Did poet Ted Hughes’s deserve the hate?

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Ted Hughes faced immense backlash from the feminist movement following Sylvia Plath's suicide in 1963 and Assia Wevill's suicide in 1969.

Do you think he deserved it? I’m asking because someone was taking to me about this and she thought he did, while I didn’t think he deserved all the vitriol which at times included death threats, physical attacks on his property, and being branded a murderer.

I felt very sorry for his children Frieda and Nicholas, as they both suffered and Nicholas later died by suicide, and Shura, who was murdered by her mother Assia Wevill at age 4.

Should children be kept in the dark about an abusive parent?

I doubt very much that the children were unaware, but they also had a relationship with him as their father and I’m not aware that he was abusive to them.

I find most poetry pretentious and self-indulgent, and I know very little about Sylvia Plath or Ted Hughes, so to me this is just an (apparently) famous man who was a serial cheater, and an abusive wife beater, who had not one but TWO wives kill themselves? I have no sympathy for him, and I feel as though if he was some unknown who worked in a factory, there wouldn't be the same defences of him.

So, did/does he deserve to be derided as abusive? Well, of course. Should anyone be sent death threats or have their property vandalised? Of course not.

Is it sad for his children? (Presumably who know their mother committed suicide, probably in part because of their abusive, cheating, wife beating father?) Yes. But I have to imagine it was probably more upsetting and damaging that their mother killed herself and they had him for a father, than that members of the public blamed and hated him for being a terrible person.

No, of course not. Freida Hughes openly defended her father. She has criticised the public and feminist activists for projecting hatred onto her father. She labeled this decades long targeting of him as an "abuse" and a "horrible form of theft," saying that the public knew very little about their private reality.

The “poetic temperament” does exist. Psychological and literary research identifies it as a heightened capacity for emotional processing, sensory observation, and a tendency to pause and reflect deeply on everyday experiences.

The. children were very aware. His daughter Freida publicly defended her father.

Does that description also include beating your spouse?

I don’t care about the rest of it. He was physically violent to his wife and intentionally hurt her. Nobody, ‘poetic temperament’ or not, can be excused for that. Plenty of poets manage to be brilliant, successful and creative without needing to beat their partners.

Ted Hughes’s children have publicly stated that they had a close relationship with their father. Freida acknowledged that the death of their father affected Nicholas deeply. He suffered severe depression and eventually died by suicide.

As Frieda Hughes stated, the critics of Hughes were not in a position to judge as they were not aware of the true nature of the relationships involved. Their fame created problems for the family after Plath’s suicide. But suicide of a family member heightens risk of suicide attempts by relatives. It’s a complex picture. No doubt Hughes was violent and unfaithful and Plath had mental health issues; and as other posters pointed out, she was left alone with no phone to raise two small children alone in the hardest winter in living memory thousands of miles away from home.

I'm not sure how what you've said here negates what I said?

Given Ted Hughes died of a heart attack while suffering from cancer, his son being devastated by his death seems wholly unrelated to him being a violent domestic abuser, whose mistreatment most likely contributed to two of his wives killing themselves?

And plenty of children love and are close to their abusive parents - that makes it no less psychologically damaging. They end up justifying the abusive behaviour, suppressing it, denying it...because they love their parent, and don't want to confront the truth.

Anyway, regardless of his children who have nothing to do with it, and are victims of his abuse themselves by suffering the effects on their mother and their lives, yes, obviously a man who was physically violent to his wife, and potentially raped her and caused her to miscarry with a beating - and then appears to have been abusive to his next wife, who also killed herself, does deserve disdain, contempt, and derision.

This is not difficult to figure out. Very odd question, OP.

And having looked into Ted Hughes thanks to this thread, the more I read about him, the more it's clear that he was a despicable worm who treated the women around him like objects to be used, abused, and discarded for his amusement.

Him being skilled at a pretty turn of phrase doesn't redeem him in the slightest.

He was a violent domestic abuser who likely sought out vulnerable women who he could manipulate, control and draw into cycles of conflict.

the fact he was a “literary genius” gave him an air of legitimacy that would never - and should never - have been afforded to Bob the sales manager. It imbues a depressingly tawdry and tragic pattern of behaviour with a romanticism and intellectual glamour that is undeserved. It’s plain VAWG.

that his children were traumatised is no surprise. Witnessing domestic violence and the death of your mother would do that to the hardiest of souls.

Ted Hughe married his second wife Carol Orchards in 1970, and remained with to her until his death in 1998.

@DancingNotDrowning Freida was 2 and Nicholas was 1 when their mother died. We don’t know what they might’ve witnessed.

Have I remembered rightly that he also destroyed a lot of her writing after her death, diaries or something? That's what stayed with me when I learned about her at college but I don't think we were taught about the rest of it

Yes, he did destroy some of Plath’s work and heavily edited some of her manuscripts.. He destroyed her final journal to protect their young children from the raw, distressing contents leading up to her death.

That’s horrific :(

I didn’t know that

Yup, he ticks all the 'utter bastard' boxes all right. His daughter has found a way to survive the dysfunctional by absolving and protecting her father - perhaps she has no choice for her own mental survival, but that doesn't mean we have to.

Ah, so he wasn't married to the second woman he was romantically involved with, who killed herself.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, otherwise. Plenty of men have affairs or mistreat women while being married until they die. The length of his marriage says nothing about the quality of it, or how he treated either his wife, or any other women in his life.

And even if he was a faithful husband who didn't abuse Carol in any way, it seems he was an abusive prick to multiple women before his marriage to her, so what I said still stands.

He most certainly deserves contempt.

Absolutely. How dare he destroy his wife's writing? Clearly, he was trying to get rid of anything she had written that painted him in a particularly poor light, under the guise of 'protecting' his children. What utter rot.

He just seems like a particularly nasty garden variety domestic abuser and misogynist.

I think it’s overly simplistic to blame Ted Hughes for what happened. Sylvia Plath had deeper problems. But he was a shit of a husband and undoubtedly had a negative impact on both women’s lives.

It is overly simplistic to blame Ted Hughes for what happened.

Assia Wevill began a passionate affair with Ted Hughes in the summer of 1962. At the time, both were married to other people. Wevill to Canadian poet David Wevill and Hughes to Sylvia Plath.

There’s no excuse for being a domestic abuser so I would say yes he deserves contempt. Read his poems, even he realised he was a shit. www.goodreads.com/quotes/66438-the-other-she-had-too-much-so-with-a-smile

This is true.

imho TH not just edited but rewrote some of SH’s poems. Whether this was in her honour or as a commercial opportunity…

Also The Bell Jar was published posthumously under her real name. Previously it was under a pseudonym (to protect her mother and others) and sold about three copies. So that was to say the least a bit of a winner. TH said all this was for the financial benefit of his children.

Anyone interested in SP and TH should give the awful film a swerve and read some of the (many!) books about them. For a good back story I would suggest Mad Girl’s Love Song.

Whether they witnessed violence against their mother, one of his lovers or anyone else, it would be extraordinarily unlikely they had never witnessed any abuse by a man who was a repeated and proved abuser.

why are you so keen to defend him? Did you know him or his family?