Customer Reviews

Lover of Unreason: Assia Wevill, Sylvia Plath's Rival and Ted Hughes' Doomed Love

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I find "A lover of unreason: The life and tragic death of Assia Wevill, Ted Hughes' doomed love" completely irresistible and very well researched and written. Those of us lucky enough to be at the Plath Symposium in 2002 at Indiana were teased with some of the information presented in the biography. Shock and awe spread throughout the auditorium when Koren and Negev spoke about the Plath/Hughes trip to Ireland, the deception, and the Hughes/Wevill trip to Spain. That was barely the tip of the iceberg in this very complicated situation.

The success of A Lover of Unreason in my opinion comes from presenting a very full and human picture of Assia; a woman who has been alternately ignored and raked over coals and not given sufficient attention. Here is a woman who was far, far from perfect and revered only for her uncommon and undeniable beauty, presented in a way that reminded me much of how Plath was presented in Bitter Fame. I was not expecting a book of idolatry, but I also was not expecting to find that Wevill did have some redeemable qualities. This is truly an enlightening read and brings an important piece of the Plath/Hughes puzzle closer to completion.

Assia's journals, according to the text, are in private hands. They shed some very crucial information into not just her own mind and life, but also into Plath's and Hughes?. I would not mind being introduced to those private hands! I wonder if there are any plans to publish them or to deposit them with an archive?

Finally, the story of Assia Gutmann Wevill is told, and what a story it is. The life of the "other woman" in the mythic marriage of poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes seems eerily like the life of Plath herself. Even the excerpts from Wevill's journals sound -- in tone, style, and content -- like they could have been ripped from Plath's own journals.

I have studied Plath's life and work for a long time, so I am always interested in any new material that is brought to light. The authors have done a fine job with this book. I have read their previous book, "In Our Hearts We Were Giants," which was well-researched and interesting, but I believe their book about Assia Wevill is more well-written; I could barely put it down.

And I have to admit -- after reading Diane Middlebrook's excellent biography of Ted Hughes, "Her Husband," I gained quite a bit of understanding and sympathy for Mr. Hughes. The biography of Assia Wevill, however, negated all of that. I will be interested to reread "Her Husband," and see if I regain any of that feeling.

And now they are all gone, all of these unbelievably intense, brilliant people, so heavily laden with self, self, self. It's likely we'll never know the truth about how everything went down. And down and down, until everybody was dead.

The saddest thing of all is the murder of Shura Wevill, four years old and innocent of everything.

I am almost completely uninterested in the somewhat tortured lives and art of the poets, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, and I admit I initially picked up LOVER OF UNREASON for its startlingly beautiful cover photograph of Assia Wevill, with an outsider's curiosity about the whole affair, of which I only knew some passing facts.

This is a biography of a woman who was made up of contradictions. Shallow and selfish, yet very attractive to men and very charming; clever; a talented linguist, and later a translator of note, with artistic talent too--but all without the necessary concentration and application to create a lasting body of work. Assia was beautiful and socially skilled, yet deeply insecure and disliked people taking notice of her lovely face; this, despite a childhood with loving parents who thought the world of her and surrounded her with admiration; too much, perhaps.

The times in which Assia Wevill lived demanded that a woman marry the man she was sleeping with, so Wevill was married three times (quite shocking for her era) and apparently had numerous abortions. The thing that struck me about her story is the fact that she was unable to form lasting relationships with any of her husbands, not really due to any serious fault of theirs, but seemingly because while in a relationship which had the potential to be a good, loving and lasting one, Assia always kept her eyes open, seeking someone or something else. Assia seems to have had no concept of true fidelity, not only of the body, but of the heart. It was disturbing to read about so much wasted time; the choices that caused so much hurt, both to herself and to others, and the waste of her potential.

However much pain Assia caused her husbands during the periods of time she spent with them, she was repaid in kind and in full by her relationship with Ted Hughes. The suicide of Sylvia Plath caused a huge wrent in their already fragile affair, although in one respect it bonded them, since Assia provided care to Ted's children immediately after the loss of Sylvia. But after the initial shock, neither one seemed prepared to let the other go, and years of a toxic and uneven relationship continued; Assia being particularly unwilling or unable to leave the truly unhealthy relationship. After Assia gave birth to their daughter (a choice she made, not supported by Hughes), they formed some stability in their relationship by living as a family in Ireland, but the needs of Hughes' infirm parents and their strong disapproval of his relationship with Assia was another nail in the coffin of their relationship. And their relationship really was, most unfortunately, a coffin. Also, by this time, Assia was getting older. Her ever-increasing insecurities about her looks; about aging, and her earning potential, combined with the maddening indecision over whether to put a period on their relationship that was Ted Hughes' biggest fault, left her convinced there was no other way out but suicide.

I felt a great deal of pity for Assia toward the end, and pity that she chose suicide, yet somehow, after reading the full story of her life, I understood why she did it and why she took her little daughter with her. Yes, that particular choice seems brutal and heartless, and yet, on the other hand, totally understandable, she didn't want to leave her Shura to a father who never really acknowledged her or supported her, or leave her to an aunt who lived a world away, who Shura had never met. (Yet on the other hand, Assia's sister might have been a stablizing influence for the little girl. It's impossible to know.) Shura was perhaps the one person who had all of Assia's love, without conditions, and in a twisted way, she had Shura's welfare in mind when she took her life.

Just a tragic, tragic story and a tragic life. The book is very well written and the claustrophobic downward spiral of Assia's life is explored fully and painfully by the authors. As you read her life story her eventual suicide becomes, at least to me, inevitable, despite Hughes' later assertion that it was avoidable. She had no inward resources, no core of strength and stability. She lacked confidence, having never learned to follow through on opportunities given to her throughout her life. She was a ship without a rudder or a compass, doomed to crash on the rocks. At least, that's how I felt after reading this biography.

Not only is this book the story of Assia and Ted Hughes, it also takes the reader on a wonderful trip back in time to pre-Hitler Germany. I love biographies which tell not only the life of the main character but begin with the subject's "beginning", including parents and grandparents and the world they faced during their lives. This approach reveals the forces and influences which formed the main character; in this case, Assia. This is a tragic story - a story which breaks your heart by the time you turn the final pages. The writing is intelligent and informative without being pedantic and carries the reader along as though you are there on the journey with Assia. Never gets bogged down with theory or analysis - just unfolds as it happens to a beautiful, sad, bright woman with fatal flaws.

This deeply researched book goes into detail after detail about Ted Hughes's relationship with two talented women living in an age about to burst with freedom for women. Although the Suffragette Movement had power, giving women the vote in decades before Sylvia & Assia were born, they were still (as the authors point out) stuck in a mind-set that "without a man, a woman is nothing." Romance to this day plays a huge part in people's lives, men & women, gay or straight. People do continue to commit suicide over failed love, especially teenagers. But this book goes into detail about how Assia's personality & life experiences led up to her suicide & the killing of her little daughter. Her father was a natural story teller & he adored her. Her looks slayed men, she could snap her fingers & they'd all lie down for her but she had--according to people who knew her--a strange lack of awareness of her own intense beauty. She had a gift with words, used this gift in her work as a translator (a job I wished for when I was a teenager) and an ad writer (a job my sister & I both thought would be fun--we were teens in the 60s, when Assia was writing ads). The description of one ad she wrote---based on the 007 movies & The Odyssey was delightful. There were so many little scenarios like this in the book, it made me want to read it straight through in one sitting. People who saw Ted Hughes at Assia & Shura's memorial service say he was weeping. Why was he so unable to be kind to women who adored him & put their projects/lives on hold for him? Assia easily kept other men in the palm of her hand. Her Russian soul identified with the tale of Anna Karenina. It must've been a shock to realize she couldn't keep Ted Hughes hypnotized. She clearly had come to a fearful place--a child out of wedlock back when that simply "wasn't done," lost her job, apart from her doting father, Hughes prevaricating as to whether he'd buy a house with her or not, trying to keep his relationship with her secret, him not admitting Shura was his daughter. Above all, the looming ghost of Sylvia Plath--perfect housefrau, good mother, genius of a writer. All that crept up on Assia as she faced the loss of her Cleopatric beauty. In the many photographs this book offers, she looked gloriously beautiful to me. There are women who continue to be beauties up into their 80s/90s. If only--if only--if only Sylvia & Assia had close friends who could reassure them that yes, beauty changes over the years or you can survive without a man. I wonder why Hughes didn't honor Assia's last wish to be buried in the simple countryside. The authors offer a possible reason. Why was Hughes such a predator? Perhaps the way he grew up, having to hunt to put food on the table, one of the few young men in a WWI descimated Yorkshire, resulted in a loner who had to shake women off him like a Retriever shaking off lake water? This book clearly explains how the tragic end of Assia's life was woven, beginning with the tapestry she mailed to Sylvia at the beginning of her affair with Ted. It is a must read for anyone interested in the strangely woven lives of Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes and Assia Gutman Weevil.

This is the first, full length treatment of the "other" woman in the Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes triangle. The authors present Assia Gutmann Wevill by availing themselves of documents, letters, journals and interviews, to present a complex portrait of this most unique woman.

In relevant ways, her story is part of the story of the Jewish experience of the 20th century. Assia was not able to fit into Jewish Palestine, and found it equally difficult to find a home in Canada and England. Even though she spent most of her life in England, she was never fully English. Zionism failed her, and with nothing to replace its failed promise, a crisis of identity appears to have set her life on a course of failed marriages and still born ventures.

But what amazes most in reading this biography is that Gutmann-Wevill never became an artist of any merit. One of the more enlightening elements of this book are her insightful and penetrating diary entries, quoted throughout. She had keen and relevant observations about her contemporaries, including two literary giants, Hughes and Plath. In her writing one can sense a voice of great clarity and vision expressing life with precision and accuracy. She never translated this into sustained, artistic endeavors. It seems her failure was self-realized. She wrote: "I was endowed with too many minor qualities, but neither the will or the huge intelligence to bring them a life of their own." She is being unkind to herself here. As this memoir makes very clear, it is apparent that her will was more impaired than her creativity or intelligence.

I found Assia Wevill a spellbinding, quite moving figure and couldn't stop reading. And between her and Sylvia I grasped much more about women than I ever knew before. This book enriched me. I commend it to all readers, though it's much less about poetry than about why and how people -- especially two unique poets -- love and act. Assia becomes a green-eyed flame on the page. You wish you'd known her, though she'd be a tough friend to console through her choppy rhapsodies with Ted and miseries with Sylvia's ghost stuck to her. The authors are clear-eyed about Ted as well with his self-inflicted dooms and wavering recoveries.

I admit to being fascinated with the lives and works of poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, so when this book was published I wanted to read it. There is much tragedy in this story: a woman who was brilliant in her own right and accomplished but who seemed drawn to a man that consumed her. Wevill's affair with Hughes was a major contribution to his separation from Plath, whose tragic suicide and memory cast its own long shadow over the relationship of Hughes and Wevill. In her own cry of desperation, and seeming mimicry of Plath's own fate, Wevill took her own life and that of the illegitimate daughter, Shura, she had with Hughes.

I am glad for Wevill that her voice has come to life in this book but it is tragic to read of another brilliant woman who has been drawn to a powerful man like Hughes and has been squelched by him. Clearly, despite his own brilliance, he could not commit as a partner to any woman and his own life and work was always shadowed by the ghost of his first wife. One realizes, too, that no one was to blame for these misfortunes--that the women in his life could have risen above the dysfunction of their relationships to strive for their own personal stability. Perhaps in another time, or with the right combination of therapies and today's pharmaceuticals, they could have done so. Hughes is not the villain in this story but an enabler to the demise of these women who were clearly not strong enough to carry on without him. There is cruelty, yes, but there is also the miasma of intricate relationships between complicated personalities. I came away from this book feeling sorry for them all. It is also a cautionary tale of how when we play with fire, we get burned. And "the other woman" will always be just that.

One has to admire Wevill for having her child on her own in the early 1960s, a time when women of her background would rarely have made that choice. It is also easy to be angry with Wevill for moving in on a marriage and ultimately forsaking her own pride of self for a man who clearly was not capable of providing security and sustenance. I was also angry at her for killing her child in an act of desperation and ultimate selfishness. It is clear that Hughes, Plath and Wevill were in a toxic triangle of ego, mental illness, and insecurities that doomed them all. Hughes had to live with these three tragedies--of his wife's suicide, his lover's suicide, and the murder of his youngest child--for the rest of his own life. It is clear to see his own part in these tragedies but despite that, this book provides a better understanding of his own torment and how the blackness of his life shaped his own brilliant poetry.

This was a great book from the prespective based on the woman who caused the demise of Ted and Sylvia's marriage (in my opinion). There were many parts of the book where I found myself asking "what the heck is she thinking" or better yet screaming AT HER "what the heck is wrong with you" in various parts of the book. Not only did I find this book intriquing but by the end of it I was exhausted mentally from all the drama of her life. I would never put myself through reading this book again but I would definitely recommend it to anyone who is fascinated by the whole Ted, Sylvia, Assia triangle. It definitely sheds light on who she was but it also paints her in a negative light as someone so desperate for attention, yet seductively innocent at the same time. I took away from the reading a feeling of sympathy for her based on the choices she made, bad and good and the lives that she ruined because of her insecurity and loneliness.

Sylvia Plath's poetry tore off the top of my head when I first read her writing in the late 1960s. I sensed that something deeper than a run-of-the-mill depression caused her to turn on the gas and stick her head in an oven. What a pity that her young life flickered out as her work began to ride the crest of international fame! Whatever, I wondered, drove her to kill herself?

Now I know. Koren and Negev's clear, detailed biography of Assia Wevill traces how Assia's love of poet Ted Hughes (Sylvia's husband) destroyed both their marriages and, finally, Assia herself in what looks like a copy-cat suicide.

This biography, with its love tensions, provides many of a novel's pleasures. In a way Assia reminds me of Anna Karenina although Assia's tale of love and adultery isn't played out against a backdrop of Moscow's high society; her tale is set in the rarified world of poets and poetry in England and Ireland. Instead of Tolstoy's late 19th century Russian society, we see a 20th century world of letters as we read scraps of poetry and bits of letters and notes that provide insight into the chaotic character of the extraordinarily beautiful Assia.

My favorite detail: Assia, who chose to move into Ted and Sylvia's home after Sylvia's death, slept night after night in Sylvia's bed. How strange it that?

Lover of Unreason is a good read for itself alone, but a particularly good read for a writer who likes to snoop in other writers' lives.

Marilyn Coffey is an award-winning writer of poetry and a widely published author of prose. Read her work at Amazon.com: GREAT PLAINS PATCHWORK, MARCELLA, or KANSAS QUARTERLY Vol. 15 No. 2.