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A Distressed Poet or Just Mentally Unstable?

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A Distressed Poet or Just Mentally Unstable? : Sylvia Plath Sylvia Plath was a very interesting woman she was born in Boston, Massachusetts who did have some personal problems she just couldn’t deal with in her everyday life. Sylvia Plath did end up taking her own life when she was only thirty at the time and she left behind an absolute artistic legacy. Plath’s life was intertwined into her poetry, ironically critics weren’t allowed to offer insights into her agony and her work. She was married to Ted Hughes, he became the poet laureate of England and he used copyright control over her works to refuse the biographers permission to quote his wife’s works when her point of view disagreed with his own. Plath was known to be neurotic and very moody that no man could put up with her, the reality isn’t that simple. Plath had a very long history of mental imbalance, three years prior to her actual suicide she previously attempted it by, “leaving a note saying that she had gone for a walk, Sylvia crawled under her house and swallowed a large number of sleeping pills.” (Hall 6). She committed her actual suicide during a horrible winter in England, she was left alone with her two young children while her husband was living with another woman, Assia Wevill. Wevill did give birth to a child with Hughes being the father, and oddly enough Assia killed herself in the same manner as Plath did. Except the difference is that Plath let her two young children live, Assia killed her only child

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