The American poet, novelist, playwright, and short-story author Sylvia Plath is as famous for her award-winning writing as she is for her personal life and death. Her one and only novel, The Bell Jar, is regarded as a roman à clef or a novel meant to be looked upon as fiction but in all actuality is real. The protagonist's descent into mental illness in The Bell Jar parallels Plath's own disconnect with sanity. If you've never read it before, you should give it a try.Plath was married to English poet Ted Hughes. They lived together in London for years before she discovered he was having an affair with one of her close friends. During this time, Plath attempted to take her life several times, once purposely getting into a car accident.
After their split, Plath moved into the London flat you see pictured above, which is 23 Fitzroy Road. It was once lived in by famous English poet William Butler Yeats and Plath viewed this as a good omen. Nevertheless, mental anguish got the best of Plath and she took her own life in the kitchen in February 1963.
After clogging the space under the door with towels to protect her sleeping children in the other room, Plath stuck her head inside the oven and died of carbon monoxide poison.
She was only 30. Several years later she was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, making her the first person to ever receive one after death.
^^^This is the plaque adorning the wall of 23 Fitzroy Road. I'm surprised that there is no mention of Sylvia Plath. I wonder if this plaque was here during the time she lived there as well. Although Yeats is intriguing in his own right, I find Sylvia's story and connection with the home much more interesting.♡- Kristen
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ReplyDeleteThe blue plaque honoring W.B. Yeats on the Fitzroy Road home was definitely there when Sylvia Plath lived there. It was an incentive for her to live in the house. As to why there is no mention of Plath on the house, it was her daughter, Frieda Hughes's decision to put the blue plaque identifying the home of her mother on the Charcot Square, Primrose Hill house instead of the Fitzroy one. Frieda explained the decision stating, "My mother died in that house. She lived in this one."
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