by Sylvia Plath
One thing about sex. I hate comfortable rituals. I like all sorts of positions at a lot of odd times of day, & really feel terrific and made new from every cell when I am done. I actually wondered at one point if Ted was sick. Well, of course, how can one keep up that intensity & variety every day & night for over 6 years. A biological & psychological impossibility I would think. And I have my pride. I mean, I was not schooled with love for 2 years by my French lover for nothing. I have in me a good tart, as distinct from a bad tart: I feel all I feel, which is a lot, & which I think men like to feel they can do, and I do not need to pretend I feel, or to feel only in my head. Well I want this tart to have a good life again. I’m damned if I am going to be a Wife-mother every minute of the day. And as I am a pretty faithful type, and have no desire left for malice or revenge on Ted, to “get back at him”, I’d just as soon make love with Ted. But coming from a distance, from a space, a mutual independence.
Ironically, this great shock purged me of a lot of old fears. It was very like the old shock treatments I used to fear so: it broke a tight circuit wide open, a destructive circuit, a deadening circuit, & let in a lot of pain, air and real elation. I feel very elated. The little conventional girl-wife wanted Ted to come back & say: My God, how could I hurt you so, it will never happen again. But I knew I really couldn’t stand him to say that, & he didn’t. He told me the truth about the femme fatale, which freed my knowledge to sit about in the light of day, like an object, to be coped with, not hid like some hairy monster. And I didn’t die. I thought my capacity for conventional joy & trust & love was killed, but it wasn’t. It is all back. And I don’t think I’m a suicidal type any more, because I was really fascinated to see how, in the midst of genuine agony, it would all turn out & kept going. I really did believe it was the Worst Thing that could happen, Ted being Unfaithful; or next worst to his dying. Now I am actually grateful it happened, I feel new.
As I say, I have no desire for other men. Ted is one in a million. Sex is so involved with me in my admiration for male intelligence, power and beauty that he is simply the only man I lust for. I know men feel differently about sex, but I thought they too were capable of deep and faithful love. It is not very much consolation to me that Ted really deeply & faithfully loves me, while he follows any woman with bright hair, or an essay on Shakespeare in her pocket, or an ability for flamenco dancing. If he thinks they’re real, and they think they’re real, what good does my thinking they’re unreal do? They’re real enough to hurt me, and make me lose my pride and my joy in my mind and body and potential talents. The thought of Ted making physical love to them, registering them under my name in hotels, letting all the people we know see this, hurts and nauseates me horribly. I feel if he really loved me he would see how this hurt damages my whole being, makes it barren, & deprives me of joy in lovemaking with him.
All the stupid little things I did with love---baking bread, making pies, painting furniture, planting flowers, sewing baby things---seem silly and empty to me without faith in Ted’s love. And the children who so delighted me are like little miasmas, crying for daddy. Of course mother’s being here through all this hasn’t helped. She officially knows nothing---I don’t talk to her about it---but she has seen everything. I think in one way she hates me for having deprived her of her vicarious dream-idyll, and in one way she is viciously glad: “I knew men were like that,” I feel her thinking. “Horrid selfish bastards, just like my husband. And Sylvia thought hers was an exception!” It has been humiliating for me to have her here through this, gloating over my weaning the baby, wailing “O you looked so happy and beautiful when I came . . .” implying I am now a tired old hag. I had been getting on quite well with her before, but this has put a ghastly strain on our pleasant if distant relationship.
One or two practical questions: shall I refuse to tell our friends and relatives about this? I really have no desire to complain to anyone & I hate people maunching over my business. And shall I ever let Ted’s sister come down here? I honestly don’t want to feel her gloating, offering to provide Ted with nice Paris models & scolding me for being a dog-in-the-manger. Ted is free, why can’t he go see her on his own? Or would it be wiser to have her come, try to deflect her vileness (she is dying for Ted’s brother to get divorced---the Other Women in her family are intolerable to her) and weather a visit.
Ted has stopped doing any man’s work about the place. Should I take on the weeding, mowing, hoeing and go on figuring the income tax, paying the bills (he defiantly misads & botches the checkbook), without a murmur? He once said he hated me asking him to do jobs (I mean heavy work, not lady-work) around the house; I stopped; he doesn’t do any. I love this place and get on well with the people in the town, thank god. It is my first home. But I am ready to pack off on trips in a flash, anything. Do you have any advice about these other women. And how to maintain my own woman-morale from day to day. And toughen myself!
Love to you,
Sylvia
PS: I’d feel awfully relieved if you’d see fit to agree to a few paid airletter sessions! And can I dedicate my novel to R. B. or would this be unethical or a bother? It may not be High Art, but it is good & funny.
TO A. Alvarez
Saturday 21 July 1962
TLS, Smith College
Court Green
North Tawton
Devon.
July 21, 1962
Dear Al,
Let me know what you think of the 3 poems I sent.* I am, as you will gather, a bit of a clairvoyant. But that has nothing to do with poetical quality. I know “Elm” is too long & fat for the Observer but thought it might amuse you in one way or some other. And maybe the other two, though not so gigantesque, are too late, or you don’t like. Or both. I like your opinions. I don’t mean, agree. But like. And I am tough enough, so don’t be ginger.
I’d be grateful to have a whole No, or whatever, soon, because I need to flog round what I’ve got. Money money. You know. Please don’t be “nice”.
Love,
Sylvia
TO Richard Murphy*
Saturday 21 July 1962
TLS, University of Tulsa
Court Green
North Tawton
Devonshire, England
Saturday: July 21
Dear Richard,
I don’t know how fast the cogs of officialdom work, but I could not deny myself the pleasure of letting you know right away that “Years Later”, the Epilogue of the “Cleggan Disaster” has won first prize in the Cheltenham contest. I suppose you have already heard, or will soon hear this from Mr. Wilkinson, the chairman of the festival. The Epilogue, because we felt that touched heights perhaps greater than in the earlier part.
I now have a question to ask you. Is there any chance of Ted & me coming to Bofin* around the last week in August or first week in September? I don’t know how long you run your boat, or what your terms are, but for me at least, I desperately need a boat and the sea and no squalling babies. We are now trying to negotiate a family to come & mind Frieda (2 years) and Nicholas (6 months), and I should know Monday if and exactly when they can come. If they won’t, then I shall have simply to hire someone. But if you could let me know right away if any week in late August or early (first week) September would connect us with you & your blessed boat, it would be so nice.
It would also be lovely to see you again.* The center of my whole early life was ocean and boats, and because of this, your poems have been of especial interest to me, and I think you would be a very lovely person for us to visit just now. Is there any kind old soul on the island who would feed & bed us & would it be possible to bring the car there, or would we have to leave it on the mainland? I hope, while in Ireland, we may also collide with Jack & Maire Sweeney, of whom we are very fond. And maybe Dublin. I have never been before.
Do tell me I am not being an awful bother. And please do say we may come on your boat. I have always desired, above many things, a friend with a boat. Ted sends his best, and hope
s you will take us on.
Again, congratulations, & warmest good wishes.
Sylvia Plath
P.S. Eric White said something about Faber & Eliot having accepted your poems.* I am so very glad. It is so deserved!
TO Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse Beuscher
Monday 30 July 1962
TLS, Smith College
Court Green
North Tawton
Devonshire, England
Monday: July 30th
Dear Dr. Beuscher,
I do hope you will agree to a few paid letter-sessions. I have even been wildly thinking of saving my money to fly to America for some person-to-person sessions with you, if that were possible, but I have to do a few more novels to manage that, I think. This seems a violent change-point in my life, & I feel to need to work toward as much insight as possible to change with it & weather it in a creative way, not withdraw from it. I feel I could ruin everything now by persisting in blindness & ignorance.
I have been at a nadir, very grim, since my last letter to you. What I would like to do is isolate and purge the father-feelings from my relation with Ted. I see I’ve been a fool to indulge in these---I’ve been frantic if Ted came home later than he said, for fear he might be in an accident; I’ve not wanted to stay alone overnight in the country, because the darks of Dartmoor scared me; I’ve let him buy the meat (my father always brought home our groceries from work) & had Frieda play with him mornings while he worked in the garden & I wrote. We had reasoned that this last arrangement was “economical”---freed me for writing at my peak period to earn money & Ted had to do the chores around the place anyhow, so why not let Frieda play along. He’s always loved her & loved teaching her things. Well, I see my fear of accident & dark as repetitions of fears for the life of my father: they are gone from me. I shall do all the shopping & baby-minding (I am now just about successful enough to hire a local babyminder for 4 hours a morning) as these have turned from casual jobs into symbols of whose sex is what. What other practical things can I do?
And what, above all, does Ted think I am? His mother? A womb? What can I do to stop him seeing me as a puritannical warden? He says he doesn’t want any more children & wants to make over our cottage & hire a live-in nanny to free me (fine by me!); when Nicholas came, he said he felt the baby was a usurper. I don’t think he’d have felt this if it had been a girl---so does that make Ted my baby as well as me his? Ye Gods. I would like a couple more children---later, when I have this live-in nanny so I can take off.
Anyhow, Ted is on the rampage---writing letters and even radio broadcasts about the advantages of destruction, breaking one’s life into bits every ten years, and damn the pieces. His favorite poem of his own is pure ego-Fascist, about a hawk “I kill where I please because it is all mine.”* I realise now he considered I might kill myself over this (as did the wife of someone we know well), and what he did was worth it to him. I have always admired him for this inner pride and energy---most people just haven’t got the power in them. But I would like to break my life, & go ahead with him, not be relegated to the homefront: the suffering & pitied but very repugnant mother-wife.
The real crux to me now is what to do about the Other Woman business. Maybe a lot of my nausea & shortness of breath & sleeplessness is due to my second loss of a second father. Okay. I want to get rid of those little-girl desires & fears. But some of it is that I am horribly hurt in my morale as a wife. Ted had one girl after another till he met me. And I had enough inner pride in myself as a woman not to fear other attractive woman---I liked them as friends myself. Now Ted is looking everybody over. And with him, it’s not flirting, it’s bed. We went for a ghastly poetry reading together to Wales this week.* I had just weaned the baby in a hurry, my milk was going anyway, & I didn’t want to take the baby along. Well there was a very lovely 18 year old blonde secretary, just married. Ted eyed her, immediately made a date to read in her hometown and asked me what I thought of her, why didn’t she quite come off? Well he always criticizes a woman he’s after. To put me off. What am I to do? Ted says he hadn’t been infatuated with anybody for 6 years since me, till this ad-agency girl. Am I to cheer him off onto one infatuation after another now? I have too much pride to say: O please God, it kills me to think of all these other women knowing you and your body and laughing at me, doing the dishes & wiping noses in Devon. My other impulse is to say: O fuck off, grab them all. What seems civilised & sophisticated to the people we move among seems stupid and boring and selfish to me. Am I an idiot to think that there is some purpose in being bodily faithful to the person you love? In riding through infatuations without always indulging yourself, if you know it hurts someone? I mean, my pleasure in lovemaking is spoiled by thinking: is he comparing my hair to this one, my shape to that one, my talents to the other?
I am sick of being suspicious. I would rather know the truth about everything, than merely suspect it. And be told by all the other people who love to pass on nasty news---and when you’re famous as Ted is over here, they are legion. How can I have any self-respect? I hate the idea of living here in the country with the children & having Ted go off & sleep with various women & come back exhausted & refreshed to write, be fed etc. It humiliates me. I simply can’t laugh and blow smoke-rings. He hates me to be tearful, but my god, the prospect of this makes me cry. I don’t ask for “conventional” safety, but how can I make our relationship “fundamentally safe”, as you suggest it can be? When I think he wants to follow every infatuation into bed, shall I just let him? This is what freedom, it seems, means to him. And just about all. He is handsome & fantastically virile & attractive. I am not beautiful. When I am happy, I can glow & burn, but what have I in this to make me happy? I bear his name; I have born his children. He loves me in a way. Shall I just sit around waiting till some girl agitates him to get a divorce? I mean, I want to write, travel, etc. etc., but it is pretty hollow to me when my relation to my husband is such a lousy one. How can I have the guts to cheer him on to new women, wait & wait, wondering how long it will last, and then welcome him home, no tears, no bitchery, no nothing. How can I make these women unnecessary to him? And keep up my own sense of seductiveness and womanly power? I don’t want to be sorrowful or bitter, men hate that, but what can I do in face of these prospects?
What I need now is the guts not to be lugubrious or accusing when I am tired, or my morale is low. I want Ted to understand I am not a doll-wife who can be lied to & kept happy. I want the dignity of facing facts, & facing them before all my friends & relatives. There are a few things I do think important. I’m not French enough to enjoy entertaining people who sleep with my husband, & having the little bitches criticize my hostessery into the bargain. I’d like honestly to know roughly where Ted is, so I could get in touch with him at a GPO or something in case of emergency. If he is fucking about with someone, I’d rather know it straight out, than get suspicions, intimations, anonymous phonecalls & letters. Do you think I am still asking too much? I mean, I do think I am prepared to do an awful lot. I am a good cook, I mow the lawn, am getting to be a good gardener, I weed, afford a cleaner, earn half our income (this I feel is an advantage to both of us, for it frees Ted from a dull job to support us, & gives us travel money), make out the income tax, am a feeling & imaginative lay, & probably can write quite funny & good books.
What I see now I could not have stood, what would to me have been the real worst, was for Ted to come & say: I want this girl for my wife & to bear my children. But of course, he felt his problem was womb-engulfment & did not want a wife or children at all. I at one point told him: I am saving you from ever getting mucked up with a wife & children again: you can have tarts & bastards, but if any other woman gets refrigerators & nappies in her eyes, you can say you have a really good old wife at home who is saving you to be free & not get stuck in the wallow of domesticity again. And he does genuinely love us. He says now he dimly thought this would either kill me or make me, and I think it might make me. And him too.
What I also need is wisdom for him. He takes a lot of understanding. He is, I am sure, a genius. A really great writer, a handsome and great man. I have been so hurt this week I feel like upchucking at the thought of his laying about with other women just this minute. But I would like to be able to cope with this again, if it came up. If he needed to test his freedom, to test me. And believe me, women are dying to get their hands on him. And on me, too. I honestly don’t ever, by cowardice, boringness, accusation, limitedness, ever want to give Ted the chance to think he should trade us in for a better family model. I am sure there will be other pressure points, as he proves & proves his freedom to himself, & I would like to feel I could write to you for a talk at those times, & be billed, as for interviews.
What I am not is a Penelope type.* I have come to this country town because Ted said it was his dream---apples, fishing, peace, clean air, etc. etc. I had wanted to stay in London, because I liked all the social life, movies, art exhibits & rush. Well now I love it here, & this is the first home I’ve had, very beautiful, & with some fine people in the neighborhood. It is a good base. But I am damned if I want to sit here like a cow, milked by babies. I love my children, but want my own life. I want to write books, see people & travel. I want, eventually, to make over our separate cottage & hire a nanny. So I’ve got to work hard. I refuse the role of passive, suffering wife. I think your advice about not having any more children for years a good one. I think I’d like a couple more someday, but only when I’ve got a nanny to free me.
I am, by the way, not fat!! I have the gift God gives some skinny women, namely that having babies & nursing them have given me a better figure than I ever hoped for, & my waist is the same (with all this lugging of fertiliser pots, mowing lawns & weeding huge vegetable patches) & I can wear clothes with good style. My nose, I fear, is unalterable, but otherwise I might become vain & insufferable, so the good lord has seen fit, in his wisdom, to load me with it. My hair (I remember you once said: Either very short or very long, no shillyshally pageboys) is very long.* I sometimes walk about in it like a shawl, & have a good enough coronet effect which few women can attain, with braids in a kind of pillbox.
