Disastrously, after renting out their London flat, Sylvia invites the Weevills to visit them in the country in Devon at Court Green and indeed, they do go. It would turn out to be the first nail in her own coffin. Hughes had already felt a visceral attraction to Assia's darkness and foreign accent and style. She was so Other than Sylvia, the complete opposite and it is likely this that attracted Ted as much as anything.

Adding yet more to the story, Assia had set out that weekend to couple's Devon house having told friends that she was off to "bag" Ted Hughes and went to Devon in her war paint. None of this though, is mentioned in the film. It is as if the couple meet, develop a mutual attraction (all true) but none of Assia's intent is noted, and indeed, it is not noted in very many biographies of Plath as well. It is as if Plath had been somehow overreacting, picking up on something that didn't exist, which isn't true. The attraction did exist and it was strong. Nothing may have happened, but it soon would and Plath was no fool. She had seen her husband flirt and charm before, but even she knew this was different. Here was someone who spookily, wanted not only Plath's husband, but in very many ways, was as much, if not more, obsessed with Sylvia as she was with Ted. For as much as Assia wanted to bag and bed Ted, she wanted to fuck Sylvia as well in some primal way.

To be fair, Plath had always had some fear of abandonment, since her father had passed away when she was nine and living in Winthrop, Massachusetts. Plath had already attempted suicide at least once with the sleeping pills and another time that she mentions briefly about walking out into the ocean, but it "spit her back out like a cork... I guess it didn't want me." A man like Hughes, already predisposed to some sort of infidelity was a poor choice. Yet it is likely that it was this very thing that attracted Plath to Hughes in the first place - his inability to be tamed, the way she had managed to tame and control. He was the only man, Aurelia, Plath's mother played brilliantly by Blythe Danner (Paltrow's real mother in life), was quoted as saying that "was not afraid of Sylvia." and whom Sylvia was more afraid of.

One has seen this type of match time and time again, and if Hughes had perhaps understood his wife's true fragility a little better, then perhaps things would have turned out differently and there would have been nothing to push her over the edge. That assumes that the affair is what pushed her over the edge. Certainly, it gave a helping hand, but it seems entirely possible that Plath may have done so anyway.