3. Beyond Depression: What We Get Wrong About Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath was an extraordinarily talented writer. She is the author of the classic coming of age novel The Bell Jar, and one of the 20th century’s most important poetry collections, 1965’s Ariel. She wrote with rare force and wit, hers was a singular voice. But her words have been overshadowed by the details of her biography; her marriage to fellow poet Ted Hughes, its dissolution, and her death by suicide in 1963.

In this new three part series, the focus is firmly on Sylvia Plath’s writing as Mariella Frostrup aims to paint a more nuanced picture of Plath the writer, cutting through the noise to see her more clearly and putting her life in the context of her work, rather than the other way around.

In this final episode we confront how her experience of mental illness and depression informed her work. Sylvia Plath was part of a school of confessional poets, but this focus on the confessional means we overlook how tirelessly she worked on her poetry. With close readings of poems from Ariel such as ‘Edge’ and ‘Poppies in October’ we find the experience of depression formed into words by a master of the craft.

We also dress the controversial language she used as she confronted the Holocuast in poems like ‘Daddy’.

But the final picture of Sylvia Plath that emerges is so much broader and more unusual than the caricature she is so often reduced to. Here we meet a sharp and funny writer, one whose work was deeply attuned to the politics of the day and who captured young womanhood on the page better than anyone, a writer who deserves to be taken seriously and read widely.

Contributors include Heather Clark, Clare Shaw, Siri Hustvedt, Katherine Rundell and Sean Bordale.
Readings by Lydia Wilson
Presenter Mariella Frostrup
Producer: Jessica Treen