Plath Aurelia Schober - Letters home: correspondence, 1950-1963

In answer to the avalanche of inquiries that has descended upon me ever since the publication of Sylvias poems in Ariel and her novel, TheBellJar, I am releasing a section of her intimate correspondence with her family from the time she entered Smith College.

It may seem extraordinary that someone who died when she was only thirty years old left behind 696 letters written to her family between the beginning of her college years in 1950 and her death early in February 1963. We could not afford long-distance telephoning, though, and Sylvia loved to writeso much so that she went through three typewriters in that same time.

Throughout these years I had the dream of one day handing Sylvia the huge packet of letters. I felt she could make use of them in stories, in a novel, and through them meet herself at the varied stages in her own development and taste again the moments of joy and triumph and more clearly evaluate those of sorrow and fear.

Along with the letters written to her brother, Warren, and to me, I have included correspondence with the late Olive Higgins Prouty (the novelist), for between Mrs. Prouty and Sylvia there existed a very special bond. Mrs. Prouty was not only the benefactress whose fund made Sylvias education at Smith possible, she also was Sylvias friend and came to her rescue when Sylvia suffered a breakdown in 1953. They found each other mutually fascinating as their relationship developed. After her marriage and the establishment of her writing career, Sylvia spoke of Mrs. Prouty as her literary mother, in whom she could confide with complete trust and freedom.

Throughout her prose and poetry, Sylvia fused parts of my life with hers from time to time, and so I feel it is important to lead into an account of her early years by first describing the crucial decisions and ruling forces in my own life. As is often the case in a family having European roots (ours were Austrian), my father made the important decisions during my childhood and early girlhood. However, in the early 1920s, when financial catastrophe overtook our family as a result of unwise stock market investments, my father, broken in spirit and blaming himself most unjustly for his very human error, handed over the reins of management to my mother to the extent that my five-years-younger sister and my thirteen-years-younger brother grew up in a matriarchy. Nevertheless, ours was a peaceful, loving home, and I assumed that all marriages were like that of my parents.

Both my children were always asking me to tell us about the olden days when you were a little girl, and I shared with them the unforgettable memory of my first day in school. Although my father spoke four languages and had lived in England two years before migrating to the United States, he and my mother spoke German at home. There were no children nearby to play with, so I too spoke only German. I told my children how isolated I felt at recess as I stood by myself in a corner of the schoolyard, listening intently to what the children were shouting to each other. The two words I heard most frequently were Shut up! so when I went home at the end of the school day and met my father, I answered his greeting proudly and loudly with Shut up! I still remember how his face reddened. He took me across his knee and spanked me. Weeping loudly over that injustice, I sobbed out, Aberwasbedeutetdas,Papa? Wasbedeutetdas? (What does that mean?) Then he realized I had not understood what the words meant; he was sorry, hugged me, and asked me to forgive him. It was my first and last spanking.

From that time on we always spoke English at home; my parents bought me all the books we used in school; father was our teacher, and mother and I studied together. By the end of the school term in June, I was given a double promotion, moving from the first to the third gradea great boon for me, for I left behind those who had made such sport of my early mispronunciations.

Perhaps I aroused Sylvias interest in minority groups by my account of my early childhood in a primarily Italian-Irish neighborhood in Winthrop, Massachusetts, during World War I. Even though my father became an American citizen as soon as that privilege was possible, our name Schober, with its German sound, resulted in my being ostracized by the neighborhood gang, called spy-face, and at one time being pushed off the school bus steps and dumped on the ground, while the bus driver, keeping his eyes straight ahead, drove off.

I felt this prejudice was completely unjust for my parents sake as well as my own, for they were ardent converts to American democracy. They believed every word their idol, Theodore Roosevelt, ever wrote or uttered and, because of him, voted the Republican ticket all their lives. Support at home compensated me for outside unpleasantness, as well as did success in the classroom; and family games, walks, visits on Sunday to the Museum of Fine Arts or to my paternal uncles family in Jamaica Plain were the sweeteners of my childhood.