AureliaPlath.info Post #269

Aurelia, age 3, visiting her father's hometown

After 19-year-old Aurelia Schober played the male lead in her college's German-Club play, she got feedback from all her German Department professors but one. She wrote in her diary (5 February 1926):

"Mrs. Haskell and Dr. White, who evaluated the play, were pleased. Dr. Perrin congratulated me. I saw Mr. Plath's eyes beaming with enjoyment but he didn't come to speak with me. Mr. Haskell was appreciative. Mrs. Murphy, Annette's mother, a woman of distinguished personality and excellent education, came to me and said, 'My dear, you are a star of the first magnitude! You're wonderful. But don't let your head be turned -- although you deserve it, my dear.'

"Oh, it was all so sweet and wonderful, this praise! I must forget it and remember that I am only common, ordinary Aurelia Schober. But when I saw my friends Madeline Redmond and Grace Dickinson -- both of whom do not understand a word of German -- come to congratulate me on my voice and acting -- I felt like embracing the world.

"I am the happiest girl in the world tonight."

That was in 1926. Now it's 2026, and findings in the Plath Family archive at Yale are too momentous for this homey but limited Blogspot platform I've used since 2013. So I will be posting henceforth at Substack.com, where free subscribers receive new posts as emails the minute they are posted. Also I can choose to restrict with a paywall the viewing (and AI scraping) of some of the touchier items. Pioneering Plath research is moving from small town to big city. Please join those of us already there. I value as always your comments, suggestions, corrections, and advice.

Here is the Substack link to what I have named The Yale Diaries, in part because my favorite post here was "Diary of a Plath Researcher" (2023).

I like to remember the star of Aureliaplath.info as the happiest girl in the world, her whole life ahead of her and including two remarkable children. By their fruits you shall know them.

-Your researcher, Catherine

Feel Like a Longer Read?

I spent the past week writing a long post about Sylvia Plath, her mother Aurelia, and her psychiatrist Dr. Ruth Beuscher, three women intertwined and caught in the "I hate my mother" trap: https://theyalediaries.substack.com/p/i-hate-you-mother. You might like it. I'm training myself for the marathon task of finishing a book-length work.

Sylvia's Psychiatrist, Dr. Ruth Beuscher, in the News

More people read The Bell Jar than Plath biographies, and for them Esther Greenwood’s psychiatrist, the good “Dr. Nolan,” arrived in summer 1953 out of nowhere and fades out at the end. Biographies say Sylvia Plath and Dr. Ruth Beuscher met again in 1954 and 1958-59, but that story usually ends with Sylvia’s death in 1963. Most research treats Sylvia Plath as an end in herself. On this site, there is a before and a beyond. The bulk of Sylvia’s career has been posthumous. She actually hoped for that. And a person who influenced Sylvia as Beuscher did ought not to vanish because a book cuts her off. So here’s “RB” as you haven’t seen her.

Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse, born in 1923, was the eldest child of a authoritarian Presbyterian fundamentalist preacher, her mother a missionary who died in her forties. Ruth and siblings had high IQs and were rigidly home-schooled to be prodigies and whiz-kids and recite whole chapters from the Bible. After her first year at Vassar, Ruth, 17, eloped to Santa Fe with a young Mr. Edmonds she met at a retreat. The New York Times announced the marriage because her father Rev. Donald Barnhouse was a radio star, his “Bible Study Hour” broadcast coast-to-coast. He died in 1960 and his tapes still have avid listeners. Rev. Billy Graham said, “He knew the Scriptures better than any man I ever knew.”

Ruth had two children with Edmonds and in 1947 divorced him in Reno, where the above photo was taken. She sold flowers at the courthouse for six weeks to make money. The Edmonds' divorce was again New York Times-worthy news. Photos of young Ruth are hard to find; the Wilmington, Delaware, newspaper ran the photo on top of this post, with its caption reproduced at right.

Ruth married med-school classmate Bill Beuscher in 1950, and as psychiatrist Dr. Ruth Beuscher, M.D., met Sylvia Plath at McLean Hospital. Beuscher was a working professional woman, brilliant, attractive, and married with children -- all that Sylvia hoped to be. Sylvia loved Dr. Beuscher, also known as “Dr. B,” a “permissive mother figure” and granter of wishes. Sylvia refused therapy with anyone else and in her final days in London requested a female psychiatrist she didn't live to meet. 

Earrings show the doctor's fashion flair.

A Boston Globe article, 15 December 1957, headlined “Child Psychiatrist Quits In Hospital Squabble,” says after Beuscher left McLean she was hired to head a children’s psychiatric clinic but resigned. Beuscher explained: “What I was trying to do was to bring the children's unit up to top efficiency even if it meant the shifting of some senior employees.” The senior employees were all men. They called it a personality clash. With the article is a photo of her, taken in profile.

Beuscher then set up her private practice, meeting Sylvia for regular therapy sessions in 1958-59. Sylvia suffered from writer’s block and concern about the man she’d married. The pair explored Sylvia’s family issues. Sylvia decided having a baby would solve her problems.

In England Sylvia’s marriage fell apart and Sylvia asked "Ruth" for therapy by mail. Ruth advised her to get a lawyer and not sleep with her cheating husband, or the court might think her unserious. Ted Hughes really ran with Ruth's instruction, “Keep him out of your bed.” He repeated that as if it was sick or sinister and as if he were entitled. It was good advice.