When one is a fan of Plath (1932-1963), one feels one has to issue a disclaimer that it isn't the sensationalized, soap opera of her life that appeals and compells, but rather the sheer force of her talent that attracts. I think there is no technical virtuouso like Plath in poetry, no one with her emotional compass and her intuitive impact. The woman was a stunningly brilliant poet (and her novel The Bell Jar is a fabulous evil twin Skippy to Bridget Jones).
I have just finished reading the 670-some pages of her unabridged journals, published in the United States in 2000 for the first time. I had read her abridged journals during college, and I remember nothing like the impact that comes here. And now that I am done, I feel kind of grieved in a new way for the loss of her, a fresh hurt.
The book is divided into sections based on her notebooks or journals that include Plath's adult journals from 1950 to 1962, and is an exact transcription of her writing, including errors and notes on edits she made or that her husband, the late British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes may have made, in the original manuscripts. The unabridged version comprises sections from the following years: July 1950 to July 1953; November 1955 to April 1956; July 1956; July 1956 to August 1956; January 1957 to March 1957; July 1957 to August 1957; August 1957 to October 1958; and December 1958 to November 1959. The 15 appendices contain journal fragments and entries starting from October 1951 to 1962. And the phases of her life included are some of her years as an undergraduate at Smith, her time at Newnham College, Cambridge, as a Fulbright Scholar, her honeymoon in Spain with Ted Hughes, her married life with Hughes in Cambridge, her life with Hughes as university instructors in Massachusetts, her life with Hughes as freelance writers in Massachusetts, and some of the appendices include journal entries made when they lived in England before their marriage ended. Shortly before he died, Hughes unsealed two of her journals, which are published here for the first time, that contain her notes on her therapy in Massachusetts shortly before they moved to England. (Two journals from the end of their marriage and written at the end of her life are not included. One, according to Hughes has been missing since Plath's death, the other he destroyed after her death to spare their two children, Frieda and Nicholas Hughes.)
I think it's important to note what is missing here before I write about what is included. Those looking for "G" on her college-age suicide attempt won't find it. While some of Plath's dark mood shortly before her attempt in August 1953 is recorded, nothing specifically about that event was written, and Plath didn't keep a journal for up to two years after that. The missing and destroyed journals mentioned above were written during the time of the discovery of Hughes's affair, the end of their marriage and the months she lived in London shortly before her suicide there in February 1963. The one Hughes destroyed contained entries up to three days before her suicide.
And what is missing isn't missed, I think. What you get instead of the sensationalism and scandal are the real workings and pressures of the ambitious, 1950s coming-of-age, conflicted, smart, needy woman that Plath was. Her ambitions are tremendous, and the pressures on her internally and externally match them. Her mother's pressure to find a secure job conflicts with Plath's need to be free of such constraints to really try to write. But when she has the time, she is scared of writing because she fears failure. And so on.
Aside from seeing how she works, processes ideas, plans stories, copes with challenges and rejoices over triumps, Plath is interesting for the time in which she came of age in the 1950s -- a spectacularly Smith-and-Cambridge educated young woman who knows that a role is wife and mother is dictated to her. Her marriage means an immeasurable amount to her -- she recounts how lucky she feels that she could meet someone she admires so much as Ted and marry him. And she wants him to succeed first; she thinks it will be easier at home if he does, but one can see the tension that causes her, as she so deeply wants to succeed as well. "Dangerous to be so close to Ted day in day out. I have no life separate from his, am likely to become a mere accessory. Important to take German lessons, go out on my own, think work on my own. Lead separate lives. I must have a life that supports me inside" (p. 524).
There is a constant theme in the later journals, curiously, of her writing that she needs to learn German. She is constantly instructing herself to study German. Learn German. Read German. It's bizarre to the reader of the journals who cannot connect that with her overarching goals of being a prize-winning, published successful writer of both poetry and prose. But she constantly reminds herself of what she has yet not succeeded at and what she must do to meet her goals. (And her father spoke German and died when she was 8, and one cannot deny that obvious connection.)
The chronological sections each have their own definite characters, as Plath becomes more independent and more skilled. One that really stands out with what I term Plath's "psychotic verve" is the December 1958 to November 1959 journals that she wrote as a means of working through her therapy sessions and making the most of them. The first entry is the reaction to her therapist telling her, "I give you permission to hate your mother." One can see the roots of some of her later, famous poems in these paragraphs as she slogs through the family sacred things and norms, challenges them and tests her own strength against those mores. An interesting journal entry from this time includes the day on which she was FINALLY finished teaching at Smith and could be free to write creatively nearly full-time, and cannot find Ted, who was supposed to meet her. At last she saw him, walking up from a pond with a young, flirty Smith student. She was furious. What is fascinating about the entry is how she takes the time to completely set up the situation, writing about the whole day with purposeful foreshadowing incidents, building up the suspense of the moment so that the reader may experience her disappointment, suspicion and anger, too.
The final section, Appendix 15, includes character sketches of her neighbors in North Tawton, Devon, England, and recounts her and Ted's and the children's lives as far as they come in contact with the people with whom she interacts there. The section includes a detailed description of the birth of her son, Nicholas, and the story of the death of one of her neighbors. As the last entry, it is poignant.
And to spend this much intimate time with Plath, and then to get to the end, see that the marriage broke up shortly after the last entry, and that she was dead not long after that is a new, and painful experience, because one gets to know her in a real, time-consuming way through these pages. It seems even more of a regret.
