Sylvia Plath Archive Comes to Light, Reveals Abusive Last Months With Ted Hughes

In unsettling news, The Guardian's Danuta Kean reports that some heretofore unseen letters written by Sylvia Plath to Dr. Ruth Barnhouse, who treated Plath in the early 1950s, reveal that then-husband Ted Hughes beat the poet and told her he wanted her dead. "[T]he correspondence is understood to be one of Plath’s only surviving uncensored accounts of her last months," writes Kean. More:

Nine letters written after Plath discovered her husband’s infidelity with their neighbour Assia Wevill in July 1962, form the core of the collection. The letters are part of an archive amassed by feminist scholar Harriet Rosenstein seven years after the poet’s death, as research for an unfinished biography. Also included in the collection are medical records from 1954, correspondence with Plath’s friends and interviews with Barnhouse about her therapy sessions with the poet. The archive came to light after an antiquarian bookseller put it up for sale for $875,000 (£695,000).

Plath’s treatment with Barnhouse ended when the poet moved to England but the two shared a close friendship, which has long been of interest to scholars because of their affection for one another. The correspondence reveals a warm and open intimacy, as well as a shared sense of humour.

But as well as exposing her pain at the discovery of Hughes’s adultery, the most shocking passages reveal Plath’s accusation of physical abuse shortly before miscarrying their second child in 1961, in a letter dated 22 September 1962 – the same month the poets separated. Several of Plath’s poems address her miscarriage, such as Parliament Hill Fields: “Already your doll grip lets go.”

The extent of their estrangement during this period is revealed in another letter in the collection, dated 21 October 1962, in which Plath claimed to Barnhouse that Hughes told her directly that he wished she was dead. Though Plath had a history of depression and had attempted to kill herself a number of times previously, she did not tell Hughes about her struggles with mental health until some time after their marriage.

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