Sweetly Picking Up Pieces

Here's a note from Sylvia Plath to her mother Aurelia Plath, dated by Aurelia 18 July 1962. Sylvia in this note was telling Aurelia how to feed and care for Frieda and Nick at Court Green, and manage Sylvia's housekeeper Nancy Axworthy while Sylvia was away on business.

Sylvia's note is "real nice" considering she'd banished houseguest Aurelia during the week of July 9, telling her to find a hotel. Not finding a room, Aurelia had by July 14 moved in with Sylvia's midwife Winifred Davies. Yet Aurelia was asked to visit daily to serve Sylvia as a free babysitter and cook. As much as Sylvia hated hosting her mother, Aurelia hated to babysit Sylvia, who reacting to her husband's cheating howled with grief and drove her car off the road, was so shattered and out-of-control that the local doctor prescribed tranquilizers. [1] In turn, Winifred Davies gave Aurelia a sleep aid. 

The above note was tucked into Aurelia's 1962 diary at the appropriate page and photographed in situ. It is part of Aurelia Plath's literary estate, which along with Warren Plath's literary estate was donated by the Plath family in February 2025 to Yale University's Beinecke Library. Its archivists are currently processing the donated materials. The note ends, "Love, Sivvy."

[1] Sylvia to Ruth Beuscher, 20 July 1962: "got the doctor to knock me out for 8 hours after a week of no eating or sleeping" 

Plath and Sleeping Pills

Sylvia Plath mentioned sleeping pills in numerous letters. The pills were barbiturates, some available over-the-counter.

From Sylvia Plath's Letters, Volume 1:

28 June 1949 to Aurelia Plath: "I really don't need any sleeping pills by the time the day is over." (Plath at the time is 16 years old.)

29 October 1950 to Aurelia: "I have taken a hot bath and a sleeping pill"

3 December 1950 to Aurelia: "I'm going to take two little pills and be asleep by nine o'clock"

31 January 1951 to Aurelia: "I guess I'll take sleeping pills till after exams are over"

18 October 1951 to Aurelia: "It's wonderful how comfortable strong nosedrops, hot compresses and penicillin and sleeping pills can make a sinus sufferer."

20 October 1951 to Aurelia: "I was dosed with pirivine [nose drops] and pyribenzamine [antihistamine] and sleeping pills"

3 March 1952 to Aurelia: "I took two sleeping pills two hours apart, as you said"

19 July 1952 to Aurelia: "It now being 10:30 p.m., I am sitting in bed (phenobarb duly taken)" 

17 November 1952 to Aurelia: "got the first good night's sleep (with the aid of a phenobarb) for weeks." 

(Plath takes sleeping pills prescribed by her aunt/family doctor, Francesca Racioppi, M.D., for most of spring semester 1953. That summer, Racioppi prescribes for Plath a stronger sleeping pill. In August, Plath overdoses on sleeping pills and barely survives.)

28 December 1953 to Eddie Cohen: "I became immune to increased doses of sleeping pills"

27 October 1955 to Elinor Friedman: "Gone are the good old Smith days with cocaine, codeine, and sleeping pills" [1]

Journals, 5 November 1957: "First I couldn't sleep without pills, now I can" 

In Letters, Volume 2, as Sylvia's marriage falls apart she becomes addicted to sleeping pills and knows it.

27 January 1960 to Aurelia: "I am taking iron pills & every so often sleeping pills (not barbiturates) like those you gave me"

31 March-1 April 1960 to Aurelia and Warren Plath: "Well, just twelve hours ago I woke up groggy from two sleeping pills"

29 December 1961 to Aurelia: "I've started taking sleeping pills for my arms have been a bother--all pins & needles & often so painful I can't lay them anywhere at all: evidently a normal symptom of some pregnancies" 

12 January 1962 to Aurelia: "The doctor's sleeping pills are very good" 

29 September 1962 to Kathy Kane: "I can't sleep without pills." The same day, Sylvia mentioned sleeping pills in letters to Aurelia and to Ruth Beuscher.

12 October 1962 to Aurelia: "Every morning when my sleeping pills wear off, I am up about 5, in my study with coffee, writing like mad."

16 October 1962 to Aurelia: "I live on sleeping pills"

14 December 1962, to Dorothy Benotti: "I hope to get off sleeping pills"

26 December 1962, to Daniel and Helga Huws: "I am going to the doctor this week to see if he can help me get off those sleeping pills"

22 January 1963, to Olive Higgins Prouty: "I am still on sleeping pills & tonics to help me eat" 

4 February 1963, to Ruth Beuscher: "I am living on sleeping pills and nerve tonic"

Because most of Sylvia's mentions of sleeping pills are in letters to her mother, I think her mother, who herself took sleeping pills, got her started on them. There are very few studies about Plath and drugs.

[1] U.S. pharmacies legally sold cocaine and the morphine derivative codeine most of the 20th century, at first over-the-counter and then by prescription. Sylvia Plath was prescribed cocaine for sinus pain.