't. They have simply been ignored.
Did you know Aurelia Plath had a first love who kept a diary about their affair? Do you know what courses she taught and where? Do you know where she traveled? Those who know only what Sylvia wrote about Aurelia don't know Aurelia very well.
Please see this short video introducing some facts about Aurelia Plath's life: her college years, her job, how if Aurelia wasn't an easy mother to have, Sylvia was not an easy daughter to have.
But didn't her mother manipulate her anyway?
We underestimate Sylvia if we think she was easy to manipulate and control!
More on this topic in "How Did Aurelia Plath Manipulate and Control Sylvia Plath?" blog post, 11 July 2023.
[1] David Trinidad, “Hidden in Plain Sight,” Plath Profiles, Vol. 3 (2010) Supplement: Autumn 2010, p. 126.
Very good points. My time in the archives shocked me at the number of requests Sylvia made to her mother for care packages. She was an adult living on her own, yet she still needed shoes, magazines, stockings, etc. Almost constantly. It seems to me that Aurelia worked to appease Sylvia in the same way that she had once worked to appease Otto. She was a bit of a doormat, I think. And of course, a product of her times, when to be a mother and a wife was everything. When she lost the wife-half, perhaps she sort of married Sylvia.
ReplyDeleteThis blog is so valuable as Sylvia burned her mother's letters, and we don't have enough of a true representation of Aurelia's voice.
Agreed on every point you made, Julia! This blog is incredibly valuable. Thank you, Catherine, for all of your hard work!
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