She is my chosen sister.
I love Sylvia like an earlobe,
like she's a delicate, necessary
part of me. Sometimes I think
we form a goddess of two brains
and one body. I hope we stay
Siamese close forever.
Marcia and Sylvia knew each other from 1951 until Sylvia's death. Sylvia was a bridesmaid in Marcia's wedding and always counted her as one of her best friends.
Summer 1951
Imagining Sylvia Plath
In the style of “Two Lovers and
a Beachcomber by the Real Sea”
She is bathing beauty. Sea-spun again.
The waves kiss her ankles.
A day off from tending the children,
She writes, she suns, she gathers her cockles.
In the ocean foam she sprouts fins, washes her face.
Her anxious tides disintegrate under water.
If only she could hold summer's smooth embrace
All year, maybe warmth would envelop her.
She combs her locks, combs the beach
For shells like a child.
She stills by the waves, her language at peace.
Yesterday's work expired.
Luxuriant fruit de la mer, gold glimmers of light.
The day folds like a sheet.
Tomorrow will be work. She and Marcia dance into night,
No boys to flaunt or tempt.
Can she not be happy alone on the sand
With her letters and stories?
Why must she conform, attach to a man?
She shivers in the dark breeze.
They call her into their water, the voices and the waves.
But she can't wade out to the bar yet.
She can't comprehend speaking a language that brave.
She turns housebound. For now, she retreats.
Over the summer of 1951 Sylvia worked as a mother's helper in Swampscott, Massachusetts, for Dr. and Mrs. Frederick Mayo and their three children. Marcia Brown was a mother's helper for another family down the street. The poem “Two Lovers and a Beachcomber by the Real Sea” deals with the conflict involving mind, belief, and imagination—common themes in Plath's poetry as she struggles to use her art for her own personal salvation. “Two Lovers …” was awarded the Glascock Prize during Sylvia's senior year at Smith. The poem can be found in her The Collected Poems as part of the “Juvenilia” section.
Patriarchy
Dick Norton, Sylvia's on-and-off boyfriend throughout college
1951-1952, Sylvia's sophomore year
If only Sylvia
would give up
her silly notions
of being a woman
of letters, and cultivate
her culinary skills,
social graces,
maternal instincts,
and all manners
becoming a doctor's wife.
Harvard Med behind me,
I will provide all that we need.
Sylvia is lovely,
but uppity.
Raised in the same town,
she should be my perfect
match. I can make her
so—adjust her skirt
to the right length,
teach her to darn
my socks correctly.
We are destined to be
a magazine couple.
If only she behaves
as I, the dominant gender,
demand. As I see fit.
Sylvia dated Dick starting in the winter of 1951, though to his dismay not exclusively until the winter/spring of 1953. Dick wanted to marry Sylvia, but Sylvia felt she and Dick were too similar to be right for each other as husband and wife. Dick pressed Aurelia in March 1953 as to why Sylvia would not marry him, and that pretty much marked the beginning of the decline and end of their romance.
Incurable Romantic, and Yet
Marcia Brown, Sylvia's second Smith roommate
and lifelong friend
1951-1952
She said the night was March and black
and that the hill where he kissed her
and enveloped her in his arms
was a sea of grass and she rooted
to the ground like a sapling,
like it was natural and yet
all created for her moment of romance.
Sylvia brooms through boys,
always hopeful that
one will catch her, will catch
her eye for more than a moment,
for more than a few journal entries.
She gets swept up, wants to be caught,
but by a worthy suitor, a man
of more than muscles and brains.
A man who shimmers, who is knightly,
not a man-as-mirror in which Sylvia
views only herself. She keeps trying
them on, brings her boys to the tailor
with hope and lust in her eye.
But even with straightened seams
and new lapels, no man
quite fits her, yet.
Sylvia records the feelings expressed in the above poem in her journal, entry fiftyeight, in The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath.
Patient
Nurse at the Smith infirmary
1951-1952, Sylvia's sophomore year
Poor girl suffers
from sinusitis,
only relief she gets
is when she's laid up here,
snuffing her cocaine nasal spray.
Flattened as a tire,
that Sylvia works herself
to the brink until she is
raw nerve, until she collapses.
My mama always said
maladies are the body's way
of asking for a slower pace.
But there is a blue violence
about this patient.
She has checked herself
in here three times now.
Guess it's better than checking
herself out. I hope we cure
what ails her.
Sylvia's sinusitis was an acute problem since early childhood. The doctors took her bouts seriously. At this time Sylvia was treated only for a physical illness. She was not referred to a therapist or psychiatrist
Summer Job 1952
Mr. Driscoll, Sylvia's supervisor at The Belmont
A problem case,
that's what she is.
Not a talented waitress.
I assign her to the side room
to serve our staff, not our guests.
She snubs her nose,
makes plea and fuss
that she needs tips
to make this gig worthwhile.
I listen, shake my head,
tell her she lacks qualifications,
lacks skills.
She huffs
out of my office
like a boiling teapot,
then proceeds to gallivant
until dawn every night,
always on the arm
of a different boy.
Proves me right.
Still, I pity her.
I've needed cash
a day or two in my life.
So I throw this pup
a bone, offer Sylvia
an extra thirty dollars a week
to change the bed linens.
Turns me down cold
as an icebox. Ungrateful,
these youngsters. Lazy.
Maybe she thought she'd flirt
her way into an apron
of dollars, shine the guests
her silver-dollar smile.
I offer work for compensation.
Guess she won some
girl's magazine contest,
wrote a story.
Now I hear she's sick,
sent home to recuperate.
Phone call says she's not returning.
Can't say I'm sorry to see her go.
The Belm
ont was a resort hotel in West Harwich-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts. Sylvia wrote about this waitressing job in her journals.
Prophecy
Harold Strauss, Editor in chief,
Alfred A. Knopf
Summer 1952
I chuck the Mademoiselle magazine
snatched from my daughter's bureau
on the acquisition meeting table.
“I want all of you to read this
prizewinning story, ‘Sunday at the Mintons’,
by Sylvia Plath.” My secretary distributes
carbons to the staff. I inhale half
my cup of joe. Black, steamy, it burns
the roof off my palate.
“Mark my words,
this girl will publish with us
someday.”
In June 1952, Sylvia received a telegram saying that she had won one of the two Mademoiselle College Fiction Contest first prizes and would be awarded $500. “Sunday at the Mintons' ” can be found in Plaths collection of essays and short stories, Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams. Knopf did publish Sylvia's first collection of poetry, The Colossus and Other Poems, in the United States on May 14, 1962, after many delays.
Job Number Two
Margaret Cantor, wife in the family Sylvia nannied
Summer 1952
My husband hands Sylvia
the oversize check our children
constructed on manila art paper
and that he signed over to Miss Plath.
A million dollars for the million ways
we are grateful to have had Sylvia
help with our children this summer.
A magnolia, she brought beauty
and fragrance to our home,
enriched our little ones, was a radiant
influence of decorum and hard work
for my teenage daughter.
I tell Sylvia I would recommend her
for any job, to please let me know
if I can ever be of help to her. I love Sylvia
like a daughter, like a sister, like family.
I wish the summer would never end.
Sylvia smiles, dishes me a piece
of her chocolate layer cake, so devil rich
it must be a sin, and says, “Me too.”
The Cantors vacationed in Chatham, Massachusetts. They had advertised for a mother's helper in the Christian Science Monitor. Sylvia worked for them for six weeks. She was included as part of the family. In her journals she writes, “… Life: full, rich, long, part of the family, growing to know them and their quietnesses, their laughters, their convictions, and always subtly probing, questioning, the core—Christian Science.”—July 25, 1952.
Proud
Olive Higgins Prouty, Sylvia's benefactor
October 1952
My dear Sylvia, little wunderkind,
what a lovely story, no wonder it would win
the contest. I can hardly express
my pleasure, and I wish you the best
as you enter your third year at Smith.
I also write to inquire as to if
you might visit and talk over tea,
so delighted I'll be for your company.
You make an aging lady proud.
You are a writer avowed.
I have no doubt if you continue this way,
big publishing doors will open someday.
Olive Higgins Prouty lived in Brookline at 393 Walnut in a handsome two-story mansion. Sylvia visited Mrs. Prouty periodically throughout her life (in the early years once or twice a year when she was home on vacation from Smith), but their primary mode of communication was letters.
Tuberculosis
Dick Norton, Sylvia's on-and-off college boyfriend
Fall 1952, Sylvia's junior year
Heavy chest, fluid-filled,
they finally diagnose it correctly
and confine me to a sanatorium.
At least I have my blond, lovely,
bright-eyed Sylvia. I have decided
that she will be my wife.
I read her favorite authors:
Dylan Thomas, Thomas Mann,
the Russian novelists, so we can
engage in lively correspondence.
They plump me in this institution,
stuff me with medication and fortification.
I sometimes think that Sylvia
envies me, wishes to be seriously ill.
She fancies this is a retreat, a vacation
from responsibility. But my cough
pierces, deep as a samurai sword,
and I am profoundly alone.
I wish to agonize over a physical
science course like Sylvia, to escape
these white brick walls, this building
of small rooms. I am abundantly
grateful to have found the mother
of my children prior to contracting
TB. I am at present in no shape
to locate a life mate. My body softens
in these nurse-cornered sheets.
Only my resolve
of a future with Sylvia
remains firm.
Tuberculosis afflicted many medical students at this time. In the fifties, TB was untreatable by medication, so those who were diagnosed with the disease were required to be confined to a sanatorium for one to three years. The sanatorium Dick recovered in was located at Saranac Lake, New York, in the Adirondack Mountains.
Tendency to Overdramatize
Aurelia Plath
November-December 1952
Sivvy's letters of late
concern me. She questions
whether she should visit
the school psychiatrist,
checks herself into the infirmary again.
I can't ascertain whether
she is just tired, withered by
the dog gnawing at her heels.
Or if, like my ulcers, it is something
more. I tell her that
the semester is almost
at a close and things will improve.
I worry in silence that all
my scrimping and years
of secondhand clothes
may prove to be for naught,
frivoled away, underappreciated.
Sylvia longs for retreat like
the waves that have comforted her
since she was a baby.
I think she identifies with Dick,
believes she deserves escape
to a hospital bed, only she carries
no disease. I tell her mind
over matter, to garner her strength.
I reiterate that she is fine.
I promise that I will nurse her
back to health over Christmas break.
Sylvia's letters that so worried Aurelia (dated November 19 and December 15, 1952) can be found in Letters Home: Correspondence 1950-1963. Sylvia's descent into severe depression during this period is also chronicled in her published journals. Just before her Christmas break in 1952, Sylvia went to see a therapist at Smith.
Manic Depression
Imagining Sylvia Plath
In the style of “Aerialist”
December 1952
She balances night.
She floats on days.
She cannot see the shift—
Her smile of light,
Her frown of haze,
She's constantly adrift.
She breaks. She's sick.
Throw a rope, a net.
She falls like a shot-up plane.
Help her find the landing strip,
Her feet are wet—
She'll learn, she'll train.
She walks a rope on fire,
“Look Ma, no hands.”
She falls with half-closed eyes.
She toils past her tire,
Exceeds demands,
She wins a golden prize.
She falls to earth.
Spends winters
Combing a mane of death.
She awaits spring's birth.
She splinters.
She's so knocked out of breath.
An acrobat of moods,
She juggles like a pro.
She clowns her painted lips.
She giggles. She broods.
She begs to be followed.
Then shifts and gives them all the slip.
“Aerialist” can be found in The Collected Poems.
The Caliber of Her Dating Pool
Myron “Mike” Lotz, another college boyfriend, roommate of Perry Norton
(Dick's brother) at Yale
December 1952
Even though I just met Sylvia,
we are so similar, two
snowflakes descending from
the same December sky,
light shimmering off our accolades—
her published stories and poems,
her editorial positions, balancing
my fast track to med school,
first in my class at Yale,
my recruitment by the Detroit Tigers.
And yet both of us keep these
things relatively quiet,
too polite to brag.
We look winning together.
Tall and lovely, we promenade
through the Smith campus
after her Lawrence House dance.
We pass the hospital, a patient's
wail rattles the glass windowpanes.
Sylvia twitches, something a little off.
She freezes, her pretty snowflake
halted midair. She can't fall to earth.
She hears the “Ooooooo” of the invalid
like he's a prisoner pleading for release,
and can't sleep.
She fascinates and enchants me,
but something seems amiss,
like the low murmur of clouds
moving in before it storms.
I hope Sylvia settles,
cascades to the ground, so we might
pile up together—
two crystals,
fighting against our ever-present heat.
Sylvia dated Mike, whom she called a “Hercules,” but was also seriously enchanted with another boy, Gordon Lameyer, at this time. Sylvia became disillusioned with Mike after she visited him the weekend of May 9, 1953, at Yale. She found Mike to be insecure and overly obsessed with his own problems. Their relationship faded after that.
Ski Trip
Dick Norton, Sylvia's on-and-off college boyfriend
Your Own, Sylvia Page 3
