I could treat you to the notes I took as I read and re-read Loving Sylvia Plath: A Reclamation, by Emily Van Duyne.
Or I could tell you my opinion, but it'd be only one of many.
Then I wondered, what is the purpose of a book review? I learned early on that reviews exist so readers can pretend to have read recent books, preparing themselves for cocktail conversations or the MLA.
What value does criticism have after a book is published? It's as Gertrude Stein said, "Criticism always comes too late."
I could link you to an article I wish I had written, about the trend toward literary "auto-criticism" that does not pretend to objectivity but loves its subject. We know that "emotionless" "objectivity" always granted the reviewer liberty to savage the book or damn with faint praise or embed little digs at the book or its author, or complain (as I wished to) that the book took insufficient notice of my point of view. Some reviews are weapons against a certain school of thinking, or showcase how erudite or in the Zeitgeist the reviewer is.
To review a Plath book is also a chance to "whatabout" my pet concerns such as Sylvia Plath's privilege and amorality and Ted Hughes's blaming the solar system for the couple's fate. Or I could harp on critics' suspension of judgement or squelching of inquiry because Plath is too special, holy, smart, for mortals to judge or edit, gung-ho to publish every word she wrote, much of it like Elvis's Greatest Shit, an LP compiling the King's most ludicrous recordings such as "Do the Clam" (from Girl Happy) and studio outtakes.
Critical "objectivity" has guessed Plath killed herself having all sorts of diseased or existential motives. An early one, taken seriously by Al Alvarez and others, was "Her poetry killed her," a statement so absurd I wonder why no one jeered -- while proscribing inquiries such as: Why does Loving Sylvia Plath, so eloquent and persuasive about Plath's experience of domestic abuse and the silencing of abused women in general -- erase Sylvia's mother? Aurelia Plath was a woman too, in an abusive marriage. That's not my opinion or new discovery. Aurelia -- she who wrung her hands about what the neighbors thought -- described her abusive marriage at length in Letters Home, published fifty years ago. Critics labeled her a "martyr," the bad kind.
There is evidence that Plath's domestic abuse is part of a family pattern: quick, defiant weddings followed by brutalization, traceable through five generations of Greenwoods and Plaths. Domestic violence is Plath's heritage and remains a family concern. A poem by her daughter Frieda Hughes, who like Plath uses poetry as expose and retribution, describes being "livid" with bruises and seeking shelter with her stepmother, who won't take her in. [1] Frieda's cousin Susan Plath Winston, who is Warren's daughter, is a lawyer representing victims of domestic violence. [2]
Loving Sylvia Plath focuses on Plath and Assia Wevill as victims of Ted Hughes, whose own mental warp required vows of silence from everyone he knew and, in partnership with sister Olwyn, hiding or destroying evidence of intimate partner violence or his portion of responsibility for intimate partners' suicidal despair. As far as I know, critics have not explored the likelihood that Hughes came from a violent family, information about his father, William, being exceptionally scarce. (Maybe more will come to light when Hughes-worshipping gets old.) Loving Sylvia Plath does say Olwyn, tireless tormentor and manipulator of lots of people, had an abusive alcoholic boyfriend and married him. [p. 185]
And a small example of inexplicable Aurelia erasure:
Van Duyne writes [p. 114] that the church sexton witnessed the wedding of Plath and Hughes. Aurelia Plath was a witness too. That's fact. Go look at the photograph of the registry (courtesy of scholars Di Beddow and Ann Skea). Why is the sexton credited as a witness but Aurelia not?
There are more such erasures, but I want to avoid nits and off-topic arguments such as, "Whoa, there; Plath's achievement is not equivalent to Virginia Woolf's." [p. 21] Better, "If Van Duyne read Harriet Rosenstein's acidic notes about her interview with Aurelia Plath, notes archived at Emory, Van Duyne surely read in that same document Rosenstein's notes about Sylvia's maternal great-grandmother":
“Miss Meyer (Beyer? What was her first name, Esther?) was
married by grandfather, Greenwood, who felt that he’d stooped.” . . . “ONE OF THE FEW TIMES SHE [Aurelia] SHOWED STRONG EMOTION. BRUTALITY OF GREENWOOD.
Treated Grandmother wretchedly. She bore nine children, raised seven of them,
ran the store in Vienna. He did nothing but be charming and feel destroyed by
improvident marriage. BRUTAL, IRRESPONSIBLE, CHARMING MEN" [3]
Possibly the editors suggested Van Duyne cut out Aurelia or family stuff. So domestic abuse looks as if it hit Sylvia from out of the blue.
I changed my approach to: "What can I offer that might build on this book's many merits, such as good scholarship, an unusual approach, and bold argumentation?"
I'll link you to that thoughtful article about the trend toward book-length "auto-criticism," which discusses Van Duyne's open affinity with Sylvia Plath, and addresses the problems of the auto-critical approach. (Every approach has problems.) [4]
I am not persuaded Sylvia's "violent marriage" was always violent and that in life she was only a victim. She married Ted Hughes knowing he "bashed people around," admired "such violence, and I can see why women lie down for artists." Plath knew she fused Hughes's personal presence and power with what she recalled of her father. So her family had a role in her choice of mate and marriage dynamics, and it's worth looking into.
Her family's gift to her, as far as we can prove, because physical abuse at home was not then a crime -- was verbal abuse. Sylvia Plath raised verbal abuse to an art form. That's why we love the Ariel poems and The Bell Jar and Journals. That's why we get our dopamine ya-yas no matter how many times we read her.
Those who in life loved Sylvia Plath got burnt really badly.
[1] "Twenty-Third Year, 1982," pp. 45-46 in 45: Poems (Harper Collins, 2006).
[3] Harriet Rosenstein's notes on her interview with Aurelia Plath (1970), p. 2, Manuscript Collection 1489, Stuart Rose Library, Emory.
[4] Lindemann, Frances. "Reading Oneself: Auto-Critics and the Sylvia Plath Problem," The Drift, issue #13, 19 July 2024.