Volume 42, Number 6 · April 6, 1995
Kicking the Myth Habit
By Rosemary Dinnage
The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath & Ted Hughes
by Janet Malcolm
Vintage, 207 pp., $12.00 (paper)
Why the 'silent woman'? Among the vast number of words generated by the suicide of the poet Sylvia Plath (which are hereby being added to) is an account of a scene in Yorkshire in 1960. Olwyn Hughes, sister of Plath's English husband, Ted Hughes, and a crucial figure in the wretched cause célèbre that the girl's death became, called her brother's wife badly behaved, inconsiderate, and rude—the kind of sisterly-in-law remark that can crop up in family gatherings. Sylvia 'glared accusingly [and]...kept up her unnerving stare. Olwyn, who immediately regretted she'd said a word, remembers thinking, 'Why doesn't she say something?'' The glaring, silent woman, as described here by Olwyn Hughes to a biographer, is the Bad Sylvia; the Good Sylvia is the one described by another biographer as 'a fragile, lovable creature, in danger of being crushed,' female victim of a cruel male world. And she is a silent woman also because, while everyone else argues and writes, she alone can't 'say something'—has not been able to since 1963.
Review, 2862 words
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