Helen Steiner Rice Book

At first I really liked this biography but as I continued reading and getting to the second part that focuses on Plath’s marriage to Ted Hughes, I felt the biographer was unreliable in her representation of their marriage and biased against Plath, even going as far as to suggest that it was her jealousy that caused Hughe’s affairs (that are simply mentioned throughout the book). She attempts to paint a picture of Hughes as the perfect husband who was often embarrassed by his wife’s mood swings but was always good and supportive of her. Even though this may have been the case, she overemphasizes Plath’s mood swings and provides multiple accounts of people suggesting she was rude to them or antisocial and it’s clear how she is trying to justify or even cover Hughe’s unfaithfulness. When she finally reaches the point when Plath decided to file for divorce because of Hughe’s adultery, she writes that: “The inflexibility of her self-absorption, coupled with the dark moods that were inseparable from her strange genius, may finally have broken down her husband’s defenses at the very time Sylvia’s fierce daemon or inner self was emerging” (p.257) To me this is not how a good, reliable biographer would handle the portrayal of the two poets and their failed marriage. Of course when one takes into account that the book was edited by Hughe’s sister, Olwyn Hughes, it all makes sense. Overall this was an insightful account of background information for her work but all together problematic and unreliable when it comes to the portrayal of Plath and Hughes.