Books December 2018
Sylvia out in the cold
A review of The Letters of Sylvia Plath Vol 2: 1956-1963 by Sylvia Plath.
In the February 2018 issue of The New Criterion I wrote that
Plath did not just love her brother Warren, as she reiterates in these letters, she impressed upon him how both of them were part of a family enterprise that their mother had established. This eighteenth-century sense of fealty is quite astounding and not quite like anything else you can read in the lives of modern American writers.
I called Volume I of Plath’s letters Pamela redux, after the Samuel Richardson novel, since it seemed to Plath that her virtue had been rewarded, that a marriage to Ted Hughes fulfilled all of her aspirations. She had held out for a hero commensurate with her high ambitions, and a man, she believed, committed to creating a large family. She wanted at least four...
A Message from the Editors
Support our crucial work and join us in strengthening the bonds of civilization.
Your donation sustains our efforts to inspire joyous rediscoveries.