C a s s a n d r a
S w a n
Notes From The Author
CANDY
COTTON KID AND
THE FAUSTIAN WOLF
Sylvia Plath was born in
Boston, America on October 27th, 1932. She was a bright child who started to
write poetry when she was five years old. Her first poem was published in a
local paper when she was eight. Her father, Otto Plath (of German descent) was
an authority on bee keeping and died suddenly of medically untreated diabetes
in Sylvia's early childhood. She made her mother, Aurelia (German/Austrian),
sign a document to say that she would never marry again. Sylvia had a younger
brother, Warren; they were both very creative children. Sylvia's mother dedicated
herself to her children wholeheartedly and she was extremely supportive of
Sylvia who was encouraged to develop her talent as a budding poet and artist.
Aurelia had to work hard to keep the family; Sylvia and Warren's education were
of paramount importance to her. Despite her focus and her mother's support,
Sylvia was deeply wounded by the death of her father. In the years that
followed, it would appear that she never truly mourned her loss. This loss
created difficulties in her growth process and early adult life with a
psychiatrist, eventually resulting in a nervous breakdown and a suicide attempt
at her family home, after staying in New York for her Mademoiselle
Magazine Guest Editorship in June 1953. Sylvia was hospitalised and
administered electroshock treatments and regular sessions with a psychiatrist.
After a long period of containment, she returned to her college and studies
with a new sense of purpose and the ability to express herself emotionally,
which resulted in sexual exploration.
Sylvia was a high achiever, who would often over exert
herself in her search for perfection. Her poetry and prose were regularly
published in Mademoiselle, Seventeen, The New Yorker, Christian Science
Monitor and The Atlantic Magazines; simultaneously she gained the
highest grades in all her chosen subjects. She met Ted Hughes in Cambridge
whilst studying at Newnham College; they both admired each other's poetry and a
whirlwind romance began. They married secretly in June 1956. Hughes introduced
Sylvia to the occult, the use of an Ouija board and he would often hypnotise
her, teaching her pagan values. Sylvia devoted herself to marketing her
husband's poetry and soon found she had assisted him to be a successful,
well-published poet. Her poetry and prose were not so swift in terms of a
collection being published. Sylvia bore two children, Frieda and Nicholas, and
the family purchased a home in Devon after living in many different flats and
rooms in Cambridge, London and Boston they settled into village life in England.
The delightful cottage known as Court Green gave the outward appearance of
ideal family life. In my opinion, Sylvia displayed signs of Post Natal
Depression and sadly, Hughes betrayed his wife by adopting a mistress, not long
after the move to Court Green. Sylvia took this very personally; she was
shattered emotionally and angry. She did not give up, in fact Hughes'
infidelity inspired the most dynamic and extreme of her works, including such
titles as Lady Lazarus, Edge, Words and many more.
With Frieda and Nicholas as toddlers, Sylvia uprooted
and moved to London in December 1962, to a flat that used to be occupied by the
Poet Yeats no less! It was a bitterly cold, bleak winter in England; with a
troubled mind, loss of weight, flue and children with colds, Sylvia still took
time to write and write with immense determination. Hughes would visit her
occasionally, but always went home to his mistress.
2/
At this time Sylvia had The Bell Jar (An
autobiographical Novel) published, under the pseudonym of Victoria Lucas.
A combination of the book being published,
illness, cold,
a lack of moral support and the grief involved in her
pending divorce, triggered a long line of
emotional traumas which overwhelmed Sylvia.
Hughes met with his wife four days prior to her suicide
at her flat; Sylvia had left her children with a friend. In her
depressed condition, Hughes would have easily been able to hypnotise her and
use post-hypnotic suggestion to encourage her to kill herself. (In a state of
hypnosis, the right and left-hand brain hemispheres synchronize; at this point
the person being hypnotised becomes receptive to auto-suggestion).
Despite the promise of an au-pair, a psychiatrist and her prescription of
anti-depressant tablets, on February 11th 1963, Sylvia committed suicide
by placing her head in a gas oven. (After putting food and drink for her
children in their bedroom and sealing the doors with tape and towels, so the
children would survive). One of Sylvia's final poems – Edge – gives a
poignant yet objective description of her own preparation for her chosen exit
from this world; the most tragic conclusion to a troubled life, for Sylvia was
truly unique.
Hughes sent a callous telegram, via a third party, to
advise Sylvia's mother of her precious daughter's death, stating “SYLVIA
DIED YESTERDAY”. Many posthumous collections of Sylvia's poetry were
published thereafter (with Hughes at the helm as Editor) the first being Ariel. She
attracted a cult following, greater than most poets do dead or alive. Olwyn (Hughes'
sister) acted as Agent for the Plath estate and took on the role of mother to
Frieda and Nicholas.
Hughes continued his relationship with Assia Wevill and
subsequently she bore him a daughter. Yet another tragedy occurred when Assia
committed suicide with their child who was two years old, by the same means as
Sylvia! It appears to be perfectly evident that Hughes had a devastating effect
on women. To drive two women to suicide, insidiously, by means that are not
completely physically evident, is torture, indicative of the kind inflicted by
a disturbed, even psychopathic personality. This type of personality can appear
charming and kind; a wolf in sheep's clothing, one of the reasons why I
composed a theory with this standpoint. Hughes did marry again in 1970's,
curiously to a nurse; it is doubtful that he hypnotised her, as she outlived
him.
Despite Hughes' foul play and often violent poetry, he
was awarded the distinguished title of Poet Laureate in 1984. In the years to
follow his merciless infidelity, he refused to break his silence and discuss
Sylvia, his marriage to her and her suicide, or the suicide of Assia and their
child. It is with great passion I have written this radical piece of work:
having studied and researched Plath and Hughes diligently, daily for over a
year, my findings also indicate that Sylvia could have been victim of sexual
abuse in her early childhood. Her isolated sailing trips as a child with her
uncle, an early tonsillectomy, regular bouts of sinusitis throughout her life,
lead me to believe this theory is relevant and could explain some of her
physical ailments, high-achieving personality, suicide attempts, mercurial
highs and lows and subsequent pre-occupation with death. Sylvia was bi-polar
and some of the aforementioned can sometimes be attributed to that diagnosis,
but they are also connected to behaviours adopted by adults abused as children.
Many abuse victims repress trauma; this is a safety-mechanism which delays the
process of experiencing such a trauma, until the mind and body regurgitate the
experience, often in women in their thirties. The sub-conscious mind has 3/
no conscious awareness; therefore the trauma lies
dormant in the memory store, until such times as the person experiences further
trauma later in life, which can trigger the original trauma to
surface (as with Sylvia's marriage breakdown).
Victims of child abuse often over accomplish; this
behaviour pattern is usually followed by periods of nervous debility, as Sylvia
experienced regularly throughout her brief and fated life. In my work, I am
simply giving Sylvia's traumas a voice – a resounding voice – and
confronting some of her repressed emotional pain, which
caused her so many problems in her childhood, adolescence and adulthood. These
traumas include, undoubtedly, the premature death of her father.
With the hope and aim to shed further light on a tragic
life - for those who care to read - and unravel a complex life, Candy
Cotton Kid and the Faustian Wolf was born.
We cannot exhume Sylvia Plath's frail body, to gain
more proof or evidence of her untimely death, we can only hope to defend her
from beyond her grave, as Hughes carefully planned to defend himself beyond
his, stating that Sylvia's medication made her suicidal, inferring the
medication was accountable for Sylvia's suicide. In 2001 Hughes' friend gave
the letter to a newspaper, which published an article with an outline of the
letter and its contents – yet another calculated, sober way of manipulating a
reason for Sylvia's suicide. More recently, fresh evidence suggests Hughes was
abusive and violent to Plath when she was pregnant with his child and she
miscarried.
A final thought: just as Sylvia gained further
recognition posthumously, should Hughes be stripped of his Poet Laureate title
posthumously for the untimely death of Sylvia Plath, Assia Wevill and the two
year old child Hughes fathered, known as Shura?
What do you think?
“ Candy
Cotton Kid and The Faustian Wolf is a prismatic trip into the nectar of
psychological disdain. It is a profound journey into the drowning world of
human pain and it trades emotional melee with “the trireme a perverted dais.”
It is a calling, a begging, melodic rampart that transcends the male mind to
comprehend beyond its maleness and to concede a conscience that all sin is
suspect of the “all seeing eye.” The richness of verbiage, the colourfulness
and descriptiveness of such destructive realism, makes humanity stop in its
tracts to consider, that sex is more a weapon than it is a gift of
loving-kindness.”
– Daniel Scott Batten
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