Cultural Debris in Aurelia Plath's Archives

Meet Aurelia Plath's Joys of Jell-O cookbook (1962). Among her last effects and sharing a packing box with Great Short Stories of the World, this volume testifies to how, with one-quarter of a stomach, Aurelia lived days, weeks, and months on fruit-flavored gelatin mixed with whatever she could tolerate. Featured recipes include "Ring-Around-the-Tuna Salad" and the timeless "Broken Glass" dessert.

What's cultural debris? The leavings and tag ends of fads and fashions inconsistent with the level of discourse. Aurelia Plath's papers have few such items. She never mentions pop music or coffee brands or her era's entertainers. Only one fad really swept her away:

To Linda Wagner-Martin, 9 December 1985

 

 

In Aurelia's copy of "Bumblebees and Their Ways"

Aurelia Plath to Mary Ann Montgomery, 1980

Aurelia started in the 1970s drawing "smiley faces" next to written or printed remarks, a pox-like American habit now faded but not extinct. The sun-colored "smiley" symbol that in the '70s defaced every manner of consumer item lived on to sire a whole emoji tribe. On a Christmas 1965 letter from Ted Hughes, Aurelia drew a "sad face" because Ted had canceled her upcoming annual visit with her grandchildren. (He wasn't ready to explain Assia Wevill's baby.) Aurelia drew that teary "sad face" on Ted's letter well after first reading it, because she used a type of marker not available in 1965.

Aurelia to Mary Ann Montgomery, 1980

Aurelia had to explain "Paper from granddaughters" because the image was so uncomfortably inconsistent with who she was. Artist Bernard Kliban (1935-1990) drew tabby-cat cartoons printed by the millions on greeting cards and tee-shirts ("Love to eat them mousies. . .") and still has fans. Of the examples of cultural debris in Aurelia's papers, the popularity of the nameless solitary Kliban Cat (never a comic strip character, never animated) -- most defies political analysis. 

What else? Aurelia tried to quote in Letters Home Khalil Gibran's famous prose poem, "On Children" ("Your children are not your children"), made mawkish by overuse. Her editor stopped her. Sylvia Plath on the other hand practically drowned in cultural debris, reading formulaic stories in women's magazines, in New York City vomiting beautifully sculpted food, and while wearing queerly-cut dresses watched food stylists using toothpicks to prop up melting scoops of ice cream.