Sylvia Plath: A Biography (4 page)

That April the family heard the Gordon String Quartet at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. A few days later, Sylvia went to help out at the Nortons’ — cleaning and cooking for “Uncle Bill” and the three boys, Dick, Perry, and little David — while Mildred was in bed with severe influenza. At home, however, Sylvia seldom did housework or cooking. Grammy Schober reigned in those departments, so Sylvia was free for piano lessons, reading, writing, drawing, playing with friends, jumping rope, riding bikes, and drinking Cokes at the local Howard Johnson’s.

Sylvia’s seventh grade year, 1944-45, saw her receiving all A’s once again, except for a first-term B in sewing. At the June 20 Awards Assembly, she was given the Wellesley Award, as the outstanding student in seventh grade. She also received two commendation cards from her English teacher, and two Honor Certificates for extra book reports.

The year 1945 saw her first publications in
The
Phillipian
, a slick-covered junior-high magazine. As a seventh grader, she wrote about nature and moods (“The Spring Parade,” “March,” “Rain”), still deeply in the sentimental tradition of her first published poem, about crickets and fireflies, which appeared when she was eight-and-a-half, in the
Boston
Sunday
Herald
. A few months after that publication she had won a $1 prize for a drawing of a woman in a hat. Writing and drawing were important pastimes for Sylvia but she seemed unsure of her friends’ reactions to them, and often justified them in terms of possible payment, or publication, or both. Even when she was a child, just enjoying an activity was not enough reason for spending time on it.

During junior high, Sylvia made posters and drawings and often sketched in pastels and ink. As a younger child, she had hidden drawings under her mother’s napkins at the dinner table. Now she illustrated her own writing, designed paper dolls and their clothes, and made intricate wrapping paper. Her special occasion cards (labeled “Plathmark” on the back) were prized by her family, especially her grandfather, who carried her artwork in his wallet until the paper was worn through.

She also wrote a great deal — diary entries, fiction, and poetry. During the summer of 1945 she kept a meticulous diary of her weeks on Cape Cod at Camp Helen Storrow with Betsy Powley. In rounded, perfectly spelled words she described fellow campers, duties, nights around campfires, and her gratefulness for being at the camp. The flair for journalism which was obvious during high school and college first appeared now and pointed to her real gifts in objective writing. In her early poems, Sylvia used some varied rhyme and stanza arrangements but her poems and stories are what one might expect from a gifted adolescent.

Some of her most interesting writing appears in her letters home from summer camp. Illustrated with stick drawings, they show Sylvia’s old concerns about being good, saving money, and eating a lot (“Lunch — two bowls of vegetable soup, loads of peanut butter, 4 pieces of coffee cake, chocolate cake and marsh-mallow sauce, 3 cups of milk ... Supper — Haddock, 19 carrots, lettuce and tomato, cucumber, punch, 2 potatoes, 4 slices of watermelon”), but she also wrote about camp personnel, the neatness of her room, and her improvement in swimming. The note of economy recurs when she mentions to Aurelia that she was able to buy Kleenex for only 15c, and wonders whether her mother would like her to buy an extra box to bring home, if she were allowed to do so.

By 1946, Sylvia and Betsy Powley were joined in camp by Ruthie Freeman, Sylvia’s Winthrop friend, and the three of them bet nickels to see who could avoid swearing. Sylvia was known as “Siv” this year. She spent money a bit more casually and wrote more descriptive letters. One of her triumphs at camp was imitating Frank Sinatra in the camp variety show (though Betsy did the actual singing), but otherwise the two weeks away were comparatively unpleasant: the campers got ptomaine poisoning from bad fish; she had an infected toenail and a cold and missed five days of swimming; and she never mastered what she called the “horrid” art of diving.

Following Sylvia’s July camp, Aurelia took the children to Loungeway farm, the home of a friend in Oxford, Maine, so they could experience farm life. The profile of Sylvia that emerges from these years is of an adolescent dutiful about enjoying the benefits her mother provided. At every turn, she is given vacations, lessons, books, art supplies. But the gifts are not without responsibilities: having such advantages will enable her to excel in even more ways, and her family will be even more proud of her in turn. She wrote in her 1946 diary, after a poem by Sara Teasdale (“Late October”) which she copied onto the page, “What I wouldn’t give to be able to write like this!”

Sylvia’s eighth and ninth grades were as full of accomplishment and as directed toward writing as seventh grade had been. And it is just as well that she continued to succeed academically. Her social life, which she — like the rest of the girls at Alice L. Phillips — considered of supreme importance, was not flourishing. Tall and gangly, Sylvia had a hearty, talkative manner that was the opposite of flirtatious. Most boys were a little afraid of her and, because she was not popular with boys, girls did not want her friendship either. Sylvia might list girls as friends, but she had only one person to eat lunch with during ninth grade, another girl who felt just as left out of things as Sylvia did.

The relationship that saved her pride to a certain extent during these junior high years began during her ninth grade. Phil McCurdy had come home on the bus with Warren one day after school. He had just moved to Wellesley with his young mother and her new husband and was adrift — emotionally and socially. His home two blocks away on Durant Street seemed less welcoming than did the Plaths’, where both Aurelia Plath and Sylvia were kind to the handsome and talented seventh grader. Gradually, he came to visit Sylvia instead of Warren. They took long walks, sketched, talked, and shared confidences. In befriending Phil, Sylvia was showing the side that made her a reliable babysitter, friend, teacher, a genuine and loyal confidant.

Phil taught her to play tennis, a sport he loved, and they biked together. He encouraged her to be more aggressive. At his urging, she ran for class secretary and, though she lost, had a good time with her elaborate campaign. Losing did not enhance her shaky self-image much, and she wrote in her scrapbook, “Perhaps I was doomed always to be on the outside.”

Most of Sylvia’s activities during eighth and ninth grades were those of the smart loner — making announcements over the school’s PA system, making posters, writing and publishing in
The
Phillipian
. “Fireside Reveries,” one of her ninth-grade poems, describes the poet as a solitary daydreamer who may become a writer of some importance. Another poem, “Sea Symphony,” borrows from Sara Teasdale’s lush imagery to describe Sylvia’s love of the ocean, just as “Interlude” describes “Slender, silver birches clad in plumes of misty green.” Her poem “Adolescence” boasts in its opening, “I was not born to love one man/ And him alone”; and foreshadows one of her primary worries during her school years, whether she would date.

Sylvia’s graduation from the ninth grade at Alice Phillips was a triumph. She again won the Wellesley Award for outstanding student (this time her prize was a copy of Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren’s
Understanding
Poetry
, the Bible of poetry explication at midcentury). She also received a unique commendation card for having all A’s in academic subjects during her three years at the school, and another for perfect punctuality. Then Sylvia was given a sixth academic letter, an award never before given, for “being the only pupil in the history of the school who had earned enough credits for a sixth letter.” She also won a certificate for a drawing (first place in a Carnegie Institute contest) and Honorable Mention from the National Scholastic Literary Contest.

Throughout these years, Sylvia had worked incredibly hard, dedicating herself to getting the grades she knew her mother expected. Early in junior high, Sylvia had scored near 160 on an IQ test. Aurelia had taught her to type so her work would always be neat. Sylvia had also become more clothes conscious, wearing with pride what new clothes her mother could afford for her and those she could buy herself with money she earned babysitting for neighbors’ children.

Yet for all the marks of maturity, Sylvia would often revert to the fears that had surfaced after her father’s death. Near the end of her junior high years, her mother was offered the position of Dean of Women at Northeastern University in Boston. Such an administrative post would have meant an increase in prestige as well as money; it would also have provided a way for Mrs. Plath to use her remarkable talents in dealing with people. But when Aurelia talked with her children about making the change, and pointed out that the job would require more of her time, Sylvia responded angrily, “For your self-aggrandisement you would make us complete orphans!” Aurelia declined the job offer. The sense of dependence and the narcissism that were to mark, and sometimes ruin, Sylvia’s relationships in the future clearly originated in her childhood fear of abandonment. That fear would surface unexpectedly — and always detrimentally — in the years ahead.

3 - Bradford High School

1947-50

“The Rich Junk of Life”

When Sylvia entered Gamaliel Bradford High School (now Wellesley High) in September of 1947, she was a tall, slim fourteen-year-old girl of five feet eight inches, weighing 119 pounds. With the long arms and legs inherited from both her parents, she was a competent basketball player but, despite the efforts of Mrs. Gulliette Ferguson’s “dance assemblies,” she would never be more than an average dancer. She was a good deal more likely to be writing scripts for variety shows than to be singing and dancing in them. Sivvy — for all the cuddliness of her nickname — was not one of the 1940s blondes who tried out for cheerleading and swooned on the arm of the star quarterback. She would have liked that role, however, and one of the ambitions of her high school years was to date as much — and with as many different boys — as possible. During early high school, unfortunately, boys who knew her were awed by her brains, her competence, even her swingy, sunny manner. She was simply too much for them. That she was not part of the right social group was also a problem. Wellesley was an extremely wealthy suburb, and the Plath family circumstances were never other than modest.

At sailing camp in Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts, the summer before starting high school, Sylvia had tried to create a new personality for herself. She used the nickname Sherry, one of what would be many pseudonyms, and had “tons” of fun “without any of the old restrictions.” Her aim was to be something more daring, more fun-loving, than the serious junior high student she had been.

But the new Sherry was every bit as competitive as the old Sylvia. She recounted to her mother triumphs in English class: her essay was better than even Perry Norton’s, and classmate John Pollard praised her work as well. She eventually dated both boys, but not often during tenth grade. Sylvia’s sophomore year was not very social, though Pollard took her to the Prom in the spring and Perry Norton was her date for several other school dances. Aside from playing guard on the girls’ junior varsity basketball team and having tennis dates with Phil McCurdy, Sylvia devoted most of her energies to school work.

The staff at Bradford High was superior. Sylvia was particularly challenged by Wilbury Crockett, the English teacher she had for all three years there. A select group of twenty sophomores were called the “Crocketeers,” the equivalent of today’s advanced placement track. During tenth grade, the group studied American literature; during eleventh, British; and during twelfth, world literature, especially Greek, Russian, and German. Crockett, who had begun teaching at Bradford in 1944, tried to bring literature and writing into his students’ lives. Reading Hemingway, Eliot, Frost, Dickinson, Faulkner, Hardy, Lawrence, Yeats, Joyce, Woolf, Dylan Thomas, much Shakespeare, Plato, Greek drama, Mann, and Dostoevsky’s
Notes
from
the
Underground
and
Crime
and
Punishment
, the Crocketeers formed a tight-knit group during their school years. They also acquired what their teacher called a “life library,” because he suggested that they buy the books they read, some forty each year.

Mr. Crockett balanced class discussion with private conferences and writing assignments, so that each student would have a chance to excel in some area. Sylvia excelled in all. She and the other students wrote four 5,000 word essays or term papers a year, instead of taking tests; they then presented their essays to their classmates. They were taught to have convictions about what they wrote.

Crockett thought Sylvia was an extremely well-adjusted, vibrant, outgoing, and brilliant student, always interested in what she read, always willing to talk about her feelings. She had “joy, bounce, and lovely enthusiasms.” Her intensity sparked the class; Crockett wondered whether she ever relaxed. She read with great maturity but was tolerant of the views of other students, even those not at her level. “She was reacting constantly” to what was going on in class, recalls Crockett. One day she rescued the class after a boy who was a fine student but a stutterer broke down in tears. While the class stared in horror at the sobbing student, Sylvia picked up the discussion, speaking directly to Crockett, and by the end of the class the boy was once again able to become involved. Crockett was repeatedly indebted to “Miss Plath.”

Maintaining stiff standards of quality for these gifted students, the young Crockett modeled his classes on college courses (he also taught at Wellesley College and Connecticut College at times). He believed that formal relationships aided high quality work, so he called his students “Mr.” and “Miss.” Despite the formality in class, Sylvia often visited Crockett at home, usually meeting also with his wife, a children’s librarian who always welcomed students. They would sit in the back yard under pine trees or in the living room by a fire and discuss — or continue discussing — either Sylvia’s writing or what had been introduced in class.

Crockett recalls that Sylvia played down her accomplishments. She would say things like “I know this isn’t very good,” “This isn’t my best,” “I know this doesn’t measure up.” But she had confidence in her own judgment and was not afraid to disagree with Crockett. (Sometimes, when he made suggestions, she would say simply, “No, I don’t think so.”) Whatever her reaction, Sylvia knew why she had come. She would park her bike out in front of his house purposefully, intent on not wasting his time with what he might consider frivolous talk.

One of the most important things Crockett’s class did for Sylvia was to make her aware of social conditions in the outside world. Crockett made connections: if the class read Thomas Mann, he discussed current politics in Germany. One of the requirements for his course was that each student contribute a dollar a month to CARE, from earned money rather than allowances. He also arranged international pen pals, and from 1947 through 1952 Sylvia corresponded with Hans Neupert, a German student. In these letters, as in her journals, she discussed the atomic bomb, the Korean War and its atrocities, the peace movement, and other events on the international scene. Some of her creative writing in high school also dealt with political themes: strikers on the labor front, being an American, the responsibilities of moral political action. Even as a high school student Sylvia thought of herself as a political person.

As part of Crockett’s attempt to integrate study with life, he took groups of students biking through Europe and England during the summer. Sylvia and her close friends Perry Norton and Phil McCurdy could not afford a summer abroad; the fifteen to twenty students who did go were the target of Sylvia’s envy. The closest she came to the Crockett summer program was writing about it when she was editor of
The
Bradford
, the school newspaper.

The Crocketeers were not just excellent students. Some of them produced and acted in plays; others edited the paper and yearbook; and they all wrote and submitted their writing to magazines and newspapers in order to accumulate the rejection slips Crockett required. And they played jokes. In April Sylvia and some other students woke Crockett at 2:00 a.m. (the day following his scolding them because they had never seen a sunrise) and took him for a lakeside cookout breakfast, promising him worse punishment if he ever again criticized their habits.

Sometimes, however, Sylvia’s laughter was more frenetic than amused, Crockett thought, and he wondered whether she was able to relax enough to enjoy life. Would she ever give up her aim of always being the best? Would she ever mature enough to realize the impossibility of that? Crockett’s method of teaching was to make students care passionately about what they were doing, but his tactics were not without humor, and behind his businesslike manner was a world of love. Sylvia’s need to excel came not from Crockett, nor from any other of her teachers; it came from herself and, of course, from her mother. It was unconsciously connected with her natural need to be loved. From early childhood, she had learned that her parents’ love depended on her achievements.

Crockett’s classroom influenced Sylvia in other ways. It made her conscious of religion and the power of differing religious beliefs. It made her see that she was part of what Crockett called the “privileged community” of Wellesley. As part of that elite world, she had responsibilities beyond her own self-satisfaction. The life she chose to lead should take account of this responsibility.

Sylvia shared in many of Wellesley’s privileges but others were closed to her. She was not completely accepted in the high school. She did not have as many clothes as some of her classmates, nor were hers always the right ones. She had no car and did not learn to drive until several years after her friends had licenses. She had seldom been out-of-state. Her family rarely went on vacations or even ate meals out. She recalled what a thrill it was to pick up Mr. Schober on Sundays at the Braintree Country Club and be offered a meal there. Like the rest of her family, Sylvia appreciated good food but she felt disadvantaged knowing it was being provided only because she was an employee’s grandchild. Later in life Sylvia would mention her mother’s “threadbare financial situation” and that, as a result, she “could not travel, vacation, go to summer school, etc.”

Sylvia also came to realize that her only route to a good college education was through scholarships. In Wellesley, a “good” college was an Ivy League or Seven Sister school. Any public institution was considered inferior. Her financial situation did not make Sylvia poor, but it did undermine her sense of self during the years at high school and, later, college because she was surrounded with comparatively wealthy friends. Sorting out values was difficult, especially when her own family cared a great deal for material things. As she later lamented to a college friend, “Why the hell wasn’t I born with a whole place setting of sterling silver in my mouth?”

Worries about money surfaced often in Sylvia’s journals and diaries. She didn’t need Crockett’s encouragement to submit her writing for publication. She was already doing that, hoping for extra income. For a girl who babysat, 50c a line for poems was royal payment. Sylvia sent her work to places that she knew paid well —
Seventeen
,
The
Christian
Science
Monitor
,
The
Atlantic
,
Mademoiselle
.

Sylvia submitted material from her sophomore year in high school on, and by her senior year she had accumulated sixty or seventy rejection slips. But she also had acceptances from
Seventeen
,
The
Christian
Science
Monitor
, and
The
Boston
Globe
. Her news stories in the latter paid $15 each, as much as the short story she had sold to
Seventeen
. In all, Plath’s earnings for nine acceptances during her senior year totaled $63.50. Even more important, she was succeeding in a professional market while she was still a high school student.

Despite this success, Sylvia wrote in her diary during that senior year, “Never never never will I reach the perfection I long for with all my soul — my paintings, my poems, my stories.” Whatever she tried, it had to be done perfectly. Sylvia’s idealization of herself, of her talents and capabilities, pushed her to try to excel in everything. When she did not or could not, the less-than-perfect results depressed her seriously.

Excelling in high school meant long days of hard work. A typical day from Sylvia’s sophomore year ran up to sixteen hours. Taking the bus to school; going to English and second-year Latin, physical education or orchestra; lunch; French, geometry, and art; and then basketball practice for nearly two hours, taking the late bus home in time for dinner. After the evening meal she began the hours of homework. Sylvia kept her straight-A record throughout high school but the record was not earned without strain. Many of her diary entries mention sore throats, high fevers, long bouts with minor but debilitating illness. She took a rigorous academic schedule and worked as well in the school orchestra, on decoration committees for dances, and on the school paper.

What she worked hardest at, however, was being accepted socially. In the fall of her junior year, she was asked to join Sub-Debs, a sorority. That invitation helped her feel as if she belonged, and then the dating that she thought was crucial to her maturity started in earnest. She asked Perry Norton to the fall Sub-Deb dance and John Pollard to the Christmas party. There were reciprocal dates; in fact she mentioned a dozen different boys in her diary under the heading “1948-49—Boys Gone Out With.” She even tallied everything:

Boys asked by me - 4

Dates requested - 19 (7 turned down)

Dates gone on in all - 12 + 4 = 16

Sylvia’s obvious delight in the improvement in her dating situation shows in her flippant tone (one list titled “Boys who asked and were unlucky”) and her “List of excuses for unwanted dates,” which included “TB or cancer” and the note that she had turned communist and no longer associated with wealthy boys.

Sylvia dated, or at least flirted with, nearly forty boys during her last two years in high school. Her diaries suggest that all this activity — her long awaited popularity — was not simply fun. Schoolgirls of the 1940s and 1950s, including Sylvia Plath, had their sights set on marriage. The list Sylvia kept of her dates during the summer of 1949, between her junior and senior years at high school, shows how conscious she was of a boy’s origins — the prep school or college he attended, the relative status of his family.