Did poet Ted Hughes’s deserve the hate?

[6ate9]

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.

Probably!! 🤣

God. A womanising bastard AND an idiot, to fail to pay a competent person to draft a comprehensive, enforceable will for him, to ensure his intentions were realised after his death.

It was the thought of handing on the misery. TH seems to have left his children out of his will, giving no legally binding instruction to pass on some of the financial and reputational legacy, but contradicting it with a non binding letter that did not see his wishes followed. Technically, both what he did, and did not, do for his children (for whatever reason), resulted in unhappy routes to pursue.

If only I were that erudite!

The intertwined lives of TH, SP and AW are deeply tragic. At the heart of it were two children who suffered greatly.

Well, three children, one of whom was murdered by her mother.

That is heartbreakingly tragic.

It's hard to know. Plath was the business brains of that marriage in terms of running their writing lives professionally, following up on having owing money paid etc. After her death and despite his increasing success, he never seems to have negotiated fees, contracts etc -- apparently it never occurred to him. Even when his tough sister took over as his agent, she also made some major screw-ups, like accidentally deleting a clause in the contract for the screen rights to The Bell Jar that ended up in a huge lawsuit.

By which I mean, I suppose it's possible it was incompetence. Though that would be more understandably if he'd died suddenly. But he had colon cancer. He was 68. It wasn't entirely unexpected.

Quite a lot of people don’t leave a will. Pablo Picasso died at 91 without leaving one.

I suppose it's possible it was incompetence. Though that would be more understandably if he'd died suddenly.

It's possible that it was intended to avoid inheritance tax too, though - so his assumption about the sufficiency of his will would be based on that particular financial hit not being passed on to his relatives.

TH's parental and sibling dynamics sound very like some I have seen through my parents' families, down to the region he was born into and the working lives that were in the background. In that, at least, I can imagine some of the viewpoints (I won't even say 'conversations' as discussion may not have gone that far). Complete projection by me and no way of knowing, though.

Surely it's pretty obvious why PP didn't make a will? Yes, the old story is that he was too superstitious to make it, but it's surely far likelier that trying to figure out who got what, out of his huge coterie of acknowledged and unacknowledged, legitimate and illegitimate children, a widow, ex-wives, multiple mistresses, and a whopping great portfolio of priceless artworks, houses, stocks and shares etc. was just something he didn't want to deal with?

I was just giving an example. TH did leave a will. Maybe he didn’t want his children paying inheritance tax, maybe they had trust funds or maybe he thought his wife would “honour” his letter. We will never know.

Well, we will if she covers it in her memoir. If she ever publishes it. Though perhaps she's handed it in secretly and it won't appear till after her death.

One would like to imagine one of Plath's lost/destroyed journals showing up somewhere as well, miscategorised with TH's stuff at Emory or something, or hidden away in a safety deposit by Carol Hughes. It's not entirely outside the bounds of possibility. A friend of mine discovered a completely unknown novel by a famous early 20thc writer stuck in with a lot of uninteresting correspondence in an archive.

I thought perhaps it would be published after her death, or maybe she changed her mind.

@SinisterPeaches What did your friend do with her discovery?

I don't think anyone reasonable would think that SP's children (now sadly one) shouldn't be the only people to benefit from the income from her work. If Carol, the rather strangely obsessed Olwyn or anyone else has interfered with that, shame on them.

SP thought the relationship between TH and his sister Olwyn was almost "incestuous.” (Like William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy’s relationship.)

See also George Orwell (Anna Funder's excellent biography Wifedom); Thomas Hardy; Charles Dickens etc., etc.

Women had no legal rights then. Some “genius” women writers had deeply toxic or emotionally destructive relationships with their husbands too. (Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Zelda Fitzgerald.) Some highly intelligent people seem to lack emotional intelligence. Albert Einstein treated his wife very cruelly.

This is, of course, quite true. But deeply sad.

Leonard Woolf was not "deeply toxic" or "emotionally destructive" - quite the opposite.

Agree. Leonard Woolf is blameless

but Virginia's Duckworth half-siblings aren't

Not sure he was “blameless?” He was quite controlling. Virginia Woolfe complained that he treated her like a "comatose invalid" by strictly managing her daily life, yet she also deeply credited him with giving her the stability needed to write. It seemed a bit mixed. Virginia Woolfe’s great love was Vita Sackville-West.

Spelt Woolf wrong!!