Plath & Hughes: Context

When and how did Plath die?

1963 at 30 years old to suicide

What happened to Plath in August 1953?

Here she was 20 years old and attempted suicide after which she was hospitalised and received electro-shock therapy

What does Letters Home (1975) contain?

Published by Hughes and Plath’s mother (Aurelia) posthumously, shows letters between Plath and family revealing intimate details such as tensions with her mother, her marriage, and being a mother herself.

What is significant about The Colossus (1960)?

It was the only collection published during her lifetime.

What inspired Plath’s “The Moon and The Yew Tree”?

When Sylvia couldn’t sleep, Hughes gave her the prompt of writing about what she saw outside her window; St Peter’s Church, a graveyard, and a yew tree. Hughes said the result “greatly depressed” him.

What inspired Plath’s “Wuthering Heights”? What was Plath’s life like at the time?

• Emily Bronte’s Victorian novel about a toxic relationship in which Heathcliff emotionally abuses his wife; set on the Yorkshire moors

• Plath wrote this poem while Hughes and herself were living in Hughes’ parents’ house as newlyweds, on the same moors

Where did Hughes grow up? What were his inspirations as a child?

• Hughes grew up in rural Yorkshire and hunted animals in his youth, influenced by his older brother’s interests

• Hughes’ father fought in WWI

What did Hughes do before attending Cambridge?

Served in the RAF before attending Cambridge

What did Hughes change his course to after English? Why did he change it, according to Heather Clark?

• Studied archaeology and anthropology, specialising in myths and legends

• Hughes didn’t write anything for a year, before TTF

• A bloodied fox appeared to Hughes in a dream, places its paw on his essay and told him to stop ‘destroying us’; this inspired Hughes to change his university course

When was Hughes awarded Poet Laureate?

1984

When were Wodwo & Crow written?

After Plath’s suicide (although he didn’t write anything for 3 years)

What does Birthday Letters (1998) reveal?

Hughes’ regrets surrounding his and Plath’s relationship — before which he refused to comment on the matter

What does Alison Barrett say about Plath’s feelings in “Morning Song”?

She quotes Betty Friedan who suggests that after WWII ideas surrounding women returned to Victorian ideology — i.e., women should be innocent and submissive & are defined by their capacity to procreate.
She says this explains why Plath feels estranged from her role as a mother in “Morning Song”.

What does Carol Bere explain about the inspiration behind Wodwo?

The title is taken from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in which the wodwo is described as a troll/satyr of the forest.

What is Shamanism and what did Hughes say about it?

Shamans have the ability to contact the divine world & to help heal human reconciliation with it. Hughes says the animals live “a divine life in a divine world” and said to Ekbert Faas “all true poets are Shamans.”

How & why are Plath & Hughes’ literary journeys different?

Hughes appears to upheave his entire ideology while Plath seems stagnant — this is because all of her work except for The Colossus was published posthumously and therefore only written in a short span of her life.

When was The Hawk in the Rain published? Which poems are included in this collection? (2)

1957

• The Thought-Fox

• Wind

When was Lupercal published? Which poems are included in this collection? (2)

1960

• Hawk Roosting

• View of a Pig

When was Wodwo published? Which poems are included in this collection? (2)

1967

• Wodwo

• Full Moon and Little Frieda

When was Crow published? Which poems are included in this collection? (1)

1970

• Examination at the Womb-Door

When was The Colossus published? Which poems are included in this collection? (1)

1960

• Medallion

When was Ariel published? Which poems are included in this collection? (4)

1965

• Morning Song

• The Moon and the Yew Tree

• Daddy

• Death & Co.

When was Crossing the Water published? Which poems are included in this collection? (2)

1971

• Wuthering Heights

• Mirror

How do Plath and Hughes utilise nature differently?

Plath often uses elements of nature in a literal presentational sense while Hughes is more symbolic

When was the Romantic era?

18th & 19th Centuies

What is typical structurally of Romantic poetry?

Following the standard set of poetic rules such as established rhyme schemes.

Which Romantic poet inspired both Plath and Hughes?

William Blake

When was the Modernism era?

20th Century

What features define the Modernist movement?

Modernism is non-traditional and experimental and so the poems often explore the boundaries of poetry by breaking traditional rules e.g. through the stream-of-consciousness technique.

Give an example of a Modernist piece of literature.

James Joyce’s Ulysses

What cultural context shapes the Modernist movement? (5)

Cultural changes in the 20th Century such as:

• Mass urbanisation

• Rise in agnosticism/ normalisation of atheism

• Waves of technological development

• World Wars

• Political revolutions such as the first waves of feminism

What is the Movement movement?

Poetry of The Movement movement attempts to remain dignified even when confronting strong subjects and was markedly nostalgic for an older, rural England

When was Absurdism popular?

1950s-1960s

What sparked the Absurdist style?

Post-war disillusionment, particularly in France and Germany

What does Absurdism focus on?

Questioning existentialist concepts such as truth or value, and elements such as satire, dark humour, the abasement of reason, and controversy.

When was the Confessionalism movement?

Late 1950s — early 1960s

What is Confessionalism and what does it focus on?

A form of Postmodernism that sprung from the US, focusing on:

• Extreme moments of personal experiences

• The psyche

• Personal trauma

• Taboo topics

• Setting personal experiences in relation to wider social contexts

What do critics say sparked Confessionalism? (2)

• Events such as the Holocaust (1941—1945) introducing existential threat

• Reacting to the idealisation of domesticity in the 1950s by exposing their own unhappiness in their homes

Give two examples of Confessionalist poets

• Anne Sexton

• Rovert Lowell

How did Plath know the famous Confessionalist poets?

She took a course in New York in which she was taught by Lowell alongside Sexton, whom she was known to be friendly with