Otto and Aurelia Plath as a Couple

Boston University Women's Building, once Aurelia's refuge, now the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies

"She was not happily married; she thinks because of her husband's incipient illness, which he refused to have treated, made him emotionally unbalanced, leading to loss of temper." Aurelia Plath in 1953 was describing her eight years of marriage to her late husband Otto, twenty-one years older than she. The transcript continued, "Age difference too great. He led narrow life; no entertaining, no outings." [1] 

That meant Aurelia led a much narrower, more isolated life than she was used to as a student and dedicated teacher. The only visitors Otto allowed at their house were her parents. Aurelia couldn't entertain old or new friends. Within a year of their wedding, with Sylvia a newborn, Aurelia famously decided she "had to become more submissive," adding, "although it was not in my nature to be so." She quit arguing and trying to reason with Otto and, within the limits of safety, began subverting him, going as far as having secret dinner guests while Otto taught night school.

The couple did go on a few outings, but with one exception those on record were Boston University German-language events such as the annual College of Practical Arts and Letters variety show (1933, 1934), emceed by Marshall Perrin, Aurelia's favorite professor of German. At the college's annual scholarship banquet the Plaths and fellow German teachers the Haskells were guests of honor. When they moved to Winthrop and attended a civic banquet, the news clipping called them "Mr. and Mrs. O. E. Plath representing Boston University." [2]

Limited to university-related functions, Aurelia created for herself a Boston University social life. Before marriage she had represented her college for the university alumni association, and continued to do so while pregnant and after Sylvia was born. [3] Both Marshall Perrin and Mrs. Haskell died in 1935, depriving Aurelia of allies who had known her as the shining star of her college class. At BU's Faculty Wives' Club, Aurelia confessed to at least one woman that Otto was a tyrant and hurt her. This woman sympathized and introduced Aurelia to Mildred Norton, a future best friend and decisive influence on Aurelia's parenting.

Aurelia had another baby, who was sickly, and Otto's health declined. She had to serve as nurse to both. In 1937 Aurelia wrote to Mrs. Helen Gaebler:

". . . I haven't been in Cambridge once during the last three years. Usually I can slip away on the average of once a week . . . At the Women's Building of Boston University, where the wives of the faculty members meet, I thoroughly enjoy my connection with these women, for we have much in common, and these monthly gatherings comprise all the social life I have." [4]

Aurelia then wasn't counting as "social" her recent election as recording secretary to BU's Boston alumni association, or the banquet in Winthrop with 500 attendees. She wanted friends who were intellectual peers. Otto in their courting days promised her an ideal partnership and failed to deliver. If in the 1930s  your husband was controlling or abusive the pressure was on you never to say so -- except Aurelia did.

I don't think it was Otto's death and the burden he left her that Aurelia was bitter about. I think it was what she underlined in Sylvia's copy of Middlemarch: "Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life -- the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within it -- can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances." She was not so much bitter as grieved.

[1] McLean Hospital intake interview with patient's mother Aurelia Plath, page 2.

[2] Winthrop Review, 21 Oct 1937, "Tercentary Banquet of Deane Winthrop House Monday."

[3] Boston Globe, 13 December 1932.

[4] ASP to Mrs. Helen Gaebler, 9 December 1937, Smith.