- Paperback: 224 pages
- Publisher: The History Press; New edition edition (July 24 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0750934220
- ISBN-13: 978-0750934220
- Product Dimensions: 19.3 x 12.7 x 2.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 181 g
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
#1,388,289 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #34 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( P ) > Plath, Sylvia
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Kirkus Reviews
Among the best Plath psychocritical investigations, by the author of Proust (1990), Brecht (1985), Kafka (1981), Nietzsche (1980), etc. Not a full-bodied life of Plath, Hayman's is a psychological weighing of the nature of the poet's suicide and its prefiguring in her works, deeds, letters, and so on. As ever, Ted Hughes, Plath's husband and now poet laureate of England, has nothing to do with the project; indeed, Hayman takes Hughes and his sister Olwyn to task for vetting earlier biographies by withholding permission to quote Plath unless Hughes or Olwyn had cut the more painful passages. (Hughes also destroyed Plath's last journal, saying he did not want their children to have to face such an upsetting work.) Plath, Hayman shows, sought her disciplinarian father's love; when he died when she was eight, she fell into a symbiotic tie with her mother Aurelia, a martyr to her children's welfare. Aurelia never told Sylvia that clinical depression ran among the women in Otto Plath's side of the family. Sylvia became a poet in part to shine in her mother's eye, grew into an academic workhorse, sold her first stories in her teens, became overloaded and failed her first pill-death effort at 20 (she took too many). That act, though, wrote the end of symbiosis with Aurelia. Sylvia transferred her superego to her psychiatrist; left America and married Hughes, with the commanding Hughes replacing father, mother, and doctor. When Hughes began seeing other women and finally separated to live with Assia Wevill, Sylvia--burdened with two children, drugged, depressed, schizophrenic, gushing razor-edged new poems in the midst of London's worst winter in a century--gassed herself. Four years later, so did Assia, killing her child--by Hughes--as well. Hayman brings new riches to Plath's story, stitching in imagery from the poems while showing that the poems of the last phase have to be read as far more intensely confessional than all that came before. (Eight pages of photographs--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Book Description
Not a conventional biograpy, this book offers an explanation of Sylvia Plath's death in 1963. The author looks back on Plath's life in an attempt to offer an objective account of why she killed herself. It discusses her life with her husband Ted Hughes, who had control of all her copyright works, as she killed herself without making a will. This edition brings the story full circle, as it includes the publication of "Birthday Letters", the death of Ted Hughes and Elaine Feinstein's biography of him, along with Erica Wagner's book "Ariel's Gift", the Al Alvarez autobiography which includes new material and Lucas Meyers's new book "Crow Steered Bergs Appeared".
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3.7 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Suicide as Life, Oct 20 2001
By stephen liem - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Death and Life of Sylvia Plath (Hardcover)
The main problem of writing a biography of Sylvia Plath is the roadblocks that are constantly being thrown out by her husband's controlling estates. Unlike other biographers, Hayman has managed to be honest and critical about who Plath is, and how she was treated by people around her, including her husband and his mistress. Hayman addresses critically and honestly Plath's husband controlling nature. He controlled her life when she was alive, but worse still he controlled her totally after she died. There are many crucial works and correspondences of Plath that were destroyed, or mysteriously disappeared (presumable by her husband). Hayman argues that these materials are extremely valuable to understand more Plath's life as suicide.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Analysis, Oct 9 2002
By Vanessa Alexandra - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Death and Life of Sylvia Plath (Hardcover)
Ronald Hayman provides excellent insight into Sylvia Plath's life, effectively using much analysis of her poetry to tell her biography.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
A taut biography, Mar 25 2012
By Carl Rollyson - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Death and Life of Sylvia Plath (Paperback)
Hayman is part of the first wave of Plath biographies. He is hard on Ted Hughes but with justification. Rather than presenting a full dress version of Plath's life, Haymen chooses to focus, as his title suggests, on her suicide and why she took her life. Much new material has come to light
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