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There are many biographies of Plath, and they frequently take issue with each other. What makes this one different is that Wilson de-centres the more usual arc of her life and focuses on Sylvia’s life before she met Ted Hughes.
Taking her from childhood till she came to study at Cambridge where, of course, she met Hughes and married him within four months, this gives us a slightly different Plath. Wilson has interviewed many people who knew Sylvia in her school and student days, and has tried to work from her journals and letters rather than previous biographies. This gives a freshness to the narrative though, inevitably, biographical readings of Plath’s own fiction lead us into some familiar territory.
What we can know about Plath and her inner life is always partial and compromised, and it’s interesting to ponder what was unique to Plath in this story of adolescence and young womanhood in the repressive 1950s, and what was, in fact, the story of a generation. Precisely because she is Sylvia Plath there is an urge to make her experiences uniquely her own, and there is an inevitable hindsight, given her end, in reading back through her life: it all seems to point inevitably and teleologically to that kitchen in Primrose Hill when in reality, Plath could have had a very different life had she so chosen.
Plath herself comes over as a strange and compelling mix of arrogance and insecurity, an acutely narcissistic personality whose only subject of all her writings was herself. So this is a very good biography of a troubled woman which adds to the mythology – and it’s nice that that mythology can, for once, be Plath’s alone rather than one shared with Hughes.
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20 of 22 people found the following review helpful
In Mad Girl's Love Song: Sylvia Plath and Life Before Ted, Andrew Wilson has finally given due attention to Plath's first 23 year years, which even if you are bad at mathematics, you know if the overwhelming majority of her life. From the moment I learned of his project I was very excited as Plath's formative years have been embarrassingly under-represented. Wilson's thesis in his biography is that "Sylvia Plath was an angry young woman born into a country and in a time that only exacerbated and intensified her fury" (7). His book aims to "trace the sources of her mental instabilities and examine how a range of personal, economic, and societal factor...conspired against her" (10).
Wilson successfully achieves these aims in a narrative that, given he is a good and compelling writer, steers its readers to reach the same conclusions to which he came. His interviews and access to public and private archival materials builds a solid foundation by which future scholars will better understand the world of Sylvia Plath, as well as to have a better understanding in how to conduct research for a biography. A book dense with relevant and important details, Wilson has given life and prominence back to Sylvia Plath before Ted Hughes.
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Absolutely loved this book. Lots of original stuff and a focus on areas of her life and points of view not covered in such detail in other biographic writings. Plath was undoubtedly an interesting, complex and multifaceted woman, and I think this book reflects that well. Definitely recommended.
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Utterly compelling, insightful and moving. Shines a light on Plath's young life, offering a frank and intimate portrait of this brilliant and complex woman.
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11 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Three things differentiate this book from previous Plath biographies;
1. The writer's premise is that Ted Hughes decided that much of Plath's early writing didn't deserve to be included in her Collected Poems. Wilson boldly suggests that Hughes may have considered her mature work to be whatever was written after she met him.
2. Wilson refers to and describes many unpublished poems and letters - most of which, frustratingly, can't be printed in the book.
3. Wilson has succeeded in digging up fresh information about Plath, tracking down lost boyfriends and interviewing friends and neighbours that other biographers haven't bothered with.
The result is a fresh take with plenty of new information - a real treat for Plath fans.
What comes across is what a perfectionist Plath was. Published from a young age, and at times dependent on publication money for college fees, she put so much pressure on herself to be better than everone else, that she was fighting and failing to live up to her own unrealistic standards. Her achievements and her dedication to her studies are astounding. But despite having an IQ of 160, at times she felt like a failure, particularly after her glamourous time as an intern in New York. Her return to reality - of financial struggle, to a mother she couldn't admit to hating, and being turned down for a writing course - felt like dying.
Her perfectionsim appears to have come from her parents, particularly her meticulous father who died when she was eight. Wilson offers the suggestion that she projected an idealised male image onto her boyfriends that may have originated with early childhood memories of an encouraging but increasingly distant father that she sought the approval of.Read more ›
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