On the Life-and-Death Cycles at the Heart of Sylvia Plath’s Work

In 1971, eight years after Sylvia Plath passed away, a disagreement arose between her husband Ted Hughes and poet and critic Al Alvarez. Alvarez, who was a friend of Plath, published a book suggesting that Plath did not intend to die by suicide, but rather it was a desperate cry for help that ultimately failed. In response, Hughes published a letter in The Times Literary Supplement requesting the section about Plath from Alvarez’s book to be removed.

Despite the ongoing debate, a new archive of Plath's unpublished work, discovered at Yale's Beinecke Library, sheds light on her unique perspective on death, a theme consistently woven throughout her poetry and prose from her teenage years until her death.

Plath's fascination with death and rebirth began early in her life. When she was 13, she wrote a poem titled "To Miss Cox" about the death of her beloved teacher, Miss Cox, who had recently passed away. This poem, which remains unpublished, is currently being studied from the Plath family papers at Yale's Beinecke Library. The poem uses seasonal imagery to frame the teacher's death as a natural cycle, with each stanza corresponding to a different season, starting with spring and ending in winter.

This structure emphasizes the impermanence of life and its beauty, much like the seasons themselves.

Later in her career, Plath continued to explore death and rebirth in her prose, particularly in her short story "Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom." This story follows the protagonist, Mary, on a train journey to "hell," only to escape and be reborn at the end. This theme of death and rebirth is also present in Plath's novel "The Bell Jar," which features Esther, a character who takes sleeping pills and subsequently travels down a tunnel before emerging into a hospital room, symbolizing her rebirth.

In Plath's final work, "Ariel," published posthumously, the cyclical structure of her earlier works is further developed. The poem "Morning Song," the first poem in "Ariel," addresses a newborn baby and establishes a connection between human life and the cycles of nature, mirroring the structure of "To Miss Cox." This poem emphasizes the continuity of life, with the newborn as a new beginning and the mother as a nurturer, much like Plath's portrayal of her mother in "The Bell Jar."