What was sylvia plath best known for

In , when Plath was eight years old, her father died as a result of complications from diabetes. He had been a strict father, and both his authoritarian attitudes and his death drastically defined Plath's relationships and her poems—most notably in her elegiac and infamous poem " Daddy. Plath kept a journal from the age of eleven and published her poems in regional magazines and newspapers.

Her first national publication was in the Christian Science Monitor in , just after graduating from high school. In early , she attended a party and met the English poet Ted Hughes. Shortly thereafter, Plath and Hughes were married, on June 16, Plath returned to Massachusetts in and began studying with Robert Lowell. Her first collection of poems, Colossus , was published in in England, and two years later in the United States.

She returned to England, where she gave birth to her children Frieda and Nicholas, in and , respectively. That winter, Plath wrote most of the poems that would comprise her most famous book, Ariel.

She died on February 11 of that year. Often, her work is singled out for the intense coupling of its violent or disturbed imagery and its playful use of alliteration and rhyme. After Hughes left her for another woman in , Plath fell into a deep depression. Struggling with her mental illness, she wrote The Bell Jar , her only novel, which was based on her life and deals with one young woman's mental breakdown.

Plath published the novel under the pseudonym, Victoria Lucas. She also created the poems that would make up the collection Ariel , which was released after her death. Plath committed suicide on February 11, Much to the dismay of some admirers of Plath, Hughes became her literary executor after her death.

While there has been some speculation about how he handled her papers and her image, he did edit what is considered by many to her greatest work, Ariel. It featured several of her most well-known poems, including "Daddy" and "Lady Lazarus. Plath won the Pulitzer Prize in for Collected Poems. She is still a highly regarded and much-studied poet to this day. The story of Plath — her troubled life and tragic death — was the basis for the biopic Sylvia starring Gwyneth Paltrow in the title role.

We strive for accuracy and fairness. She faces death once every decade and has been revived twice. At the end of the poem, the speaker again experiences the unwanted rebirth. The poem ends with the speaker planning to eat the men, or doctors, who restore her to life to make sure they are not able to revive her when she again faces death at the end of the decade.

A much quoted poem, Lady Lazarus is seen by critics as a confessional poem in which Plath uses her personal pain to illustrate much wider themes and subjects. Out of the ash.

I rise with my red hair. And I eat men like air. Published in a poetry collection with which it shares its name, Ariel was written by Plath on her thirtieth birthday. Due to its motifs of birth and death, it is speculated by critics that the poem acted as a sort of psychic rebirth for the poet.

By a feminist interpretation, the narrator undergoes a series of transformations through the poem in an effort to build a new identity. She starts by identifying herself as her oppressor, the stallion, symbol of masculinity and male dominance.

She then transforms into an arrow to prevent her submission and kill her oppressor; and finally identifies herself as water, a symbol of femininity and purification. Ariel is renowned for its sensuous imagery; and for its varied and complex interpretations.

Black sweet blood mouthfuls,. Something else. In March , Sylvia Plath was hospitalized for an appendectomy , a surgical operation to remove the appendix. She had miscarried just a short time before this operation. Plath wrote this poem on March 18th, , about a bouquet of tulips she received as she recovered from appendectomy. The narrator treasures the whiteness and sterility of the hospital room as it allows her to ignore the complications and pains of living.

But the tulips; which she equates with excitability, with loud breathing, and with eyes that watch her as she rests; demand that she acknowledge the vivacity of life. They had their honeymoon in Paris and both became interested in astrology and the supernatural. However, her second pregnancy ended in miscarriage in February , with Plath writing to her therapist that she had been beaten up by Hughes two days before the miscarriage. On January , she gave birth to her son Nicholas.

The novel was published under the pen name Victoria Lucas. It was only three years after her death that the book was republished in the UK under her original name. Nicholas, their son, hanged himself in after a history of fighting depression. Follow more stories on Facebook and Twitter. At Hindustan Times, we help you stay up-to-date with latest trends and products.