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Allyson Reed

Dr. Clark

ENGW 1111

11 October 2023

Sylvia Plath Profile Draft

Waves of electricity flow through her body while strapped down to the table. Sylvia Plath

began electric shock therapy in the fall of 1953 after coming home from a summer and being

recognized for her writing ability in New York City. Plath was a junior at Smith College in

Massachusetts when she was chosen to write a column in Mademoiselle magazine, sending her

to New York (UPenn, 2023). This was supposed to be the start of a flourishing career in writing,

and it did feel like that until she fell into a severe depressive episode. Instead of her career

beginning, her spiral to her untimely death began. Plath endured multiple suicide attempts, her

first taking place immediately after she came home from her summer in New York, beginning

her dissent. Soon after this attempt, her mother got her in touch with psychiatrist Dr. Kenneth

Tillotson, who prescribed talk therapy, and eventually, electric shock therapy (Wilson, 2013).

Plath suffered from an undiagnosed major depressive disorder for most of her life and

never considered herself to be truly happy. Mourning the loss of her father at the age of 8

solidified her melancholy aura that spilled into her writing. Along with this, female writers were

not exactly as popular as their male counterparts, especially when writing about their most deep

emotions. When many think of Sylvia Plath, they picture a depressed and tragic artist, but all she

wanted was to be a good mother, wife, and writer (Magazine, 2003).

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Sylvia Plath was born to Aurelia and Otto Plath on October 27, 1932, in Boston,

Massachusetts (Wilson, 2013). As stated before, her writing career began soon after her father’s

death when she was eight years old. In an interview with Peter Orr for Britain Council in 1962,

Plath stated, “I wrote my first poem, my first published poem when I was eight-and-a-half years

old. It came out in the Boston Traveller and from then on, I suppose, I’ve been a bit of a

professional.” (Plath, 1962). Early on, Sylvia Plath did not necessarily write about what she is

known for, instead capturing the innocence of childhood in her poems, usually about nature.

However, this changed as fell more into a depression when she continued to age, making her

poems about feeling somber, melancholy, and an overall numbness.

The 1950s were a harsh time for women’s mental health. Overall, there is a preconceived

idea of women being the “desperate housewife”, but many do not look further into that. The only

purpose for a woman at that time was to be a wife and mother who took care of the home and

children. Even though this was expected, it was not respected by society. Since there were so

many women unhappy with their lives, a flux of psychiatric drug prescriptions started. This led

to the notion that housewives were in a Valium daze or just needed a weekend at the inpatient

psychiatric hospital to get rejuvenated. Nobody wanted to be known to have a mental illness in

the 1950s and this created a long-lasting stigma surrounding the mental health of women,

especially mothers or wives (Gershon).

As Plath’s writing grew into what she is mainly known for, experiencing deep emotional

states, the writing community also began to change. When speaking about the themes she

focuses on in her writing in the same Britain Council interview, Plath said, “I've been very

excited by what I feel is the new breakthrough that came with, say, Robert Lowell's Life Studies,

this intense breakthrough into a very serious, very personal, emotional experience which I feel
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has been partly taboo.” (Plath, 1962). She drew much inspiration from writer Robert Lowell,

who helped begin a new and emotional way of writing. Writing about deep feelings was already

considered taboo in society, especially in America, but writing about similar themes while a

young woman struck her even more of a challenge (Popova, 2013). Plath’s started to gain

popularity right before the first wave of the feminist movement began.

Undated photograph with the title, Sylvia Plath, taken by Everett. (Bausells).

Today, living in a post-COVID-19 world, mental health is much less stigmatized and

there is a lot more acceptance of those struggling with mental health disorders. Although women

are more likely to face a mental health stigma compared to men, the “desperate housewife” who

is depressed about her boring life is not the case anymore (Mass General Brigham). Society does

not look at women with as much of a lack of respect, still not perfect, but this means that the
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overprescribing of psychotropic medications has lessened, and women’s symptoms do not get

written off as much.

Although Plath had begun getting her work published at such a young age, she faced

difficulty as her writing evolved and she aged. Her poetry career grew soon before the first

feminist movement, so her themes involving depression and sometimes even suicidal ideation

were wildly taboo. On top of the hardships, she had to face as a woman trying to publish

emotional works, she was battling a major depressive episode that lasted from her junior year of

college until her death. While writing, Sylvia Plath was undergoing extreme psychiatric

assistance, ranging from talk therapy to electric shock therapy (Crawford, 2017). In Plath’s most

known work, her novel The Bell Jar, she writes a semi-autobiographical account of her time in

New York City and shortly after. Like Plath, the main character in The Bell Jar attempts to

commit suicide after her stay in New York. Plath originally published this novel under the

pseudonym Victoria Lucas. The Bell Jar was published just one month before she committed

suicide by putting her head in an oven.

Sylvia Plath has become one of the most notable writers in American history, shedding

light on the difficult topics of mental illness. Although many saw her as a hysterical woman who

just wrote about her emotions, Plath’s life became much more. Sylvia Plath’s writings from the

late 1950s and early 1960s have inspired women like Lana Del Rey and Lady Gaga in the 21st

century. Without her lasting impression, many musicians, writers, and artists would not be the

same. As she is still seen as a pioneer in the feminist movement, her legacy of embracing

femininity, writing about raw emotions, and pining for choice in the world lives on.
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Works Cited

Bausells, Marta. “Typewriters and Their Owners: Famous Authors at Work – in Pictures.” The

Guardian, 5 Nov. 2014,

www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/gallery/2014/nov/05/typewriters-and-their-

owners-famous-authors-at-work-in-pictures. Accessed 15 Oct. 2023.

Crawford, Anwen. “The Letters of Sylvia Plath and the Transformation of a Poet’s Voice.” The

New Yorker, 2017, www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-letters-of-sylvia-plath-

and-the-transformation-of-a-poets-voice.

Gershon, Livia. “What Really Made 1950s Housewives so Miserable | JSTOR Daily.” JSTOR

Daily, 8 June 2017, daily.jstor.org/what-really-made-1950s-housewives-so-miserable/.

Magazine, Smithsonian. “Seeing Sylvia Plath.” Smithsonian Magazine, Nov. 2003,

www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/seeing-sylvia-plath-92570073/. Accessed 6 Oct.

2023.

Mass General Brigham. “Why We Need to Pay Attention to Women’s Mental Health | McLean

Hospital.” Www.mcleanhospital.org, 2021, www.mcleanhospital.org/essential/why-we-

need-pay-attention-womens-mental-health#:~:text=Even%20though%20it%20is%20true.

Accessed 27 Oct. 2023.

Plath, Sylvia. “British Council.” Spotify.com, interview by Peter Orr, 1962.

Popova, Maria. “Poets in Partnership: Rare 1961 BBC Interview with Sylvia Plath and Ted

Hughes on Literature and Love.” The Marginalian, 16 July 2013,

www.themarginalian.org/2013/07/16/sylvia-plath-ted-hughes-bbc-interview-1961/.
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UPenn. “Sylvia Plath Biological Profile.” Upenn.edu, 2023,

www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88v/plathbio.html. Accessed 24 Oct. 2023.

Wilson, Andrew. “Sylvia Plath in New York: ‘Pain, Parties and Work.’” The Observer, 2 Feb.

2013, www.theguardian.com/books/2013/feb/02/sylvia-plath-young-new-york-andrew-

wilson.