When Aurelia Plath Said Something Good About "The Bell Jar"

Aurelia Plath loved the November 1975 review of Letters Home that novelist Erica Jong wrote for the Los Angeles Times. Aurelia quoted the sympathetic review in notes and letters, savoring in particular the words, "Had Sylvia lived, she would have created many mothers, many daughters, and written in a voice other than that of the raging adolescent crying out in The Bell Jar." [1]

Aurelia gave an author's talk about Letters Home soon afterward. Part of this talk was recorded on tape. Aurelia told the audience The Bell Jar (U.S., 1971) was a hurtful book, but then said something she never otherwise said: "It's a wonderful book from many points of view. I was talking to the psychiatrist a few days ago and she said Sylvia has done a great service because she has explained so accurately what goes on in the emotions and in the mind of a person throughout depression. [The psychiatrist] said the same thing about Erica Jong's book, Fear of Flying. People criticize that there's four-letter words on practically every page. I've read it too, and it treats subjects that uh, certainly don't fall into the class of gentility. . . but is of invaluable importance to psychiatrists."

Sylvia Plath researcher Harriet Rosenstein, then in her early 20s, heard this tape shortly after it was made. While it was playing, another tape machine recorded both Aurelia's tape and Rosenstein's response to what Aurelia had just said.

Rosenstein [incredulous]: Fear of Flying?

Aurelia Plath: [some words inaudible] a great deal across the spectrum gone when a person is distressed.

Rosenstein: In Fear of Flying? [2]

So Rosenstein had read the Jong book, a bestseller in 1973. Like many high-literates she did not think it great. Yet "the psychiatrist" (female; identity unknown) was not wrong to compare the novels.

The narrator of Fear of Flying is an American woman who came of age in the 1950s, so frustrated sexually and otherwise that she can't believe in herself. Analyzed by six male psychiatrists and married to a seventh, she runs off on a road trip with another psychiatrist she has just met. Like The Bell Jar, Fear of Flying is semi-autobiographical but more graphic, and Jong's protagonist is an upper-middle-class New York Jew, age 29, more Sex in the City than owlish Esther Greenwood could be.

After re-reading Fear of Flying this week I'd say The Bell Jar was Fear of Flying's template. Quotations and phrases from Sylvia Plath's poems dot the text, and the voice is comparably first-person and contemporary. Both protagonists, well-educated, wanting to be writers, believe they must choose between "happy homemaker" or "intellectual nun." For them, any one choice cancels out the rest. 

In hindsight we can see the novels were not as useful to psychiatrists as they were to readers who began questioning what psychology and psychoanalysis said about women and did to them. Aurelia Plath had a front-row seat on that, seeing a radical difference in her daughter before and after electroshock and psychotherapy. Ultimately neither treatment seemed to do Sylvia any favors.

Fear of Flying (1973) sold more than 20 million copies; what I have is its 50th-year anniversary edition. Its story is dated and overlong -- unlike The Bell Jar, which is tidy and timeless -- but they were the right books at the right moments -- thus, bestsellers -- when Second-Wave women's liberation was new and questioning everything.

[1] "Letters Focus Exquisite Rage of Sylvia Plath," Los Angeles Times, 23 November 1975.

[2] Rosenstein Papers, Stuart Rose Library, Emory University, Collection 1489, tape v7b4x, side B.

Holiday Break

Did you have an aunt like mine? Mollie Albrecht (1920-2024). (Dig her rosary.)

I am on a one-week holiday break. Actually I'm researching my own family tree, using the genealogy website FamilySearch.org. Yesterday it found me a great-grandmother with a name, and as the default keeper of the family albums I have uploaded photos of each family member who has died. For privacy reasons, people still living cannot be added to the family tree. If you add yourself, only you can see that.

The Mormon church in 1894 set as a goal a family tree of all humanity, so to register on FamilySearch.org is free, and the site will not send emails or other bother. Familysearch is also rich with digitized historical documents. Anglos, you are in luck; your tree has probably already been researched and posted by distant relatives back to the 1400s. My own family of origin was barely represented, so I'm on it.

God rest ye merry!

This is Not a Nazi Salute

Pledge of Allegiance in 1941

Sylvia Plath wrote an essay in January 1963 about her "rowdy seaside town where I picked up, like lint, my first ten years of schooling," intending to sell the work to the British humor magazine Punch; she was at her most desperate for money and lived only three more weeks. Titled "The All-Round Image" and published as "America! America!" it is a lyric essay: loosely autobiographical and low on dialogue and anecdotes. Although Plath took nothing lightly, she provided the type of humor she knew: satire, meaning "ridicule with intent to improve." The Bell Jar is satirical, and approaching the novel as such reveals how much Plath was making fun of her avatar Esther.

So in writing about her "first ten years of schooling" in her hometown, Plath exaggerated, simplified, belittled, and undercut ("the lot of us" at school were "a lovely slab of depressed American public"), to amuse. She wrote, "Every morning, hands on hearts, we pledged allegiance to the Stars and Stripes, a sort of aerial altarcloth over teacher's desk." I love the spot-on phrase "aerial altarcloth." Except Plath and her classmates never did "hands on hearts" in school in seaside Winthrop, which she and her family left in autumn 1942. In a detail too horrid to be funny, and that I'd never seen or heard of, from the time the Pledge of Allegiance was imposed on U.S. public schools (around 1890) an extended-arm salute went with it. 

Pledge of Allegiance with full Bellamy salute

This was the "Bellamy salute," standard with the Pledge of Allegiance until December 1942, when Congress for good reason replaced the gesture with "hand on heart." Charles Lindbergh was photographed in 1941 giving the Bellamy salute, and with the flag cropped out of the photo looked as if he was saluting Nazi Germany. His reputation never recovered. I mention this because Aurelia and Sylvia Plath both did this, and I expect, in the U.S., the Bellamy salute's revival.

(Note: I wasn't wrong. Elon Musk made the Nazi salute in Washington, D.C., on 20 January 2025. Twice.)

Sylvia Plath's Astrology

Pleased that the U.K.'s Urania Trust asked permission to reprint my article "Sylvia Plath's Fixed Stars" from Plath Profiles, and you can read it on their webpage here. But at holiday time let's talk generally about Sylvia Plath's birth horoscope. Birth horoscopes, basic to astrology, are literal sky maps unique to each person and through symbolism show talents and tendencies.

• Sylvia Plath, like most Americans of her time, knew her Sun sign, Scorpio, but astrology was not pop-culture until around 1970, and it's the 1990s before the mainstream knows their Moon sign, and we can thank Internet astrology sites for that.
  
• Astrologers say a person's Sun sign reveals what they want, the Moon sign what they need, and the "rising sign" (a.k.a. "ascendant") how they go about getting it. Sylvia took pride in her Sun sign, Scorpio: intense, including a Scorpio's always Tragic Backstory.™
• Sylvia's Libra Moon made her artistic, dextrous, and judgy. Her rising sign was Aquarius, so her modi operandi were to be brilliant and eager for acclaim, and try to hide that she was socially and emotionally fragile as a teacup.
  
• Re "Venus in the Seventh": Sylvia abandoned her first novel, and all that's left of it is one chapter titled "Venus in the Seventh." Sylvia's horoscope indeed had the planet Venus in the astrological seventh house (or sector), which represents marriage and partnership, so she wanted and loved the security and intimacy of marriage. Neptune also in the seventh house inflated her expectations. Ted Hughes, her house astrologer, told Sylvia this and also told his sister, who used this info against her.
  
• Sylvia and her mother Aurelia, a Taurus, were exact astrological opposites, and astrology says astrological opposites have a bond whether they like it or not.
  
• Assia Wevill was a Taurus. 
• Otto Plath was a Mason, but Masons are not astrologers and never were.
• Otto's and Aurelia's wedding horoscope (4 January 1932, Carson City, Nevada, 1:30 p.m.) is the most threatening wedding horoscope I have ever seen.
• Astrologically, Plath's Hollywood counterpart is not Marilyn Monroe but Audrey Hepburn. They share the fixed star Regulus, the "royal star," on their charts' western horizon, so they have some interesting biographical parallels.
• There's a crater on the planet Mercury named "Plath."
• Shura Wevill's birth horoscope is the most angular I have ever seen.
  
• Astrology is metaphor. It has no scientific basis, yet is said to augur the future. Freudianism is metaphor. It has no scientific basis. Yet it's said to augur the future.
  
• Sylvia's heliacal fixed star is Spica, astrological granter of glittering talent, often world-class.

Do "fixed stars govern a life"? Not really. Stars are only one factor in astrology, and humans govern our own lives according to our lights. Does Sylvia's chart say she'll die early? No. Birth horoscopes are about life and character. They do not foretell death.

• 

  Sylvia Plath's birth horoscope chart [above], like her life, is a popular case study. If the chart looks technical, that's because all horoscopes are. Learning to interpret horoscope charts takes years, but it's fun, and there's always more to learn.
  

Otto and Aurelia Plath as a Couple

Boston University Women's Building, once Aurelia's refuge, now the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies

"She was not happily married; she thinks because of her husband's incipient illness, which he refused to have treated, made him emotionally unbalanced, leading to loss of temper." Aurelia Plath in 1953 was describing her eight years of marriage to her late husband Otto, twenty-one years older than she. The transcript continued, "Age difference too great. He led narrow life; no entertaining, no outings." [1] 

That meant Aurelia led a much narrower, more isolated life than she was used to as a student and dedicated teacher. The only visitors Otto allowed at their house were her parents. Aurelia couldn't entertain old or new friends. Within a year of their wedding, with Sylvia a newborn, Aurelia famously decided she "had to become more submissive," adding, "although it was not in my nature to be so." She quit arguing and trying to reason with Otto and, within the limits of safety, began subverting him, going as far as having secret dinner guests while Otto taught night school.

The couple did go on a few outings, but with one exception those on record were Boston University German-language events such as the annual College of Practical Arts and Letters variety show (1933, 1934), emceed by Marshall Perrin, Aurelia's favorite professor of German. At the college's annual scholarship banquet the Plaths and fellow German teachers the Haskells were guests of honor. When the Plaths moved to Winthrop and attended a civic banquet, the news clipping called them "Mr. and Mrs. O. E. Plath representing Boston University." [2]

Limited to university-related functions, Aurelia created for herself a Boston University social life. Before marriage she had represented her college for the university alumni association, and continued to do so while pregnant and after Sylvia was born. [3] Both Marshall Perrin and Mrs. Haskell died in 1935, depriving Aurelia of allies who had known her as the shining star of her college class. At BU's Faculty Wives' Club, Aurelia confessed to at least one woman that Otto was a tyrant and hurt her. [4] This woman sympathized and introduced Aurelia to Mildred Norton, a future best friend and decisive influence on Aurelia's parenting.

Aurelia had another baby, who was sickly, and Otto's health declined. She had to serve as nurse to both. In 1937 Aurelia wrote to Mrs. Helen Gaebler:

". . . I haven't been in Cambridge once during the last three years. Usually I can slip away on the average of once a week . . . At the Women's Building of Boston University, where the wives of the faculty members meet, I thoroughly enjoy my connection with these women, for we have much in common, and these monthly gatherings comprise all the social life I have." [5]

Aurelia then wasn't counting as "social" her recent election as recording secretary to BU's Boston alumni association, or the banquet in Winthrop with 500 attendees. She wanted friends who were intellectual peers. Otto in their courting days promised her an ideal partnership and failed to deliver. If in the 1930s  your husband was controlling or abusive you were pressured never to say so -- except Aurelia did.

I don't think it was Otto's death and the burden he left her that Aurelia was bitter about. I think it was what she underlined in Sylvia's copy of Middlemarch: "Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life -- the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within it -- can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances." She was not so much bitter as grieved about what might have been.

[1] McLean Hospital intake interview with patient's mother Aurelia Plath, page 2.

[2] Winthrop Review, 21 Oct 1937, "Tercentary Banquet of Deane Winthrop House Monday."

[3] Boston Globe, 13 December 1932.

[4] C. Loring Brace to Linda Wagner-Martin, 13 July 1984, Lilly Library.

[5] ASP to Mrs. Helen Gaebler, 9 December 1937, Smith.

This Ghastly Archive: Remembering a Plath Superfan

Claim to Fame

 

Like many dying women she spent her time making collages.

I mean it. Stuffed between oversized scrapbook pages,

  clashes of greeting-card images cut

from the times she had been greeted or congratulated.

None is attractive or makes any sense.

It was late in life that she became an artist and no less;

finally we all get around to making art,

the language when language ends, and the motionless track

travels on while the train puts us out

onto the platform that at any hour is inadequately lit.

 

A boy named Sawyer his mother calls Soya

  brings chimneys of magazines seventy percent advertising,

exactly life’s proportion. Mary Ann must make her mark.

Neighbors interrupt her making-for-posterity

collages, edge-to-edge frustration, a series of barren wants

coupled with annoyances. In her thirties she had written

letters to celebrities asking them for money and tried to sell

to rare-book dealers their angry or astonished replies, events

not in the collages. No words are. Language couldn’t root in them.

The colors red and black did. Frowning, she concentrated.

 

Collage as a claim to fame. If only it had the body’s depths

of bone, sinew and fat. Remarkably she had gone from shameless

begging to graduate school in her fifties, choosing a place

she could go entirely mad, a comparative arts program,

where no one said anything and no judgment was final. Ginsberg’s

penpal, she called herself; everyone knew she was lying.

Ginsberg had replied that her letter was stupid. She ran and begged

Sylvia Plath’s mother to “Tell me something secret about her,”

as Mrs. Plath backed out of her Wellesley driveway

in 1977. She clings to the historical record by fingertips.

 

That is what she approached with scissors and what

she approached the scissors with. To acquire the few letters

from the famous in her files, the archive had to take the lot

and store acid-free cartons of late-in-life collages

in bulk, uninteresting and unattractive, dated,

made daily as she tried to live, Mary Ann Montgomery,
old and sick and living on Social Security in a house

in Michigan she had inherited, magazines to its ceiling, every

scrapbook filled to the limit of its binding with images.

Tired of words and reading, she tried collages, wanting

her name in an archive’s collection, and succeeded.

 

Mrs. Aurelia Plath was usually generous with the Sylvia Plath fans and mourners who came unannounced to her house on Elmwood Road, but one morning in September 1977 Aurelia could not stop to talk with a would-be visitor parking a motor home with a Michigan license plate. The stranger was a 47-year-old ex-nun, music teacher and divorcee trying to live by selling famous people's letters, and obsessed with Sylvia Plath. Terribly hurt that Aurelia didn't speak with her, she sent Aurelia a letter and, each having ulterior motives, they kept up an unctuous correspondence from 1978 to 1989: eleven years. Some of Aurelia's replies include useful biographical information. 

 

Mary Ann Montgomery early on begged Aurelia for "something of Sylvia's, even a letter or scrap" and for Aurelia to tell her something secret that Aurelia had never told anyone else. Aurelia declined. Montgomery sent Aurelia a poem comparing her own life to Sylvia's; she sent unwanted gifts such as flowers (once) and cassette tapes of her piano playing, refusing to take seriously Aurelia's statements that she didn't have time or energy or eyesight enough to correspond. Montgomery visited twice, once bringing a priest friend, once sick with a cold or flu that Aurelia caught.

 

Plath superfan Mary Ann Montgomery, Ph.D. (1931-2022) in the 1990s distinguished herself as a university teacher and donated her letters collection and more to the Lilly Library at Indiana University. Viewing her archive there moved me to write the poem "Claim to Fame," which takes poetic license, but the boxes of collages are real.

"Loyalty"

Young Aurelia Schober was Winthrop High School Class of 1924's salutatorian and at graduation had to give a speech. She chose the topic "loyalty" and her speech was what anyone there would have expected, in no way radical. Although "obedience" and "virtue" and "Woodrow Wilson" today would seem strange coming from an 18-year-old, the text is so boilerplate classic I got AI to write me a 21st-century graduation speech about loyalty for comparison.

"Loyalty," by Aurelia F. Schober, salutatorian, Class of 1924, printed in The Winthrop High School Echo 1924, pp. 30-31.

 

Loyalty

 

Aurelia: Loyalty is that quality which makes a man a friend and a worthy citizen, for loyalty is fidelity to our superiors, to duty, and to love. No man can be of any true value in this world unless he is loyal to God, to his fellow men, and to his own highest ideals. It is the one requisite demanded of every human being that he be loyal to the one great Master who made him. No real friendship can exist without loyalty on both sides. It is the duty of everyone to guard his friend’s interests as though they were his own. How far should this loyalty go? We all remember the answer of Christ when asked, “How often should I forgive my brother? Seven times?” Christ’s answer, “Until seventy times seven,” means, as we all know, that there should be no limit to one’s forgiveness.

 

AI: Today, as we stand on the threshold of a new chapter in our lives, I want to take a moment to reflect on a value that has been pivotal in shaping our journey together: loyalty. In a world that often prioritizes speed, convenience, and individual achievement, loyalty remains a steadfast anchor, reminding us of what is truly important. Loyalty is not merely a word; it is a commitment to those we care about, to our values, and to the principles that guide us. As we celebrate our accomplishments today, let us consider how loyalty has woven itself into the fabric of our experiences here.

 

Aurelia: In the same way there should be no limit to our loyalty to our friends. If we are loyal to the good and  noble characteristics of friendship, loyalty should be bounded only by our friend’s need and our power. As we demand that our friends “ring true” we should first be sure that we are giving them the one great gift of friendship—loyalty.

 

AI: To our families, thank you for your unwavering support and guidance. You have stood by us through our triumphs and challenges, reminding us that loyalty is not just about being present during good times, but also about being there when the road gets tough. Your belief in us has inspired us to push through adversity, to strive for excellence, and to remain steadfast in our goals. Today, we celebrate not only our achievements but also the unwavering loyalty you have shown us.

 

Aurelia: Conflicting loyalties in friendship often occur. Should we forsake our own sense of honor in order to be loyal to our friends? Lovelace expresses this thought in the oft-quoted couplet:

 

“I could not love thee, dear, so much

Loved I not honor more.”

 

AI: To our teachers, your dedication to our education has been a testament to the loyalty you hold for your profession and for your students. You have invested your time, energy, and passion into shaping our minds, nurturing our talents, and cultivating our character. Your loyalty to our growth has ignited a flame of curiosity within us, encouraging us to explore, to question, and to learn. As we leave this institution, we carry with us the lessons you have imparted, and we are grateful for the loyalty you have demonstrated to our futures.

 

Aurelia: In friendship we give our loyalty to those we love, but there is a loyalty that is demanded of us—loyalty to our superiors. This means we must obey those to whom obedience is due. If this were not an unbreakable rule, no army could endure for a day. The quicker and better we obey orders the more quickly and certainly shall we show ourselves fitted to give them when the time comes. The man or woman who cannot obey can never govern.

AI: As we navigate the complexities of adulthood, we will inevitably face choices that test our loyalty. In a rapidly changing world, it is essential to stay true to our commitments—to our loved ones, our friends, and our values. Loyalty requires courage; it requires us to stand by our principles even when the winds of change threaten to sway us. It asks us to remain faithful, not only to others but also to ourselves.

 

Aurelia: Loyalty means obeying orders in the spirit as well as in the letter. To be successful in life one must be loyal to one’s self. This loyalty is usually termed “self-respect.” Unless we have self-respect, we cannot hope to win the respect of others. Above all, we must be true to ourselves. 

 

AI: Let us remember that loyalty is a two-way street. It thrives on mutual respect, trust, and understanding. When we are loyal to others, we inspire loyalty in return. We foster relationships built on a foundation of integrity, and we create environments where collaboration and support flourish. In our personal lives and professional pursuits, let us always strive to be individuals who honor our commitments and uplift those around us.

 

Aurelia: There is not a better place to begin this loyalty than in school. There we meet the temptation, probably for the first time, to do a thing in a way that is easier although not quite so “square” as the right way. By overcoming those sometimes termed “insignificant” temptations, we become loyal to the unwritten law of “fair play” and it is the surest display of proper school spirit. Every temptation overcome strengthens the character and helps us to be victorious over even greater battles. Well has Shakespeare said, “To thine own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day, thou cans’t not then be false to any man.”

 

AI: As we embark on this new journey, I urge each of you to carry the spirit of loyalty with you. In a world that often feels fragmented, let us be the glue that binds. Let us cultivate loyalty in our friendships, our families, and our workplaces. Be the person who shows up, who listens, and who stands by others, for it is in these moments that we forge lasting connections that enrich our lives.

 

Aurelia: Loyalty when practiced in everyday life helps us to answer the call of a great cause during a great crisis—the call of loyalty to our country in time of war. Here is where small practiced loyalties in school and business help us to obey greater and more difficult orders. The habit of loyalty and obedience, when once fixed, may save thousands of lives or turn a defeat into a victory.

 

AI: Together, let us embrace the future with loyalty in our hearts and determination in our souls.

 

Aurelia: One of our greatest helps in learning to face duty rightly and to prevent conflicting loyalties is to review the lives of those who lived in the past, and thereby profit by their example. This is the value of true hero worship. Abraham Lincoln was true to God, true to his fellowmen, and true to himself. Loyalty was the secret of his success. Honesty and his name have become proverbs. Woodrow Wilson was loyal to his highest ideals, and, while he did not live to accomplish his end, he died working for his ideal. Surely the world must be getting better when future generations have such noble influences as may be gained by loyalty to the heroes of the past. A great man [Daniel Webster] has said, “If we work upon gold, it will perish; if upon brass, time will efface it; if we raise temples, they will crumble into dust. But if we work upon immortal minds—if we imbue them with high principles, with the just fear of God, with manhood and womanhood and the respect of it—we engrave on those tablets something which no time can efface, but which will grow brighter through all eternity.”

 

Aurelia: If loyalty has played and yet plays such an important part in all lives, may not loyalty be called the “summum bonum” or greatest thing in the world? Unswerving loyalty means courage; and courage is an essential of a high character. If you wish to be successful, you must be loyal. The upright man, the loyal man, fears not to meet and cope with whatever difficulties are in store for him.

 

AI: Together, let us embrace the future with loyalty in our hearts and determination in our souls.

 

Aurelia: Phillips Brooks [Boston-based Episcopal clergyman, 1835-1893, famous preacher] expressed this sentiment when he said, “Do not pray for easy lives! Pray to be stronger men! Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks! Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle but you shall be a miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself, at the richness of life which has come in you by the grace of God.”

 

AI: In conclusion, as we celebrate our graduation today, let us not only commemorate our accomplishments but also the lessons learned along the way. Loyalty will be our guide as we navigate this uncharted territory. May we always remain loyal to our dreams, our communities, and to each other. Thank you.

 

[Aurelia's speech was followed by a speech on “The importance of athletics.”]