Ted Hughes: please Discuss

[wildfellhall]

Serpenting and I wanted to stop interrupting a TV thread to discuss Ted Hughes and his burning of Sylvia Plath's last journal/s as her executor soon after she took her own life.

His explanation was plausible - that he wanted to make sure that their two children would never be able to read them.

I have never got over discovering that not only did Plath take her life after being with him but also the woman he left Plath for, Assia Weevil (?), also took her own life and the life of her very young daughter with Hughes, Shura.

His suffering must have been very great but still; as a writer he might have put more aside to preserve her legacy.

I'm also interested in people who love his poetry & whether people can separate the artist from his life.

I'm quite ambivalent about his poetry but I love 'Thought Fox'

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!

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.

Yes that is a good point,

I am sure he suffered his whole life after Plath's death for the blame people felt.

Mental illness in families is a huge challenge.

I just always think - how did he not cherish Assia a bit better given what you hope he might have learned?

Tragic deaths for sure.

I've just always found his poetry too bleak for me but I am prepared to give him another chance. Sylvia, IMO, was the real genius in the couple.

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.

You make the case for Hughes that has withstood the test of time and I'm not qualified to argue with you at all, but some people support their spouses when sick.
Leaving her alone in that house with two small kids while you pursue a preferred muse.. it's incredibly cruel at the very least. And yes suicide has a contagion influence but Assia also killed their child. It's an incredible act, relatively rare.
Of course there was serious depression in the family. It's just destroying her last journal benefitted him on many counts. Not least his protection of the children.
I read Plath's letters and he strikes me as someone acting like he felt he was godlike and continuing to do so after Plath died.
But I am interested in being persuaded - it still feels a little like blaming the women though.
Was he an innocent in these tragedies? Is that a fatuous question? Sorry if it is.
My father left my mother with young children and I empathize with the woman generally!

Plath was very fragile, far from home, that winter was very bitter, she didn't have much help - I feel so sorry for her. She clearly frlt life wasn't worth living. And the meds are supposed to have her wrong as you say. It's just so heartbreaking.
I just feel he should have done more for her.

But you make good points and I am going to look again at his work.

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.

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.

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 think blaming Hughes, I agree, is too simple.

But given they are both dead and leave important work as their legacy - it is not inappropriate to discuss his impact on her and vice versa. I would make a few observations to discuss.

Plath's voice at the end of her life, in her journals, was deleted by him. Her final testament, in a way, was destroyed by him. As her executor and her beneficiary, he set the narrative.

He may have acted in haste but given his literary education I am still shocked at it. It is at the very least the act of someone who feels guilty and I would have thought the concern for the children's reading her journal was hardly an immediate danger given their ages.

His pursuit of Assia despite both marriages was very determined.

She was a very bright and a woman who had had a career. Her demise and that of her child is pretty horrible to even contemplate.

I am not blaming him but he was driving a car which was part of these car crashes. I'm sure he suffered enormously because of these events and the birthday letters do show he was shocked and traumatized. But he left Assia to look after Plath's children in what had been Plath's home.

We now see Picasso as clearly abusive to women and predatory but of course he was still a genius.

I feel like Hughes st the very least was brutal and callous and hadn't learned to stop despite the first tragedy. I just don't get why shagging around was still more important to him than growing up and keeping it in his trousers.

His poetry has the voice of a natural force so I have sense of someone who felt entitled to behave as he wanted. That's all and that he didn't learn the lesson of the first death.

Of course the women made their choices, Plath did have a history of attempts on her own life.

Im just thinking I bet her family and Assia's families wish their relative had never met him.

I am only asking to discuss it in the light of his extraordinary destruction of her journal. It is still, to me, a very arrogant act.

I did see him read once with James Fenton. He was an amazing looking figure. You can see why women keeled over a bit.

What I mean is the act of the destruction of the journal is a villainous act. It's potentially the act of someone who is destroying evidence as well as a literary act of destruction.

That was her voice and he silenced it. I feel that is worth discussing.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I had no idea that she was due to go into hospital so soon.

I just think if he had helped more, been around more, rallied the troops to support her, just not left her alone knowing how fragile she was. It's extraordinary. She needed people to come and help also so she could write.

But my father was just as vile to my mother when his brain was working out of his trousers or as my friend calls was "C*-struck" which I think us one of the most accurate descriptions of this mental state.

I was just really lucky my mother survived it.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-34378064

This biography does show that he was a compulsive shagger.

I guess it was 'beyond his control'.

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.

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

The thing is we aren’t talking about depression or anxiety (valid mental health conditions), which are often helped by things like support/talking/therapy. I talk as the very close relative of someone who lived with schizophrenia - bipolar and schizophrenia are so far removed from anything we can even begin to imagine. The person in my life was someone I had no choice but to support (that close), it was horrific for them and honestly I felt borderline manic myself at times.

I don’t know enough about Hughes and Plath specifically, but the little I do know about them and what I experienced leads me to give him some of the benefit of the doubt.

In terms of art, I think separating art from the artist is the only way really - unless their art is offensive.

I do agree, it's probably unethical to judge him from that stance - I think I am proposing this like a subject for debate as I am genuinely interested.

Putting aside all other issues - this man destroyed the last journals of a very fine writer. He was her executor and he argued in print that he was protecting their children (?) who were in no danger of reading them for over a decade. Why not just lock them away and let time make sense of events? That is the duty of a literary executor, surely?

Protecting the children was a weak argument, he should not have done it, It clearly benefitted/protected him not them at that point. He didn't want the world to read what she had written even in the future.

How can it ever be justified as no one knows what she wrote but I think we all know that he can't have been comfortable with what it was. Strictly speaking this was her suicide note and potentially her last communication to her children. What if she changed her will? Appointed another executor?

He also had a subsequent relationship where the woman and child died at the woman's hands. This was his partner and their child.

How can that not be seen as a pattern of a kind? The records show he was being very promiscuous over these years while also appearing to create apparently committed relationships.

Notwithstanding mental illness in Plath- no one forced him to sleep with all these other women and to be so consistently unfaithful, did they?

Reading The Birthday Letters I think someone could make the argument that here is a writer intellectually dressing up the consequences of compulsive, destructive womanizing as the inevitably fateful force of the universe, nature's power and all sorts of thrusting violent darkness as if he were the victim of them, a Greek god who had no choice. Would it be forgiven if he was a long distance lorry driver? I'm just asking to discuss it.

How about keeping it in your pants and treating your loved ones and your children properly - how about that as a strategy? I mean he was an inveterate shagger and he didn't stop after Plath died and maybe not even after Assia and Shura died.

I'm sure there are serial killers who have been 'softly spoken' - that's not an ethical defence. Serial killers in prison are written to by countless women who adore them. Women have no taste when it comes to mesmerizing sh**bags. I'm not saying he was comparably criminal - but just saying that he was loved by many is not proof that he was a good person.

I'm fascinated by how he was later perceived and how his poetry has a world view of all these fateful forces, as if everything is being beyond human control. All the horoscopes, ouija boards....

Plath's illness doesn't justify destroying her journal. Nor does anything explain his lack of care for Assia who was a strong functioning person before he pursued her. He did have a choice and he treated her badly at the very least. People seem to blame Sylvia's suicide for Assia's - interesting that no one really wants to hold him to account. There's an air of "poor man" in how people think about him which I find puzzling.

What was his responsibility? Nothing at all? So brilliant that women crashed into his genius and were killed by its ineffable majesty?

Just for discussion is all. I'm just interested to ask these questions.

Ted Hughes was not perfect. He was a flawed person, we all are. However, he also encouraged Plath to publish in the first place.
It is fascinating to read Birthday Letters alongside Plath’s work. She trusted him enough to make him her literary executor. The obsession with the burning diaries seems misplaced to me. Her published work stands. Not all diaries are intended for publication.

That's fine, don't publish them; but also don't destroy them.

I think his care for her poetry was his duty and also his income.

I am arguing that destroying her journal was strategic and benefitted him. Calling the argument obsessive isn't an argument in itself.

Also saying Ted Hughes is 'not perfect' is fairly disingenuous - what would a man have to do to be a bad man by this measure?