three Sylvias | srp

I'm not sure what Janet Malcolm was after when she wrote the silent woman. The back-ad copy says that this is a "feat of literary detection" and that in The Silent Woman, Janet Malcolm examines the biographies of Sylvia Plath to create a book about Plath's afterlife.

Malcolm succeeds in giving us a very, very thorough retelling of the various biographies, with a special focus on Anne Stevenson whom she portrays as a rather weak writer and victimized by Plath executor Olwyn Hughes (Ted Hughes, Plath's husband's sister). Olwyn, as anyone who knows about Plath knows, never was one to mince words and she is fierce in her protection of the image of Plath that she will allow the public to see. As long as Olwyn is alive, there will be biographies that are authorized that read like Anne Stevenson's Bitter Fame - which is to say, expected, the usual high points and low points, the same tired stories we have heard time and time again.

Malcolm focuses a lot on the Myth of Plath, which is the myth that Plath herself created in her lifetime, that of the brilliant but tortured victim of Ted Hughes. Of course, there was also a great love between Plath and Hughes (what else could make such high animosity possible between the two), but when Hughes left for the infamous Assia Weevil, who admittedly had "set out" to "bag" him as she told a girlfriend, the Plath - Hughes marriage fell to pieces and Sylvia fell with it.

That Sylvia was a victim, if one can still use the word and not be pounced on for being politically incorrect, then certainly she was a victim of infidelity and betrayal in the first order. Hughes had lied about other women in the past and Sylvia had stood by him, sending out his work and playing a sort of Zelda to his F. Scott, putting her husband's career and fame ahead of her own very palpable talent. That Sylvia did this willingly one does not question. But it would seem that the deal was not without its conditions, as would be expected or anticipated. Nothing is free, and even in the best of marriages, when we give, we expect some modicum of respect in return. Perhaps not an actual deed or tit-for-tat, but certainly to be treated rightly and respectfully. So after years of putting her husband first, Sylvia soon finds that he too has put himself first, tossing her by the wayside in favor of Assia, who was dark to Sylvia's light (in terms of looks) and, at the time, seemed in terms of character, light to Sylvia's dark.