Sylvia Plath: The Darkness Behind the Darkness

The 27^th October is the birthday of Sylvia Plath; she would have been 93, a grand age by anybody’s reckoning. But what if she had lived to be 43, 53, 63… I am imagining Sylvia Plath in menopause. What would that have looked like? The emotional rawness of her writing and her ability to transmute pain into art is a talent we have rarely seen before or since. What treasures from the other side, and pearls from the depths of the psychic ocean would she have brought to us, had she lived beyond the age of 30.

As an entry point into the interior world of a person, I think in terms of astrological transits, at least as a symbolic framework to the soul’s journey. At 30, Sylvia was just past her Saturn return, with the last hit on 23 December 1961, 50 days before her death by suicide. Saturn returned to the position of her natal Saturn for the first time in April 1961 which was the year she began writing The Bell Jar, (though she may have written a much earlier draft). In October 1962, around the time of her 30^th birthday, she began writing the Ariel poems, among which some of her best-known poems: “Lady Lazarus”, “Daddy”, and “Edge”, feature.

I wonder how future transits would have unfolded for Sylvia… the Uranus half return, the Chiron return, second Saturn return… but this would be pure conjecture and anyway, the point of my post is not an astrological review, though it would be interesting to do an in-depth study of Sylvia’s chart, including the pivotal points of her life and key relationships, particularly with Ted Hughes. I’m sure many astrologers have taken up the mantle, and while it may seem a little morbid or even profane to pour over the lives of the dead in this way, I personally feel that the story of Sylvia Plath’s life remains only partially told. Perhaps there is a hidden darkness. By that I do not necessarily mean a probe into her mental health and suicide, I mean something unknown. The darkness behind the darkness.

I first read Plath’s The Bell Jar when I was 22. It was October and I was on holiday with my mother in Menorca. It was just out of season, but the sun was still warm, and the summer crowds had departed. On my Walkman I listened to the distinctive and emotionally loaded voice of Dolores O’ Riorda in the Cranberries’ first album, “Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?”. Thinking of it retrospectively, I acknowledge that both women, Sylvia Plath and Dolores O’ Riordan, had trouble in the soul. And I did too, which is probably why I was drawn to them. I was trying to make sense of my own inner turmoil. I’d just returned from a year living in Dallas, Texas where I’d had some strange occult experiences (for another time).  Back in Edinburgh, I was working for a criminal defence lawyer who had his fingers in the underbelly of the city, and I suspect was on the right side of the law only by credentials. He was an alcoholic and liked to frequent various public houses, one of which was a hub for the legal professionals who worked hard, played hard, and more than occasionally sniffed white powder in the back room. I accompanied him a few times to these haunts, and other less salubrious establishments in the city’s darker territories. I was privy to the corruption behind the respectable veneer of society and the inner workings of the power structures of control (albeit it on a relatively small scale). This man was married; he said that he and his wife were separated though they still lived together. I knew this because when we were not in court, or in the pub, his office was in his home. I was young, vulnerable, and emotionally unstable; he took advantage of this. Not for the first or last time did I experience manipulation by men of power or otherwise.

In other ways, there were deep undercurrents running through my life. My relationship with my mother was intense and complex. It remained that way right up until her death last year. On that holiday, we had a couple of mysterious encounters. One which involved an underground temple and a snake. No kidding, it was an entirely archetypal and symbolic experience that has stayed with me in a powerful way.

The point of this post, however, is not a reflection on my own life (I’ll keep that for my memoirs) rather it is a comment on the untold lives of women, the deeper stratum that lies beneath the socially constructed personas, and the forces that drive them.

Dozens of biographies have been written about Sylvia Plath. The rawness and genius of her work and the tragic aspects of her short life have captivated us. Last year, in June 2024, another such work was published, only this was a bit different from the rest: The Occult Sylvia Plath: The Hidden Spiritual Life of the Visionary Poet, written by Julia Gordon- Bramer, introduces another side to the Poetess, one which is rarely mentioned, and which was downplayed by her family and husband. Sylvia’s interest in the occult (which accompanied by Ted Hughes included tarot and using a Ouija board to contact the god Pan) were minimized by Plath’s mother, possibly because it was believed public knowledge of these activities would have discredited Sylvia and damaged her career. While it seems both Sylvia and Ted drew on occult practices for creative inspiration, Sylvia was also well versed in the classics and mythology. Her father was a mason, as was mine, and I don’t know about Sylvia but seeing masonic symbolism at age 11 triggered something in me. This exposure was a gateway to my love of symbolism and the mythic realms, (though I believe this was innately in me).

When Sylvia Plath met Ted Hughes, she was 23 years old. They married a little less than 4 months later. Their first meeting at a Cambridge party has been made much of, the union branded by the fires of passion. In the many biographies that have been written, Hughes has occasionally been depicted as a brute, and there are some details of their life together that invite this type of criticism. There is infidelity, physical abuse, and the fallout of a fiery and passionate relationship that began with a kiss and a bite and ended in a suicide. For the interested biographer there is much meat to pick over. In a social and cultural context, the marriage and domestic life of the two artists invite a critical view of the role of women, and the difficulty of balancing a literary career with domestic life in 1960s America and the UK.

Sylvia died only 6 years after marrying Hughes, and while their marriage was tumultuous, Sylvia had periods of emotional and psychological vulnerability before the meeting. In 1953 at the age of 21, Sylvia attempted death by suicide by swallowing sleeping tablets and retreating to the basement of the family home. This event landed her a spell in Maclean hospital for 5 months. During this time, she received insulin shock therapy and electroconvulsive therapy. In the 1950s, Maclean was a prominent psychiatric institution which was well known for treating the affluent and creative class. Among those treated were James Taylor, Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, John Forbes Nash, and Susanna Kaysen. The year Plath was sectioned saw the inception of the C.I.A.’s notorious and controversial MK Ultra. This was an illegal mind-control research programme that operated until 1964. Fearing discovery, the C.I.A. destroyed most of the records in 1973, however details of the programme later emerged through various investigations. Some believe the practices continued in a more covert fashion under different names.

Sylvia Plath fictionalised her time at Maclean in the roman-à-clef, The Bell Jar. Her mother, Aurelia Plath, strongly objected to the work being published in the US under Plath’s own name. The book was not published in the States until 1971, after the death of Sylvia and her mother. Ted Hughes encouraged Silvia to publish the book under the pseudonym “Victoria Lucas”, to protect the feelings of the people depicted in what was clearly a semi-autobiographical account of Sylvia’s descent into madness.

The details of the true nature of Plath’s treatment at MacLean remains vague. In his book, C.I.A Doctors, Colin Ross says of the treatments carried out at Maclean and other prestigious medical institutions, “This wasn’t fringe science—it was embedded in the highest echelons of medical authority.”

In an interview on “Gnostic Radio” with Miguel Conner, broadcast last year, Jullia Gordon- Bramer, author of the Occult Sylvia says that Plath’s famous “Daddy” poem refers not only to her own father Otto Plath, a German Biologist who died when Sylvia was only 8, but also to Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis. I haven’t read the book and so cannot comment on this view, however, for me, Plath’s experiences raise many uncomfortable questions around the principles of psychiatry generally, female psychiatry, female madness, creativity, and a lurking sense of the occult running much deeper than tarot cards and Ouija boards.

In his well-researched and well-presented post on “MK Ultra: The Hidden Hand”, Joshua Stylman says of MacLean,

 What makes McLean particularly notable is the pattern of high-profile creative individuals who were “treated” there in subsequent decades—often emerging with dramatically altered personalities or creative directions.

In the current DSM IV, Sylvia Plath might today be diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, characterised by emotional instability, dissociation, a long-term pattern of significant interpersonal relationship instability, emotional outburst, and a distorted sense of self. BPD, a label most often assigned to women, is worthy of further research behind the veil of psychiatry. The condition is well depicted in Girl, Interrupted, a film based on the 1993 memoir of Susanna Kaysen who was a psychiatric patient in MacLean in the 1960s.

If more women told their stories unapologetically and boldly, the paralysing sense of shame, including victim shaming that has inhibited open acknowledgement of the ways in which women have been harmed in our culture, the veil would indeed begin to rise, shining a light on the more subtle mechanics at play. And I know this does not just apply to women, but as a woman, as a woman who has navigated some dark territories, I have first-hand experience of the complex undercurrent of the female psyche and the ways in which women can be vulnerable to certain manipulations.

Sylvia Plath died by suicide on 11^Th February 1963 in London. After preparing her children’s breakfast and leaving it in their room, she sealed the door to their bedroom, and returned to the kitchen. She died from carbon monoxide and was found later that morning by a workman.