Today is another review for the Literary Wives blogging club, in which we discuss the depiction of wives in fiction. If you have read the book, please participate by leaving comments on any of our blogs.
Be sure to read the reviews and comments of the other wives!
- Kate of booksaremyfavoriteandbest
- Naomi of Consumed By Ink
- Rebecca of Bookish Beck
My Review
Oh, dear, Elin Cullhed and editors, morels come out in the spring. By October, it’s unlikely that any could be found, worm-eaten or not. Chanterelles are what you pick in the fall, among others.
Euphoria is about Sylvia Plath, set in the last year or so of her life. It begins when her daughter is one year old and she is pregnant with her son. It ends a few months before her death.
Before I get into my review, I want to comment on something. When I began reading this novel, I knew very little about Plath except she was a poet, she was married to Ted Hughes, and she committed suicide. Very recently, I read her novel, The Bell Jar, just by coincidence because it filled a hole in my Century of Books project. While I was reading Euphoria, I got the sense that there was a big controversy when Plath died. Some blamed her death on Hughes, who left her a few months before for another women. Certainly, there was a lot of anger against him for burning her diaries. Perhaps I’m seeing some reflection of the opposite side, but I ran across a post by All That’s Interesting, a blog produced by material collected from other sources, that states that Plath was at the nadir of her career when she died. Actually, her novel was recently published (one month before), she had been on BBC reading her poetry, and had recently finished her most famous poem, “Daddy.” So, where did this “nadir” idea come from? Maybe from Ted Hughes’s supporters?
That novel starts with the couple having moved to Devon at Hughes’s insistence. Plath liked living in London and feels lonely in the country, pregnant and left alone with her one-year-old Frieda while Ted goes up to London. Frieda wants attention all the time, and Sylvia has difficulty finding time to work or get anything done. Her marriage already seems rocky to me, alternating sometimes vicious verbal battles with voracious sex. Sylvia admits to liking being mistreated and having a fascination with death. She is extremely needy and jealous. He is always walking away.
The novel is written from Sylvia’s point of view. She is almost always either ecstatic or depressed. With her, as depicted by Cullhead, it is I, I, I. There isn’t so much a plot here as a detailed examination of her feelings as her children grow and her marriage breaks down. Jealous or not, she immediately recognizes that Aissa Wevill is after Ted.
This novel is sometimes difficult to read. Sylvia’s shifts in mood or reactions are sometimes hard to understand, and occasionally her thought processes were hard for me to follow.
What does this book say about wives or about the experience of being a wife?
Well. Certainly Sylvia would be a difficult woman to be married to. First, she’s possibly bipolar, unsure of herself, and obsessed with Ted. But Ted, I think, is not exactly a model husband, even for his time. He helps out sometimes (which is actually unusual for his time) but he withdraws a lot because he has to write. Sylvia has to ask for time to write even though it is her fellowship that is supporting them at the beginning of the book. There are a few signs that he may be threatened by her as a writer, although other times he celebrates with her.
I know this is a time when men generally weren’t involved much with family life and childcare—and sometimes he cooks, does dishes, or takes care of the kids—but I was shocked when he left Sylvia, sick with puerperal fever but with an infant and toddler to care for, to go fishing, in winter no less.
I don’t think this book says anything about marriage in general, just something about this particular, very volatile marriage. It seems like the volatility that made it exciting at first was what did it in finally.
As so often happens when one person in a couple is attracted to someone else and wants to leave, that person begins finding fault with the person he wants to leave in order to make himself feel better about this betrayal. Often, the very things that attracted him in the first place are the things that irritate him later. You may find fault with my pronouns, but it is often these pronouns that this applies to.
What? Me Read? 
Have you read Ted Hughes’ collection Birthday Letters? It’s his response to their marriage and her death, written over the quarter of a century after she died. It’s many years since I read it but I remember it being a deeply emotional, reflective collection. The word “toxic” gets thrown around a lot these days, but I feel it’s the best word to describe their relationship. I don’t think either of them came out of it unscathed, even if Hughes went on to be one of the most admired poets of the last century.
No, I haven’t. I knew very little about them before I read the book. I might look into it more.
I don’t know if this couple just weren’t suited for each other, or if illness got in the way. Unfortunately, there weren’t very many good medications for depression then, and it would have been so hard to live with. I found this book hard to read, too, but mostly because of how sad it is.
Well, he wasn’t helping her out much, even when she was sick! Even if she wasn’t depressed, it seems like her living conditions would make her that way. Especially when she can tell he’s attracted to a woman who is making a play for him. It seems like both of them were too conscious of her previous bout of mental health issues.
This was one of the most challenging we’ve done in my time with the club. I wished I was a little more familiar with Plath’s life and work.
Me, too. I found that a little frustrating. I had some difficulty reading it, although I enjoyed it.
Thanks for sharing this review with The Historical Fiction Reading Challenge. I found it very interesting.
Thanks for posting, Marg!