Plath’s Hospital Writing

Abstract

It was not that Sylvia Plath went from having the experience of breakdown and recovery in 1953 to immediately begin writing probingly about it. Rather, as soon as she came under the control of her mother once more, she began writing about the various disguised personas that she was comfortable with. Of course, she did not write seriously for many months: all her energies went into staying up with her coursework, trying to come to terms with her memory loss, and proving to friends and acquaintances at Smith and on other campuses that she was herself again — whoever that self might be. One of the reasons during her writing of The Bell Jar in 1961 that she chose to end the book with Esther still in the hospital is that such a conclusion obviated her re-living the following years, times of discontent and anger, times of even more outright conflict with her mother.