Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark, 2020
After reading The Bell Jar, I wanted to know more about Plath. With her wry humor and vivid writing, Plath was someone I had known about but never read before.
She was expected to be a wife and mom, and nothing more, despite her talent for poetry.
Her struggle with the norm is evident in The Bell Jar and throughout her life at Smith College then at Cambridge on a Fulbright Scholarship and finally posthumously.
As Clark points out, many brilliant writers and artists have intense emotions and thoughts of suicide, but that is what Plath is known for desite her immense talent.
A recognized and published poet while at Smith, Plath decides against marriage after college to pursue her craft at Newnham College at Cambridge University, where she meet Ted Hughes.
Wtth her American spirite and drive, she pushes Ted and types up his poems to submit them for publication. Withouth Plath's support, Hughes would have settled for a life as a laborer.
Plath and Hughes have a happy and creative marriage. They both enjoy creative success although Plath's letters show that space is also needed for her to work on her writing. They had a daughter and despite Plath's insistent of not choosing between motherhood and a career, she insisted on both, a rare occurance at the time.
Desipte Hughes agreeing to care for their daughter in the mornings (unheard of back then) so that Plath could write, Plath still finds motherhood consuming. She writes The Bell Jar and another novel (which she eventually destroyed), but will find that when she has two children, she can only manage poems, which are shorter to write.
With the stress of the children and constant worrying about money (the Hughes would benefit from the generous checks from Plath's mother Aurelia and benefactor she was introduced to through Smith Olive Prouty), Plath and Hughes's marriage would fall apart.
Hughes would have an affair with a married friend of the couple. Affairs were common at the time and Plath's friends encouraged her to wait out the affair as he was sure to come back to her. However, Hughes had betrayed Plath's trust and she did no longer wanted to be married to him. Although extremely rare in the 1960s, Plath requested a divorce.
Plath would go on to kill herself at 31. A history of depression ran on her father's side of the family, something the family only realized in retrospect since depression and mental illnesses were not hidden and not spoken about. Her son would also commit suicide.
A fascinating and deeply researched and rich biography, Red Comet was a Finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.
