10 - Sylvia Plath’s letters and journals

Summary

There are many reasons why Sylvia Plath's letters and journals matter. They are strewn with the sharp writing and observations of a poet and novelist, as we see in Plath's descriptions of people she knew: 'I'm having Mrs. Hamilton, the wife of the dead coffee plantation owner and local power, to tea today. She is old, booming, half-deaf with a dachshund named Pixie' (LH, p. 432). 'Linda is . . . nondescript as an art gum eraser. Her eyes are nervous and bright like neurotic goldfish' ( J, p. 38). Plath writes honestly and subversively about the body: A delicate, pointed-nailed fifth finger can catch under dry scabs and flakes of mucous in the nostril . . . a heavier, determined forefinger can reach up and smear down-and-out the soft, resilient, elastic greenish-yellow smallish blobs of mucous . . . sometimes there will be blood . . . God, what a sexual satisfaction! ( J, p. 165) In her explicit anatomization of the grotesque, Plath breaks the rules of decorum. She looks at the body as if through a magnifying glass, and does so with wry humour.