A Walk with Sylvia Plath in Cambridge

There are moments in Sylvia Plath's journals and letters, as well as her poems and stories, where she provides enough information so that you might, if curious, take a walk with her words. In the last week or so I have been reading her journals and one such entry, one of many to be honest, sent me to Google Street View for the umpteenth time to see the view she described with her eyes.

On 11 March 1957, Plath wrote her and entry about a walk down the Fen Causeway to a fish and chips shop. It has been always an interesting one to me. A favorite, perhaps. Plath obsesses over the orange hue of the streetlights, and that color seems both ominous and ethereal in the way she uses it describing her scene. Even the color of the fried fish and chips, in one's mind, is orange-ish. Where was she going with this idea? The presence of the gun, too, is a bit weird.

Towards the end of the entry the speaker and her male companion pass a monastery, then Plath writes, "The glass lantern, the streetlight at the end of the street, against a brick wall, lit up the white background of the sign: "St. Elegius Street". Black letters. So neat. Always, I must remember this: the clear light in the square of iron ribs and glass. How fresh that sign shows."

This is the corner of St. Elegius Street and Pemberton Terrace and is, I believe, the place Plath writes about in the entry.

You can see in the top picture a post going up and you can see a brick wall right behind it. That is a streetlight but the tree is blocking it from view. The second image shows the street sign and, as well, an additional light. A winter evening/night image of this view would be nice to see and feel a bit more authentic.

Here is a map showing where 55 Eltisley Avenue is and the possible route they took to the Fen Causeway. The journal entry also mentions "Russell Street" being up on the "right", which leads me to believe the people in the entry made it as far as Hills Road (A1307).

I have not been to Cambridge since 2003. I need to remedy this as soon as it is safe to do so...

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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