December 9, 1959

A reminder that today is the anniversary of Ted and Sylvia Plath Hughes's departure from the U.S. to England on the U.S.S. United States. The above was a sticker or tag for outbound boxes or luggage. Aurelia Plath kept this particular tag and it's in the Plath Family Papers at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale, opened for research this past December 3.

Aurelia liked to annotate. Sometimes her annotations are helpful or revealing, but this "Dec 1959" annotation up top puts me in mind of a brain floating around without a brain stem. Or a little cloud on a blue horizon. But who knows she felt remembering her daughter, alive and adventurous?

Sylvia was optimistic although the move was risky, especially for her, because she was leaving her network/safety net of friends, relatives, well-wishers, the psychiatrist she trusted, and her native country: almost everything. Yet on that December 9 she was looking forward, not back. In her journal she'd written, "I really want this." [1]

[1] Journals, 20 January 1959.

Fifteen Posts I Haven't Written

After a six-day work week, the working girl gets the memo "We missed you last Sunday at Sunday School." Source unknown.

I am stocked up with two years' worth of research for new posts. Here's a selection, in capsule form:

"Anxiety is Terror": Sylvia Plath thought her mother's anxiety was cowardice, but labeling anxiety a disease and a personal weakness, and medicating it, disguises systemic threats which for very good reasons cause chronic terror and dread.

"A Place for Mom": Sylvia's mad grandmother Ernestine Plath probably preferred life at an insane asylum over wifehood and motherhood.

"Aurelia Plath's Archive": Aurelia curated the 3000-piece Plath mss. II archive at Indiana University's Lilly Library so we see only what Aurelia wanted us to see. What is missing?

"Aurelia the Peacenik": Oddly, "peace" was an important value in the family of a famously troubled writer.

"Herr des Hauses": Examples in period literature show Otto's dictatorial ways at home were the norm in Prussia.

"How I Read Essays About Sylvia Plath": I read critical essays and biographies way differently than before.

"I Am An American": How Sylvia and family were entangled in the first-generation-American assimilation process.

"It Has a Gothic Shape": obstacles to Sylvia's learning German.

"Miss Mucky-Muck and Lady Jane": Nicknames and labels people hung on Esther Greenwood and on Sylvia.

"Rude Speculations: When Your Rival is Your Mom"

"Sylvia and Her Family's Secrets"

"Sylvia Plath, Drama Queen"

"Sylvia Plath, Harriet Rosenstein, and Ms. Magazine"

"Visage de Aurelia Schober Plath": Probably will be a video.

"When Nervous Breakdowns Were Cool": They were.