Images from the Plath Family Papers

Aurelia Plath's last diary. These pages from 1989 show variations in Aurelia's handwriting as she struggled with macular degeneration. Emotionally she has just been knocked sidewise by the blow dealt her by the then-new Plath biography Bitter Fame. 

On the leftward page she noted "Nov. 10 The OPENING OF THE WALL Between East and West Germany! Is light coming to this part of the world as I continually lose my sight?" Just above that, a late-in-life realization: "I should have worked for my own 'career.' Regret so not accepting the 'Dean of Women' post at Northeastern. Bleeding ulcers were still with me then." Also Sylvia had declared that taking the Dean of Women job would leave herself and Warren orphaned. On the rightward page, on November 12 "(Full Moon!") Aurelia and her neighbor, financial professional Bill Cruickshank, worked on her accounts until 5:30 p.m. "Think Positive!" she told herself, and under November 17 made a catty little little note about "uneducated" Dido Merwin, whose searing short memoir about Sylvia is appended to Bitter Fame.

The baby is Aurelia's sister Dorothy, Aurelia is on the right, with their mother Aurelia Greenwood Schober about 1912; Aurelia is six.

The label on this palm-sized diary for 1962 says "Catastrophe at Court Green." During the days Ted and Sylvia's marriage fell apart Aurelia, who kept quiet and tended to her grandchildren, wrote remarkably little. On July 11 Sylvia shut herself away to write a novel and Aurelia served her dinner in the study. Aurelia later wrote in a diary that during this week Sylvia angrily told her "You are of no use to me here!" and ordered her to move out. Housed with midwife Winifred Davies, Aurelia passed the time reading a book of home remedies, copying out numerous uses of cider vinegar. (I'm not making that up.) A few later days later Aurelia, invited back to Court Green, recorded in Gregg shorthand that Sylvia, unable to sleep, eat, or care for her children was sedated by the local doctor. 

The first of two diaries Aurelia censored, this one by tearing out pages and noting, "Tore out all the sad notes from 1936-40." Wish she hadn't. In the other injured diary, several pages from autumn 1958 were razored out. Letters from Sylvia hint it was a period of conflict having nothing to do with Sylvia: Aurelia was fighting with her siblings. 

A frank and lengthy discussion about reading Aurelia Plath's diaries is free at Substack.