Book review: “Loving Sylvia Plath” is more devoted to the author’s polarizing circumstances than to her work

A popular form of writing today is to re-examine the lives of people, often members of marginalized groups, who have been crushed or disadvantaged by history.

Many writers wonder what influence societal assumptions and prejudices have on the memory of a person and what information do we have available to tell a more complete story?

Emily Van Duyne, associate professor at Stockton University, asks these questions in “Loving Sylvia Plath: A Reclamation.”

After Plath’s suicide, her husband and fellow writer Ted Hughes constructed the story that he had been the “stabilizing factor” in his wife’s life, but in the end even he could not save her. Van Duyne, however, rejects any notion that Plath was a bad mother or just a morbid poet. She believes Plath should be remembered as a complicated woman, a formidable writer – who overshadowed Hughes – and almost certainly a victim of domestic violence.

This book is not primarily a hermeneutic study or a close reading of Plath’s writings. Rather, Van Duyne’s source material for this reimagined portrait of Plath is her life circumstances.

Van Duyne seeks to undermine Hughes’ narrative of Plath’s life and the reasons why she ended her life. In the wake of #MeToo and cultural discussions about women of faith, Van Duyne argues that Plath’s story should be revisited.

Those seeking an introduction to reading Plath or a comprehensive biography should look elsewhere and consider the wealth of existing literature on the enigmatic literary giant. However, Loving Sylvia Plath: A Reclamation should be viewed as supplementary material for those seeking to better understand the circumstances of her final years.

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