The Death and Life of Sylvia Plath [Paperback]

Ronald Hayman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 24, 2003

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".

Editorial Reviews

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.

About the Author

Ronald Hayman has worked in the theatre as an actor and director. His books include biographies of Nietzsche, Kafka, Brecht, Sartre and Proust. He writes for the Independent and the Guardian, broadcasts regularly and writes the Radio 3 comedy series Such Rotten Luck. He lives in London.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: The History Press (July 24, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0750934220
• ISBN-13: 978-0750934220
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,383,146 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #39 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( P ) > Plath, Sylvia

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Suicide as Life, October 20, 2001

By 

stephen liem (antioch, ca United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

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.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Analysis, October 9, 2002

By 

Vanessa Alexandra (Maryland, USA) - See all my reviews

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:

3.0 out of 5 stars Thesis about Sylvia Plath, February 23, 2011

By 

Emilie - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Death and Life of Sylvia Plath (Paperback)

I liked how the book begins with the days before her suicide and then rolls into her life. It mirrors the title of "The Death and Life of Sylvia Plath". Her fame skyrocketed after her suicide, but there were so many events of her life that deserve attention.
The writing style is stifled, no real emotion, and gives the impression of being the author's doctoral thesis (I do not know if this is the case at all). It follows a very formulaic style to the point where as a reader, I was able to predict what he was going to say next.
It was a very good book nevertheless and I do recommend it.