America's first feminist writer: Who is Sylvia Plath?

Let's get to know Sylvia Plath, who has struggled with her tragic life for years, struggled with manic depressive disorder, and is known for the books she brought to the world of literature:

Born October 27, 1932, to a German father and an American mother, she was born in Plath, Massachusetts.

She grew up with her mother's lovelessness and her father's indifference. The author's parents decided to divorce when she was eight years old. After her father married a younger woman, Sylvia Plath suffered from depression and began to write poems.

Plath, who met her manic-depressive disorder here, made her first suicide attempt in her second year of college. When she failed, she was admitted to a mental institution for treatment.

Sylvia Plath (October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for two of her published collections, The Colossus and Other Poems (1960) and Ariel (1965), as well as The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel published shortly before her suicide in 1963. The Collected Poems was published in 1981, which included previously unpublished works. For this collection Plath was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1982, making her the fourth to receive this honour posthumously.

After graduating from Cambridge University, her poems began to be published in the school newspaper. She married the famous English poet Ted Hughes, whom she met here in 1956. With this man who seems to be the love of her life, their marriage ended in constant jealousy fights, and Plath filed for divorce after she gave birth to her first child.

The couple, who gave their relationship another chance, started to try again; Meanwhile, their second child was born. Learning that Ted Hughes had begun to betray their marriage, Plath could not stand this situation and fell into depression. One day, after bringing milk and cookies to her children, she took sleeping pills and stuck her head in the oven, and ended her life.

The Author's Loud Suicide

Plath, who was 30 when she committed suicide in 1963, was trying to be a mother, a successful writer, and a good wife. Trying to take all these roles together, Plath is alienated from this marriage full of turmoil and jealousy. These situations cause the writer to be under constant pressure and lose her creativity.

Thinking she has married the love of her life, Plath finds herself a woman who does not leave the house and waits for her husband at home all day. She feels pressured to live in her husband's shadow, with her talents rotting away. Plath, who had restless days, told in one of her diaries that the only thing that gave her pleasure was spending time with her children and baking cookies in the oven.

Sylvia Plath and Perspective

In her book, The Glass Jar, she actually put her own world in these lines with the words "The world looks like a nightmare from inside the glass jar". She has struggled with psychological problems such as depression all her life and has felt restrained and pressed into a container.

The theme in the author's works is a sad, pathetic, pessimistic voice.

Sylvia Plath and Her Unknowns

In addition to writing, Sylvia Plath also painted paintings that reflected her own world. With this talent, she won the Scholastic Art & Writing Award.

The author's IQ is 160.

After her first suicide attempt at the age of 20, she was hospitalized and received electroshock therapy for her depression.

She lived in the house of William Butler Yeats, one of the successful 20th-century writers, and committed suicide there, she ended her life.

Shortly before committing suicide, she published her novel The Bell Jar in 1963 under the name "Victoria Lucas".