Ted Hughes: please Discuss

I know Plath had mental health issues before she met Hughes but that doesn’t mean he’s without blame. Often men who are abusive are drawn to vulnerable women. Plath may have been highly intelligent and successful but she was vulnerable. He will have played his part in it I’m sure. There is a section in The Bell Jar I think that I think shows she did have self destructive tendencies however. Been years since I read it but I think it was about losing her virginity and knowing she was making an emotionally painful/ bad choice but she wanted to feel that pain. Someone on here may know the section I mean

Hughes wasn't the arrogant, obnoxious bully people seem to think he was. He was a quiet, reserved sort of character – even a little shy. Those who knew him generally spoke highly of him, and he seems to have been a very loving father.
He betrayed his wife by having an affair, which is a cruel and horrible thing to do, but none of us know what the marriage was like. I always hesitate to judge people who cheat. Sometimes people have affairs because they're desperate for love and affection rather than sex and excitement. I just don't think they were suited. He was a quiet, working-class Yorkshireman who loved country life, and she was a gushing, rich, all-American girl who loved the big city.

There is a very good documentary on Youtube about Ted Hughes. I think they say on there that Plath's GP prescribed her the worst kind of medicine for someone in a manic phase. It tipped her over the edge. She didn't kill herself because she was pining for Ted. She killed herself because she was mentally ill. It's unfair on Plath to see her as the victim of his affairs. It suggests she was a weak, fragile woman who couldn't live without her man. She wasn't like that at all. She was fierce and gutsy and brilliantly clever. Had she not suffered from bipolar disorder, she'd never have done what she did.

I'd definitely recommend his poetry though. Some of it is very hard, but his nature poems are wonderful. Try Season Songs. They're a great way into his work.

It was a dreadful winter, she had discovered that Assia was pregnant, and she took her own life the night before she was due to be admitted to a London psychiatric hospital. It’s likely she was terrified of more electro-convulsive therapy and that Hughes would have her committed and take the children.

Interesting thread! I agree with miranda above. ‘A lover of unreason’ is a fascinating read. I have also just read ‘loving Sylvia Plath’ by Emily Van Duyne which describes violence by Hughes against Plath. It’s a little over written in my opinion but the violence appears to be fairly well documented by Plath and others (she mentions a couple of events in her diaries/ letters). Some new letters recently came to light and they’ve sparked up the debate again. Heather Clark’s biography is great too and very balanced in my opinion, lots of new info as others have said eg the cocktail of meds Plath was on at the end, and how the treatment she received after her first suicide attempt was pretty poor.

I’ve been reading the biographies and following the story since my late teens and find it fascinating in itself to see how the way things are told/ interpreted has shifted since the 1980s. Of course, we will never know the truth but I’ve come to think the Hughes family in general acted pretty badly. It’s a very sad story.

Red Comet alludes to Sylvia having an affair with Al Álvarez. However, at that time Hughes had already left her for Assia and was keeping his options open with at least two other women.

I have read all the biographies. Ted Hughes treated Sylvia Plath and Assia Wevill terribly. ‘A Lover of Unreason’ details how desperately unhappy Assia Wevill was and how she didn’t trust Hughes to care for 4 year old Shura as he did Frieda and Nicholas. He probably reined in his womanising with his second wife because a third suicide would have made him look even worse.

Plath was actually getting better. There were also rumours of a reconciliation. Plath was let down by many many healthcare professionals over her life.
I’m not one for Hughes blaming.

I knew someone who was a close family friend of Hughes and Plath. (I also met him when I was a teenager studying English at school - he was calm, deeply interesting and quiet inspiring, especially as I hated poetry.) Their relationship was apparently very turbulent from the start put down by most as them being 'artistic types'. There are two sides to every story and people will always choose the one which suits their own narrative. The lady I knew said it was terrible to see them tearing each other apart and that he never really recovered from Plaths death (she threw him out then moved to London where she committed suicide). She remained his friend until his death.

Sylvia Plath had been seeing someone else in the months before her death, if I recall. And if it's not fact, it's heavily speculated. If I recall Jonathan Bate's book touched upon it.

Hughes' writing has an altogether different beauty to that of Plath. Its really worth looking into Birthday Letters and then googling the poem, 'Last Letter.'

I don't think we'll ever know what happened.

Hughes has been unfairly cast as a villain. In reality, Sylvia Plath suffered from a serious mental illness, and that killed her, not his infidelity. Living with someone who is mentally ill is very hard. As for his second wife, she was a fragile woman who was haunted by Plath’s suicide. The awful thing about suicide is that it’s weirdly contagious. When a teenager takes their life, the chance of a sibling or friend copying them is scarily high. Ted Hughes’ daughter is still alive and speaks of her father with deep love, so he can’t have been such a bad man.

As for his poetry, it can be difficult stuff. But he is at least a serious and great artist trying to say profound things. He’s probably one of the three best British poets since WW2 (the others being Philip Larkin and Geoffrey Hill…and maybe Donald Davie). There doesn’t seem anyone today of his stature. I remember a devastating review of Carol Ann Duffy’s work in which the reviewer wrote that “it all feels a bit GCSE.” You could say the same about Simon Armitage’s stuff. Poets like Hughes and Geoffrey Hill treat poetry as a serious and profound art. Great poetry is meant to be visionary. Think of Blake and Wordsworth and T S Eliot. Poets like that had something to say. So did Hughes. Seamus Heaney (who was a close friend) wrote that Hughes had his feet in the soil and his fingers on the horizon. He writes about the forces at work beneath or behind nature. Yes, he’s difficult (though not as difficult as T S Eliot or Geoffrey Hill), but he’s worth the effort.

So glad you’ve mentioned Birthday Letters - it really is a great collection, and a late-life reflection after refusing to speak on it so long.

His collection Birthday Letters is fantastic (worth reading alongside Plath).
Plath and Hughes had quite a complex relationship. However, his infidelity wasn’t the only problem by a long shot. Amongst other things she’d been put on an inappropriate medication due to name differences in drugs between US/UK.
I don’t think it’s far fetched to say it was protect the children. Looking at what ultimately happened to Nick it was probably a good idea that Plath’s last journals were destroyed. I’d imagine they were very dark!