Sylvia Plath: Excellent Writer, Depressed Woman

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Sylvia Plath was an excellent writer who had a dark side. She had a large collection of poems and some books. Her most famous work, Ariel was published after her death. Another famous book was The Bell Jar. Sylvia Plath’s writings showed her despair and her struggle with mental illness. Sylvia used her writings as a way to let the world know how she felt, since she had a confident appearance. She felt that writing was a way to express her innermost feelings about everything ranging from her father’s death to her suicide attempt.

Sylvia Plath was born on October 27, 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts. Her father died when she was a child. She published her first poem when she was eight years old. Sylvia was a very intelligent person; she had the best grades and won all the awards. “She entered and won many literary contests and while in high school sold her first poem to Seventeen magazine. She entered Smith College on a scholarship in 1951 and was a cowinner if the Mademoiselle Magazine fiction contest in 1952. Despite her remarkable artistic, academic, and social success at Smith, Plath suffered from severe depression and underwent a period of psychiatric hospitalization. She graduated from Smith with highest honors in 1955 and went on to Newnham College, Cambridge, in England, on a Fulbright fellowship” (“Sylvia Plath”). Silvia was sent to a mental hospital after her breakdown. She had electroshock treatment and was later released. She had outpatient electroconvulsive shock treatments. In August of 1953 she tried to commit suicide in her cellar by taking sleeping pills. Sylvia had to go back to the hospital and spent four months


there. Then she went back to Smith College and graduated summa cum laude and got an M. A.

Sylvia married Ted Hughes, an English poet. They lived in Cambridge until 1957, when they moved to Boston. Sylvia became a professor at Smith College. In 1959 Sylvia and her hus...