Source: Wikipedia
Have you ever seen a suicide note?
Envisage the picture of a suicide note, written by an author, a substantial part of whose literary oeuvre encapsulates the themes of death, melancholy, tragedy, loss, suicide, bouts of depression, and existential angst. What did you imagine? A bunch of pages? Long paragraphs? A parting note to the world? A message for loved ones? Regrets?
Sylvia Plath, after explicitly and evocatively writing about suicide and death in her poetry, left a suicide note that simply said four words- "Please call Dr Horder." and had his phone number. Shocked? So were all other folks all over the world. Debates over Plath's death persist to date and many critiques express their views and possible explanations for her mysterious death.
Published Works of Plath With Their First Covers
Background
Sylvia was a gifted poet and had been a fiercely intelligent girl with an unconventional personality since her childhood. Her semi-autobiographical novel 'The Bell Jar' records her journey from losing her sanity due to a nervous breakdown to regaining it in an asylum during the period of her late adolescence and early adulthood.
Diagnosed with clinical depression, she had spent a great amount of time of her life in the clutches of suicidal thoughts and had thrice in her lifetime attempted to kill herself before she finally succeeded in February 1963. One of her most famous poems, Lady Lazarus, posthumously published in 1965, records her experiences with her suicide attempts.
However, if we attempt to trace the origins of depression and insecurities, in most cases, what can be found is a clew with interlaced threads. We do not know how those threads are linked with one another.
The Bell Jar provides various explanations behind Sylvia's depressive state in her initial years- her father's untimely death, unsound relationship with her single mother, lack of an elder's proper guidance, vicious encounters with patriarchal and misogynistic mindsets of society, struggle to fit into the established standards and to claim female authorship in opposition to a presumed masculine nature of literary authority.
Unfortunately, it was the same stereotypical mindset that forced even the most successful and famous women writers of all time such as J.K. Rowling, the Brontë sisters, Harper Lee, Louisa May Alcott, etc to adopt male pen names to get published.
Virginia Woolf boldly comments on this masculine authority over literature in her A Room of One's Own (1929)- "For most of history, anonymous was a woman." Female authors feared that if they revealed their true identity, people would not read their works. Hiding behind a masculine wall seemed the only way to let their voices be heard by the world.
Source: Roving Heights
An incident in The Bell Jar records Sylvia's defiance to align her life and dreams according to the patriarchal standards dictating the 'desirability' of a woman and asserting the subordination of female endeavours. All these dreadful faces of reality manifest a sense of dissatisfaction that spawns the neurotic inability to accept and live in the real world which is very commonly seen in poets and other artists. Sylvia too suffered the same.
Where It All Started
Sylvia's suicidal behaviour and depression in later stages can be accredited to her tragic relationship and thwarted marriage with Ted Hughes. Her letters to her therapist revealed that she had suffered domestic violence by Ted's hands two days before her miscarriage. Hughes himself acquiesced in his poetry to be engaged in an extramarital affair with Assia Wavell. He later abandoned Sylvia and broke the marriage. Much of her personal life information was revealed posthumously through her letters and journals.
Sylvia and Hughes, Sylvia With Her Children Frieda Hughes and Nicholas Hughes, Sylvia’s Letter to Hughes Among Keepsakes at an Auction
The period before her death saw Sylvia's mental health and daily life deteriorating. After the break-down of her marriage, she was taking care of her two children alone as a single mother, living in a flat in London. She was seeing Dr John Horder, a nearby practitioner for her clinical depression.
On February 11, a nurse was supposed to visit her for a checkup. When she didn't answer, the nurse sought a workman's help and they barged into her apartment. Sylvia was lying dead with her head in the oven. Her suicide note was taped on her children's pram.
Rumours
While some people blame her husband, Ted Hughes- his infidelity and abandonment of Sylvia- for her death, Hughes blamed Sylvia's doctor, Dr Horder for his defective medication that exacerbated her depressive state. Hughes is also put under suspicion by many to have destroyed the written pieces of evidence, particularly her last journal entries, suggesting his involvement in Sylvia's death.
Many others blame poetry, over the ages, for being the cause of Sylvia and many other authors' suicides. According to a study, poets have, relatively, the highest suicide rates—as much as five times higher than the general population.
Many poets who wrote about death and existential angst have been charged with the onus of encouraging suicides. Anne Sexton, for example, laments over Sylvia's death in her widely acclaimed poem 'Sylvia's Death' (1963) where she calls out Sylvia for leaving the world alone and not taking (Anne) with her.
In 1974, a few years after Sylvia's death in 1963, surprisingly, she too was found dead under the same circumstances as Sylvia was discovered. Sylvia gassed herself with carbon monoxide in her kitchen. Anne did that in her garage.
Sylvia Plath’s Grave
For a poet whose poetries played "Russian roulettes with six cartridges in the cylinder", could a slip of paper with four words be accepted as a suicide note at all? Or was it a cry for help as many critics believe? While calling Dr Horder, did she want to be rescued from imminent danger? Or was it really the venom of her poetry that led her to kill herself?
"Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well" Sylvia Plath, Lady Lazarus
Written By- Disha Nashine
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