We shall by morning/Inherit the earth/Our foot’s in the door.

Obviously A Daddy’s Girl January 29, 2007

Posted by amanda in : Uncategorized , trackback

I am currently reading the first twenty poems in Sylvia Plath’s Ariel (the restored edition which came out in 2004). I must first rant about the foward written by Frieda Hughes (Plath’s daughter). I completely understand that i can never completely understand Frieda’s situation: being a daughter (and poet in her own right) to two extremely famous poets, one of which committed suicide when she was only four; however, I am surprised that in re-releasing and restoring Ariel to the arrangement Plath had indicated (which Hughes had rearranged) Frieda, in the foward, seems more bent on vindicating her father’s legacy then upholding her mother’s. This of course makes sense when you consider that she didn’t really know her mother and admits to not even reading Ariel until she was thirty-five, but it seems that rather than write about her reactions to the poems, she seeks instead to argue for her father’s decisions and baisically tell everyone to back off.
She talks about how devoted Hughes was even after the separtation, frequenting Plath’s apartment to “babysit when my mother needed time for herself” (xiv) (who calls taking care of your own children babysitting???) and how he shielded Frieda from her mother’s “bad” side until she was much older and even justifies his publication of the former Ariel quoting him as saying “I simply wanted to make it the best book I could” (xvi). The problems I have with this bizarre un-Plath-centric foward are that it has so very little to do with Plath’s legacy or the celebration of the restoration. In an attempt to get people to stop harping on her father and the infamous death of her mother she ends up bringing these subjects once again to the forefront.
She even comes off as abrasive when she says towards the end of the foward:
“Criticism of my father was even levelled at his ownership of my mother’s copyright, which fell to him on her death and which he used to directly benefit my brother and me. Through the legacy of her poetry my mother still cared for us, and it was strange to me that anyone would wish it otherwise” (xvii)
I cannot imagine where she would even get the idea that people wouldn’t or didn’t want Plath’s funds from her posthumous publications to go to her chidren! so i don’t even know where that accusation comes from.
I guess what really bugs me about this foward is that it is so cold and so accusitory that when you finish it you almost dont’ want to read the poetry anymore because you’ve had so much of your origional motivation bullied out of you. I actually had to put the book aside for a full day before I worked up the energy to put aside Frieda’s shaking fist and read Plath’s words.
It wasn’t all bad though she does share one sentiment that I completely agree with and that is what i’ve stated as my purpose in this study, she writes, “I saw such poems as ‘Lady Lazarus’ and ‘Daddy’ dissected over and over, the moment that my mother wrote them and being applied to her whole life, to her whole person as if they were the total sum of her experience.” (xvii) so supposedly, she agrees with me in some respects….although i will try to “dissect” those two poems later on.

Anyway I know this extremely long rant has very little to do with Plath’s poetry and it was simply an unfortunate error that Frieda’s foward caught my attention, but i felt too strongly to just let this argument go (and i’m too biased against Hughes I guess) As i’ve said, it will be impossible to completely divorce Plath’s life from her poetry and here is an instance where that is very much the case. My next post will be happier and more poetry focused, I promise!

P.S. I will also later discuss Frieda’s poetry which professor Emerson has put away in a box in her basement because it is that bad…..i’m just saying…..