Olive Higgins Prouty at her desk, 1950.
You have been through a terrific ordeal and I know well you are still terribly anxious and beset by all the decisions to be made and also by Sylvia’s suffering. I wish I could help relieve your anxiety about Sylvia’s future, but I am very hopeful there will be no disfiguring scars left on either her body or soul.
Sincerely
Olive H. Prouty
{Sylvia was now at McLean Hospital, Belmont, Massachusetts}
OCTOBER 22, 1953
Dear Mrs. Plath,
I went to see Sylvia yesterday, and we went out to lunch together. She met me with a smile, looking very pretty in her blue suit and her hair lovely. After lunch at the Hartwell Farms, we stopped at various fruit stands on our way back to the hospital where I had an appointment with Dr. B. Dr. B. said that Sylvia’s weaving was the best in the shop, though Sylvia had told me it was “awful.” Later, she showed it to me and it is really exquisitely done. She gave me the typing I had asked her to do and that, like the weaving, was flawless. Dr. B. suggested that she is a perfectionist, which accounts for her self-depreciation if she falls short of perfection in anything she does. I didn’t leave her until darkness began to fall. She asked me to send her more manuscript to copy—also said she would like a beginner’s book in Culbertson contract [in the game of bridge]. Isn’t that encouraging? I shall mail her one today …
Sincerely,
Olive H. Prouty
{The following letter is from Mrs. Prouty to Dr. William H. Terhune}
WALNUT ST.
BROOKLINE, MASS.
NOVEMBER 2, 1953
Dear Will,
… Dr. H. says Sylvia will recover completely in time. There are no schizophrenia symptoms, no psychosis of any kind, and no fear the present neurosis will develop into a more serious mental condition …
I would like Sylvia to go to you finally, but one of the doctors at McLean said to me, “If she is improving here, why change her?” Because the treatment at McLean seems to me so unconstructive (though I didn’t tell him this). None of the patients are given a schedule. No occupational therapy or outdoor exercise is required. No stimulating mental effort is provided (like the little green books at Silver Hill). No philosophy of living is offered and no instruction as to how to live wisely when one is well again …
Sylvia received insulin therapy and after several weeks showed definite signs of improvement. She submitted to a series of shock treatments toward the end of her stay at McLean, but her understanding psychiatrist promised to he with her throughout the treatment, and Sylvia’s faith in her doctor was without reservation.
By the fifth of December she seemed to be her normal self. To see her eyes light up again and a genuine smile accompany her first embrace of me was cause for deep thanksgiving! She told me that she was determined to return to Smith for the second semester: “I know I can do it, Mother! I know I can do it!”
Sylvia handed me this following letter in the spring of 1954, saying, “I never sent this. However, I kept it as a record of how I felt about things at the time, looking back at last summer.”
BELKNAP HOUSE,
MCLEAN HOSPITAL,
BELMONT, MASS.
DECEMBER 28, 1953
Dear E.
The rather enormous lapse in time between the date of this letter and the date of your brief-but-eloquent plan for me to write needs an explanation. I don’t know just how widely the news of my little scandal this summer traveled in the newspapers, but I received letters from all over the United States from friends, relations, perfect strangers and religious crackpots; and I’m not aware of whether you read about my escapade, or whether you are aware of my present situation. At any rate, I’m prepared to give you a brief résumé of details….
I worked all during the hectic month of June in the plushy air-conditioned offices of Mlle magazine, helping set up the August issue. I came home exhausted, fully prepared to begin my two courses at Harvard Summer School, for which I’d been offered a partial scholarship. Then things started to happen. I’d gradually come to realize that I’d completely wasted my Junior year at Smith by taking a minimum of courses (and the wrong courses at that), by bluffing my way glibly through infrequent papers, skipping by with only three or four exams during the year, reading nothing more meaty than the jokes at the bottom of the columns in The New Yorker and writing nothing but glib jingles in an attempt to commune with W. H. Auden. I had gaily asserted that I was going to write a thesis on James Joyce (when I hadn’t even read Ulysses through thoroughly once) and take comprehensives in my senior year (when I wasn’t even familiar with the most common works of Shakespeare, for God’s sake!). Anyhow, there I was, faced with the impossible necessity of becoming familiar with the English language, which looked as coherent as Yiddish to me, in the short sweet space of one summer. When I had come to think psychology, sociology, philosophy … were infinitely more worthwhile, valuable, and unattainable.
To top it off, all my friends were either writing novels in Europe, planning to get married next June, or going to med. school … The one or two males I knew were either proving themselves genii in the midst of adversity … or were not in the market for the legal kind of love for a good ten years yet and were going to see the world and all the femmes fatales in it before becoming victims of wedded bliss.
Anyhow, to sum up my reactions to the immediate problem at hand, I decided at the beginning of July to save a few hundred $$$, stay home, write, learn shorthand, and finesse the summer school deal. You know, sort of live cheap and be creative. Truth was, I’d counted on getting into Frank O’Connor’s writing course at Harvard, but it seemed that several thousand other rather brilliant writers did, too, and so I didn’t; so I was miffed and figured if I couldn’t write on my own, I wasn’t any good anyhow. It turned out that not only was I totally unable to learn one squiggle of shorthand, but I also had not a damn thing to say in the literary world; because I was sterile, empty, unlived, unwise, and UNREAD. And the more I tried to remedy the situation, the more I became unable to comprehend ONE WORD of our fair old language.
I began to frequent the offices and couches of the local psychiatrists, who were all running back and forth on summer vacations. I became unable to sleep; I became immune to increased doses of sleeping pills. I underwent a rather brief and traumatic experience of badly given shock treatments on an outpatient basis.
Pretty soon, the only doubt in my mind was the precise time and method of committing suicide. The only alternative I could see was an eternity of hell for the rest of my life in a mental hospital, and I was going to make use of my last ounce of free choice and choose a quick clean ending. I figured that in the long run it would be more merciful and inexpensive to my family; instead of an indefinite and expensive incarceration of a favorite daughter in the cell of a State San, instead of the misery and disillusion of sixty odd years of mental vacuum, of physical squalor, I would spare them all by ending everything at the height of my so-called career while there were still illusions left among my profs, still poems to be published in Harper’s, still a memory at least that would be worthwhile.
Well, I tried drowning, but that didn’t work; somehow the urge to life, mere physical life, is damn strong, and I felt that I could swim forever straight out into the sea and sun and never be able to swallow more than a gulp or two of water and swim on. The body is amazingly stubborn when it comes to sacrificing itself to the annihilating directions of the mind.
So I hit upon what I figured would be the easiest way out; I waited until my mother had gone to town, my brother was at work, and my grandparents were out in the back yard. Then I broke the lock of my mother’s safe, took out the bottle of 50 sleeping pills, and descended to the dark sheltered ledge in our basement, after having left a note to mother that I had gone on a long walk and would not be back for a day or so. I swallowed quantities and blissfully succumbed to the whirling blackness that I honestly believed was eternal oblivion. My mother
believed my note, sent out searching parties, notified the police, and, finally, on the second day or so, began to give up hope when she found that the pills were missing. In the meantime, I had stupidly taken too many pills, vomited them, and came to consciousness in a dark hell, banging my head repeatedly on the ragged rocks of the cellar in futile attempts to sit up and, instinctively, call for help.
My brother finally heard my weak yells, called the ambulance, and the next days were a nightmare of flashing lights, strange voices, large needles, an overpowering conviction that I was blind in one eye, and a hatred toward the people who would not let me die, but insisted rather in dragging me back into the hell of sordid and meaningless existence.
I won’t go into the details that involved two sweltering weeks in the Newton-Wellesley hospital, exposed to the curious eyes of all the student nurses, attendants, and passers-by—or the two weeks in the psychiatric ward of the Mass. General, where the enormous open sore on my cheek gradually healed, leaving a miraculously intact eye, plus a large, ugly brown scar under it.
Suffice it to say that by fairy-godmother-type maneuverings, my scholarship benefactress at Smith got me into the best mental hospital in the U.S., where I had my own attractive private room and my own attractive private psychiatrist. I didn’t think improvement was possible. It seems that it is.
I have emerged from insulin shock and electric (ugh) shock therapy with the discovery, among other things, that I can laugh, if the occasion moves me (and, surprisingly enough, it sometimes does), and get pleasure from sunsets, walks over the golf course, drives through the country. I still miss the old love and ability to enjoy solitude and reading. I need more than anything right now what is, of course, most impossible, someone to love me, to be with me at night when I wake up in shuddering horror and fear of the cement tunnels leading down to the shock room, to comfort me with an assurance that no psychiatrist can quite manage to convey.
The worst, I hope, is over … Somehow, all this reminds me of the deep impression the movie “Snake Pit” made upon me about six years ago. I only hope I don’t have any serious relapses and get out of here in a month or two.
… I can now have visitors, go for drives, supervised walks, and hope to have “ground privileges” by the end of this week, which means freedom to walk about the grounds alone, to frequent the Coffee Shop, and the library, as well as the Occupational Therapy rooms.
… I long to be out in the wide open spaces of the very messy, dangerous, real world which I still love in spite of everything …
As ever,
syl
The following was written more than three years after her own breakdown when Sylvia, married to Ted Hughes, was studying on a Fulbright grant in Cambridge, England. S. was the son of a dear friend. His mother had written me about his being deeply depressed and asked my advice about urging him to get psychiatric counseling.
NOVEMBER 29, 1956
Dearest Mother,
I was most moved by your account of S…. I suddenly “felt myself into” his state where he must feel, as I felt, only a little over three years ago, that there is no way out for him scholastically. I wish you could somehow concentrate on him—have him over alone for a weekend, get him to talk, break down whatever sick reserve and terror he has and even get him to let go and cry.
If you think you can, use me as an example. I’m sure he thinks that even though I went to a mental hospital, I never had any trouble about marks. Well, tell him I went through six months where I literally couldn’t read, felt I couldn’t take courses at Smith, even the regular program … Tell him I went back without a scholarship for my half year. I know only too well how it is to have nothing anybody says help. I would have felt almost better if people had not tried to be optimistic when I honestly believed there was no hope of studying and thinking. I am sure he is not that badly off.
Find out what his marks are. Is he in danger of failing? If not, tell him that (even in our competitive American society) while marks may get scholarships, people are judged by very different standards in life. If he tries to enjoy his studies (I assume he is now taking some courses he likes), he will be enriched throughout life. Try to give him a life-perspective … walk out in nature maybe and show him the trees are the same through all the sorrowful people who have passed under them, that the stars remain, and that, as you once wrote me, he must not let fear of marks blind him to the one real requirement of life: an openness to what is lovely among all the rest that isn’t. Get him to go easy on himself; show him that people will love and respect him without ever asking what marks he has gotten.
I remember I was terrified that if I wasn’t successful writing, no one would find me interesting or valuable.
Get him to see that he must like his work for itself first … tell him to force himself every time he does a paper or exam to think, “Whatever mark I may get, I liked this … I have discovered such and such. I am that much richer whatever the examiners may think.” Marks have no doubt become the black juggernaut of his life. Do not try to be overoptimistic, because that will only make him lose trust in you…. Agree with him about the problem, even if it is dark. Start from the bottom. If he is not failing, tell him how good that is. If he likes any subject, tell him how important that is. If he gets despairing or frantic and thinks he can’t work or think, give him some ritual phrase to repeat sternly to himself. Let him be gentle in his demands; tell himself he has as much right to work and be at Harvard as anyone …
Tell him … that I only want to share some of my own experience with him … that I thought … that my case was utterly hopeless.
Do ask him out alone and talk straight out with him. It is better he should break down and cry if he has to.
I think psychiatrists are often too busy to devote the right sort of care to this; they so seldom have time to get in deep and blither about father and mother relationships when some common sense, stern advice about practical things and simple human intuition can accomplish much.
… When he dies, his marks will not be written on his gravestone. If he has loved a book, been kind to someone, enjoyed a certain color in the sea—that is the thing that will show whether he has lived.
He probably feels something like a hypocrite, as I did—that he is not worth the money and faith his parents have put in him … Show him how much chance he still has … Help … his summer plans … I wish you would give him as much time and energy as you can through this time. Adopt him for my sake (as the Cantors did me) … Show you love him and demand nothing of him but the least that he can give.
Sylvia returned to Smith in the second semester, taking only three courses. She was not on scholarship at this time. I wanted her to be free of any sense of obligation and cashed in an insurance policy to meet her expenses. During the first few months in 1954, we telephoned frequently—more for my peace of mind than hers.
Sylvia was welcomed back by her classmates and the faculty. Understanding and every possible kindness were given her. She picked up an active “date life,” which helped build up confidence, and she said she enjoyed herself “in a casual, hedonistic way.”
After Sylvia’s return to college, she made me think of deep-sea plants, the roots firmly grasping a rock, but the plant itself swaying in one direction then another with the varying currents that pass over and around. It was as though she absorbed for a while each new personality she encountered and tried it on, later to discard it. I kept saying to myself, “This is only a stage; it will pass.”
Her memory grasped and held to discords and seemed to have lost recollections of shared childhood and early girlhood joys. Kindnesses and loving acts were now viewed cynically, analyzed for underlying motives. We all strove to be patient, helpful, and understanding through this very difficult period of self-rediscovery on her part. Then, periodically, to our relief, her sunny optimism would reassert itself and we would be once more showered with affection.
SMITH COLLEGE
NORTHAMPTON, MASS.
> UNDATED; WRITTEN FEBRUARY 1954]
I have spent a good deal of time chatting in the rooms of various girls in the evening and playing bridge, figuring that getting well acquainted with some of the underclassmen is most important at first. Am reading Hawthorne’s short stories, Crime and Punishment, and Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser.
Needless to say, it is simply wonderful to be back here, and I feel no desire to graduate, amazingly enough, with the rest of my class.
UNDATED; WRITTEN MARCH 1954
Dear Mother,
The flight to New York was ecstasy. I kept my nose pressed to the window, watching the constellations of lights below as if I could read the riddle of the universe in the braille patterns of radiance …
… I spent the afternoon at the Museum of Modern Art, which I am getting to know better and better … I looked up a few paintings of modern American artists to describe for my long feature article for Vogue, which is going to take a heck of a lot of research. I stayed to see the late performance of the movie … and have never been so moved … It was a silent French version of the “Temptation of Saint Joan,” with written titles and piano music going all the time … quite casually on its own, absorbing some of the powerful emotions aroused by the black-and-white counterpoint of faces—it was almost all faces—of Joan and her tormenters … a picture image of Joan on a wooden stool with a paper crown and stick scepter in her hand contained all the impact of Christ and all martyrs. The burning at the stake was incredibly artistic and powerful, but the very lack of sensationalism, just the realism of fire licking at sticks, of soldiers bringing wood, of peasant faces watching, conveyed by the enormity of understatement the whole torture of the saint.