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July 09, 2024 12:16 am IST
Book review: ‘Loving Sylvia Plath’ sheds light on author’s circumstances more than her work
A popular form of writing today is that which reexamines the lives of people, often members of marginalized groups, who have been suppressed or wronged by history.
Many writers are asking how society’s assumptions or prejudices have influenced how a person is remembered, and what information do we have available that might tell a more complete story?
These are the questions Stockton University associate professor Emily Van Duyne asks in “Loving Sylvia Plath: A Reclamation.”
After Plath’s suicide, her husband and fellow writer Ted Hughes concocted a story that he was the “stabilising factor” in his wife’s life, but in the end, even he could not save her. But Van Duyne rejects any notion that Plath was a bad mother or simply a morbid poet. She says Plath should be remembered as a complex woman, a formidable writer – even better than Hughes – and almost certainly the victim of domestic abuse.
This book is not, for the most part, an interpretive study or an in-depth study of Plath’s writing. Rather, Van Duyne’s source material for this reclaimed portrayal of Plath is her circumstances.
Van Duyne attempts to overturn the narrative Hughes wrote about Plath’s life and what drove her to suicide. In the wake of #MeToo and cultural conversations about women of faith, Van Duyne argues that Plath’s story should be given a new look.
Those seeking an introductory text or a comprehensive biography for reading Plath should look elsewhere to the abundance of literature that exists on this mysterious literary giant. But “Loving Sylvia Plath: A Reclamation” should be viewed as supplemental material for those who want to better understand the circumstances surrounding her final years.
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