Plath and Hughes - Context

Crossing the Water

written 1962, knows about Assia and the affair, is revisiting road trip taken with Ted across Canada in 1959

Heptonstall

Hughes grew up here, he and Sylvia lived together here in 1956, Sylvia's gravestone is here

Tulips

1961, Plath is recovering from an appendectomy, recently miscarried (speculated result of Ted brutality) - reads like a poem written in 1953 after her suicide attempt, influenced by surrealism

Thistles

Context?? - references Viking, Hughes grew up in Yorkshire = many vikings

Finisterre

visited with Ted in June 1961, left Frieda in England, called 'lands end'

Rain

written in 1973, Sylvia and Assia are dead

Ariel

owned a horse in Devon called Ariel (in myth she gave up her voice to get married), written in October 1962 when she wrote 25 poems, wrote on her birthday, Ted is gone

The Horses

written early 1957

The Moon and the Yew Tree

October 1961, couldn't sleep so Ted suggested she wrote about what she could see from the window to help settle her mind

The Jaguar

written in 1957, worked in London Zoo after graduating in 1954, saw jaguars there, made sculptures of them which he gave to his brother and sister

Spinster

written in 1956, where writing each other lustful letters, Adlai Stevenson II commencement address at Smith's girls college = saying they are meant to be wives and domestic mothers

Wind

written in 1956, he and Sylvia just married

A Birthday Present

written in 1962, Plath inspired by Surrealism

The Lovepet

published in 1971, after Assia and Sylvia are dead

Lesbos

written in 1962, supposed to be in Ariel but Hughes left out, semi-autobiographical, dramatic monologue, 'Lesbos' is the island where Sappho grew up (lesbian), title is ironic because the speaker is antipathetic towards her friend, when Hughes left she went to Cornwall to stay with her friend Kathy Kane, Ted excised it from Ariel, After WW2 gov keen to encourage women to give up work and return to the domestic sphere so men had secure jobs after demobilisation, general consensus that a good mother would not take a job and as such deprive her children, by mid-50's half women who had started university education abandoned it in order to marry, Plath heard Adlai Stevenson address in Smith College Graduation - told them to immerse themselves in the 'very pressing and particular problems of domesticity', confessionalism

Her Husband

written 1961, around the time they split, published in 1967

You're

written in 1960, few months before Freida was born, inspired by Lowell and Sexton Plath turned to confessionalism

Full Moon and Little Frieda

published in 1967, after Sylvia dead, Freida around 2 when encounter took place, liked astrology

Daddy

written in 1962, Plath’s dad died when she was 8, he studied Bees, nuclear war threat, world starting to come to terms with WW2 - people starting to talk about what happened, rise of 'The New Poetry' (Confessionalism) Lowell, Sexton - wanted to make poetry more personal, more powerful, less genteel, less old and stuffy nature and the like, baby boom - society promoted family life and traditional gender roles - Plath found this oppressive, electra complex - Freud

What event in 1962 may have greatly inspired Plath?

Cuban Missile Crisis - closest Cold War came to an all-out nuclear war, wrote 25 poems in this October including Daddy, Birthday Present and Ariel

What was the 2nd wave of feminism?

End of WW2 provoked discussions about women’s role in the home, domestic abuse, reproductive rights and beauty standards - many had worked in factories and did not wish to reenter the domestic sphere

Literary context on the 2nd wave of feminism:

‘The Second Sex’ - Simone de Beauvoir (1949) - challenged idea that biology determines gender differences

‘The Feminine Mystique’ - Betty Friedan (1963) - captured frustration and anguish of educated middle-class housewives who felt trapped and unsatisfied

Plath and Sexton:

Met in Lowell’s poetry class at Boston University, wrote confessional poetry delving into personal lives, relationships and psychological trauma - both struggled with mental illness and tumultuous private lives

Other literary influences on Plath:

used a modernist technique of stream-of-consciousness, surreal imagery and fragmented, symbolic language - heavily influenced by T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf

Heavily infleunced by the Surrealist movement in response to WW2 (Carrington, Dali) - form of rebellion using Freud’s ideas about dreams and the unconscious

Hughes’ Literary Influences:

Rejected the sentimentalisation of Romantics but deeply focused on the sublime and role of the poet as a seer or shaman

Heavily influenced by Blake and was deeply interested in Yeats - especially his early work on folklore, magic and the occult - even adopting Yeats’s direct poetic voice

Similarly to Plath, T.S. Eliot was formative influence on Hughes when acting as key editor at Faber&Faber who recognised the strength of Hughes early work - only met a few times but held mutual respect, Hughes adopted Eliot’s crucial ideas especially the concept of a ‘Poetic Self’ (theory of impersonality, where poet acts as a depersonalised medium for blending experience - doesn’t express direct personal emotion)

‘The White Goddess’ - Robert Graves (1948) - book about poetry myth, creativty - heavily influenced both

“The woman whom he took to be a muse, or who was a Muse, turns into a domestic woman and would have him turn similarly into a domestic man.”

“Woman is not a poet: she is either Muse or she is nothing.”

Plath’s Journals:

“the very content that comes from finding yourself is overshadowed by the knowledge that by doing so you are admitting you are not only a grotesque, but a special kind of grotesque.”

“I have too much conscience injected in me to break customs without disastrous effects; I can only lean enviously against the boundary and hate”

“I go plodding on, afraid that the blank hell in back of my eyes will break through, spewing forth like a dark pestilence, afraid that the disease which eats away the pith of my body with merciless impersonality will break forth.”

“What inner decisions, what inner murder or prison break must I commit if I want to speak from the true deep voice in writing?”

Hughes Quote on what excites him (The Poetry Bulletin 1957):

”What excites my imagination is the war between vitality and death, and my poems may be said to celebrate the exploits of the warriors of each side”

Hughes’ dad fought in the Gallipoli Campaign/massacre