Aurelia Plath, Young Wife and Mother: 24 Prince Street, Jamaica Plain

Newlyweds Aurelia Schober and Otto Plath rented here the lower left unit from 1932 until 1936. This was where the couple rewrote for publication Otto's dissertation about bees. Here Aurelia studied Latin for a college course Otto had her take so she could better draft his paper about insects. Sylvia Plath was born in a Boston hospital, but this house in the Boston neighborhood called Jamaica Plain was her first home. In a little pink baby book Aurelia chronicled her daughter's growth and milestones. Sylvia spoke her first words at eight months old. At 14 months Aurelia noted that Sylvia said, "Daddy," "specially when someone shakes the furnace!" Back then, someone had to shake the house's furnace about every 12 hours to knock the ashes off the burning coals.

In this house Sylvia learned to walk, talk, and read. Little Sylvia, using tiles, here copied onto the living-room carpet an image of the Taj Mahal, artwork that delighted her father. Built in 1916, 24 Prince Street is a short walk from the Arnold Arboretum, a botanical garden and haven for bees, where Otto had dwelt for years with a houseful of fellow Harvard graduate students. Sylvia could recall from her very early childhood her grandparents' house in Winthrop, by the ocean, but only Aurelia recalled in writing some of the events that took place here.

Aurelia to a Scholar, September 8, 1986: The "Double" Theory

"I have one deep-seated wish: that the truth of my relationship with my beloved Sylvia would be made public. I am 80 years old now and do not wish to leave this planet believing that I did not cherish, love, serve, (sacrifice gladly for her) my daughter from the time of her birth (dreamed of my child and loved her from the first I knew of her conception) and still work to correct the terrible misconceptions concerning our relationship. After that first shock treatment (these should be abolished forever!) she, as I have told and written you many times, became her own "double." And as she had to plan to earn her own living, soon found out that the public was more interested in tragedy, unhappiness, -- these writings SOLD and writing in the first person made it all realistic for the uninformed read[er]s. [handwritten:] She fantasized brutally time & again."

 

I am interested in finding out when Aurelia Plath, after Sylvia's death, first discovers or hits on the theory of good-daughter Sylvia's brutal "double" emerging after Sylvia's shock treatments in 1953. By 1986, Aurelia's concept of "the double" is a well-rehearsed set piece and appears in other correspondence and papers with examples of what Aurelia took as proof, such as Sylvia's Smith College thesis (written in 1954) on the topic of "the double" in Dostoyevsky's novels. I could make a good guess about when, but regarding Aurelia, and Aurelia and Sylvia, we have arrived at the point in scholarship when assumptions and guesses are no longer acceptable as facts.