Esther Greenwood's episode with Marco

There were two books that came out in 2013 that presented some of Sylvia Plath's month in June 1953 in very different ways. Those books were Andrew Wilson's partial Plath biography Mad Girl's Love Song and Elizabeth Winder's look at what's been termed as Plath's Bell Jar summer, Pain, Parties, Work. In Plath's final journal entry before her suicide attempt in August, 1953, she wrote: "New York: pain, parties, work. And Gary and ptomaine - and Jose the cruel Peruvian and Carol vomiting outside the door all over the floor - and interviews for TV shows, & competition, and beautiful models and Miss Abels:" (capable, and heaven knows what else.) And now this: shock. Utter nihilistic shock."

Wilson's book is really very good but Winder seems to have gotten a fuller idea of what went on, having the benefit of interviewing many of Plath's fellow guest editors. In particular, Wilson and Winder disagree on the episode in The Bell Jar when Esther Greenwood attends a country club dance with Marco, the woman-hating Peruvian delegate to the UN.

It is an interesting scene. I wrote a little about how it may have been influenced by Plath's meeting with Ted Hughes in February 1956. But in re-reading the novel last December, another source for how the scene played out struck me: Plath's encounter with Bill the Vet which she recounts rather honestly in a letter to her mother dated 3 December 1950 (Volume I, pp. 237-8). After they danced a bit, the two went for a walk so they could talk and it developed that "he seemed to think we should have intercourse."

Plath's journals tell a more graphic story, see entry 45. Their conversation seems to be recorded verbatim, and at one point, "his leg lifts over yours. You feel reality, cold and icy, on your illusions...You are sick. He is damn strong. His arms and hands are pushing you down. You roll in the pine needles. You are scared. You think: This is one time your innocence won't help you; you're done. But then you're on top, shaking him, your hair falling in your face. He has relaxed. He's listening to the words pouring out. 'I hate you. Damn you. Just because you're a boy. Just because you're never worried about having babies!'"

Just a thought...

Famous Quotes of Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath inspires us all in various and wonderful ways. She is in many respects a form of comfort to us, which is something that Esther Greenwood expresses in The Bell Jar , about a bath: "There must be quite a few things a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them. Whenever I'm sad I'm going to die, or so nervous I can't sleep, or in love with somebody I won't be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: 'I'll go take a hot bath.'" We read and remember Sylvia Plath for many reasons, many of them deeply personal and private. But we commemorate her, too, in very public ways, as Anna of the long-standing Tumblr Loving Sylvia Plath , has been tracking, in the form of tattoos. (Anna's on Instagram with it too, as SylviaPlathInk .) The above bath quote is among Sylvia Plath's most famous. It often appears here and there and it is stripped of its context. But I think most people will know it is from her nove...

Sylvia Plath's Gravestone Vandalized

The following news story appeared online this morning: HEPTONSTALL, ENGLAND (APFS) - The small village of Heptonstall is once again in the news because of the grave site of American poet Sylvia Plath. The headstone controversy rose to a fever pitch in 1989 when Plath's grave was left unmarked for a long period of time after vandals repeatedly chiseled her married surname Hughes off the stone marker. Author Nick Hornby commented, "I like Plath, but the controversy reaching its fever pitch in the 80s had nothing to do with my book title choice." Today, however, it was discovered that the grave was defaced but in quite an unlikely fashion. This time, Plath's headstone has had slashed-off her maiden name "Plath," so the stone now reads "Sylvia Hughes." A statement posted on Twitter from @masculinistsfortedhughes (Masculinists for Ted Hughes) has claimed responsibility saying that, "We did this because as Ted Hughes' first wife, Sylvia de...

Sylvia Plath and McLean Hospital

In August when I was in the final preparations for the tour of Sylvia Plath The Bell Jar sites, I found that I had long been mistaken about a couple of things. This is my coming clean. It was my intention in this blog post to discuss just McLean, but I found myself deeply immersed in other aspects of Plath's recovery. The other thing I was mistaken about will be discussed in a separate blog post. I suppose I need to state from the outset that I am drawing conclusions from Plath's actual experiences from what she wrote in The Bell Jar and vice versa, taking information from the novel that is presently unconfirmed or murky and applying it to Plath's biography. There is enough in The Bell Jar , I think, based on real life to make these decisions. At the same time, I like to think that I know enough to distinguish where things are authentic and where details were clearly made up, slightly fudged, or out of chronological order. McLean Hospital was Plath's third and last...

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