Rough Magic Page 12

  After January finals brought her her customary good grades—English, A; Government, A; Writing, A; Religion, A—; Art, B; and Physical Education, B—Sylvia worked on Press Board, anticipated her spring classes (which were essentially continuations of the fall’s), and, though she really did not want to, dated Dick. “Why is your face and form wildly attracting rather than merely pretty?” Dick wrote her following a weekend together in Wellesley in early February 1952. “Is it an inner radiance, a glow, a deep pleasure in existing and moving and creating and accomplishing? . . . I do think we are an unusual pair of humans.” While Dick viewed Sylvia as “an unusual human” full of “inner radiance,” Eddie perceived an entirely different person. Her general un-happiness had prompted Eddie to write her a pointed letter in which he advised her to see a psychiatrist. She did not do so, even though, as of February, her depression now caused her to question her ability to write. After a Seventeen rejection made her feel untalented, a lecture by the Hampshire Bookshop president about publishing bolstered her confidence enough so that, in composing a letter of application for an Elks Scholarship, she looked forward to preparing for creative work. But once she mailed off the Elks application, she again concluded that she had lost her talent—a fear that would plague her repeatedly in the future.

  Because she believed much of her apprehension grew out of her confusion about boys and sex, Sylvia wrote Eddie that she believed she suffered from schizophrenia, penis envy, and an inferiority complex. She also fought a powerful sex drive, she told him. Eddie responded with a demand that she “[f]orget this stuff.” Her unhappiness did not result from “schizophrenia, inferiority or the lack of a male sex organ”; she was depressed because she was dating a young man she did not love. “You are further disturbed because you are frank enough to admit to yourself that you have a physical drive towards sex,” Eddie said. “The fact that you have no satisfactory outlet for this stems from the fact that society is maladjusted to the welfare of the individual, and not because there is anything wrong with you.” As for the inconsistent quality of her writing, about which she had also written him, he suggested she read Hemingways The Sun Also Rises and Across the River and Into the Trees, “just to see how much variation there can be in quality, even in the best of us.” Eddie concluded this letter—never missing the opportunity—by saying that, “if the physical barrier between us were removed, I should be quite headily and overwhelmingly in love with you. As I yet may well be some day.”

  March began on an up note—Seventeen announced that her “The Perfect Set-up” had won honorable mention in its annual fiction contest—but afterwards Sylvia became bogged down in her regular grind of coursework and extracurricular activities. Besides volunteering to teach children’s art classes at Northampton’s People’s Institute, she served on Haven’s House Committee and the Sophomore Prom Entertainment Committee, which she chaired. She also dealt with Eddie’s requests to see her. “I really feel that a second try wouldn’t turn out badly at all,” Eddie wrote in a letter in March. “And spring vacation cometh.” He even admitted he had almost bought her a round-trip airplane ticket to Chicago but did not because he was afraid she would turn him down. The month’s strangest episode, though, happened at mid-month, during a trip from Wellesley to Northampton. On the bus, Sylvia sat beside a young man who, covered up by his raincoat, slept for the first hour of the trip. Following a brief stopover the bus made at the Flying Yankee Diner, Sylvia arrived back at her seat to find the young man awake and eager to talk. Which they did, all the way to Northampton. In their conversation, Sylvia learned that the young man—his name was Bill—was completing a doctorate in entomology at M.I.T. Later, in Northampton, where they stopped in a coffee shop to chat some more, Sylvia had said, “You know, my dad wrote a book on bumblebees once.” Bill’s reply thoroughly surprised Sylvia: “Not Bumblebees and Their Ways.” Still later, after Bill carried her suitcases to campus and told her good night, Sylvia realized that she could never see him again even if in some small way she had fallen in love with him.

  Around this time, Sylvia had another odd encounter. Finally agreeing to see Eddie again, Sylvia hosted him and a friend briefly in Wellesley on her spring vacation. Unlike their first meeting, this visit proceeded in a comparatively normal fashion. “One night we went into Boston,” Cohen remembers, “and wandered around the city until we dropped in on a jazz club. Terrible jazz. But Sylvia was or pretended to be enjoying this bad jazz greatly. It was on this night that I saw that she was all mask. After the jazz club we went and sat on the Commons for three or four hours. As we talked, it became increasingly clear to me that she was posing a lot. She was not at all like she was in her letters. There was no spontaneity. She seemed incapable of an impulsive remark.” Previously, Eddie had not been able to discern this “posing”; now that he had, he was turned off by it. The next day, Eddie and his friend drove to New York and left Sylvia behind, although at one point she had planned to travel there on her break. Following this trip, they continued to correspond regularly and at length, but Eddie no longer considered Sylvia a potential romantic interest.

  Spring break over, Plath focused on her literary life. In April, she finished “Sunday at the Mintons’,” a story that she had drafted during vacation and which now, almost on a whim, she entered in Mademoiselle’s fiction contest. She also heard several guest speakers—Robert Frost, Ogden Nash, Joseph McCarthy—and wrote at least one poem, “Go Get the Goodly Squab.” When not studying or writing, she pursued outside activities like Press Board. By reporting for the Springfield Daily News, she netted ten dollars a month. Apart from writing articles, she received several honors. She was chosen secretary of Honor Board; inducted into the Society of Alpha Phi Kappa, an honorary arts society, and the Sophomore Push Committee, a group of girls who were “special” to her class; and invited to join the editorial board of The Smith Review, the school’s literary magazine. On May 1, The Belmont, a resort hotel in West Harwick-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts, oflFered her a seven-day-a-week waitressing job for the summer, a position she now needed, even more desperately than when she had applied for it, because she had been turned down for an Elks. And at present, though their relationship seemed as precarious as ever, Sylvia still dated Dick. In her journal she revealed that she believed Dick suffered a mother complex from which he tried to break himself through his rebellion, which took the form of—or at least this was the way Sylvia saw Dick’s recent confession about losing his virginity—“seducing a waitress, a Vassargirl.” If Dick’s confession troubled her, a larger question lingered in her mind. Could she alter her “attitude and subordinate gladly” to Dick’s life? In short, could she devote herself to wifehood if it meant neglecting her art? “Thousands of women would!” Sylvia wrote in her journal, unsure of whether she could.

  Following finals, which brought her more good grades, Sylvia rested a few days in Wellesley before assuming her waitressing job at The Belmont in early June. At once, management told her that, since she had no previous experience, she could not work the main dining room, where tips and salary could have earned her five hundred dollars for the season. Instead, she would wait Side Hall, the employee dining room, in which she could make about half as much. Plath had begun to feel resentment over their decision—she had passed up a job at The Pines to work at The Belmont—when, on the 11th, she received a telegram forwarded to her by her mother. Tearing open the envelope, Sylvia read:

  DEAR MISS PLATH: CONGRATULATIONS ON WINNING

  MADEMOISELLE’S COLLEGE FICTION CONTEST, COULD

  YOU AIRMAIL US PHOTOGRAPH AND BIOGRAPHICAL

  MATERIAL IMMEDIATELY? LETTER FOLLOWS.

  She could hardly believe it: “Sunday at the Mintons’ “ had won one of Mademoiselle’s two five-hundred-dollar first prizes in its fiction contest.

  Now that she did not have to worry about money, Sylvia relaxed somewhat. At mid-month, she dated a bellhop named Lloyd, who took her out for a cheeseburger and beers. She attended a birthday party where
she met a boy named Clark, a first-year Harvard law student. Nursing a Tom Collins, she ate coconut cake; then she and Clark went to the employee dormitory. As they sat outside on a bench, Clark rested his head in Sylvia’s lap while she read to him poems by T. S. Eliot. The next morning, Clark forgotten, Sylvia set out on a twelve-mile bicycle ride with Perry and Dick to Long Pond.

  Near the end of June, a Mr. Driscoll, Sylvia’s Belmont supervisor, offered her the chance to earn an extra thirty dollars a month by putting out the linen after the dining rooms had closed. Figuring up the time required to perform this task—thirty hours weekly—Sylvia refused, which angered Driscoll, especially since Sylvia had complained about having to work Side Hall. Within days, the point was moot. Sylvia came down with sinusitis, no doubt because of her nonstop nightlife, which started at ten-thirty and lasted until dawn. On orders of the hotel doctor, she prepared to go home to recuperate. Philip McCurdy had been coming to play tennis with her at The Belmont, so on the day he arrived, instead of playing tennis, Sylvia drove back to Wellesley with him. Along the way, when both went to pat Philips dog at the same time, their hands touched. Perhaps she could become interested in Philip, Sylvia wrote about the event in her journal.

  After lingering for days in a blur of penicillin, Sylvia felt better by July 4, the date on which The Belmont called to ask if she planned to come back to her job. Since she was still sick, she’d have to give it up, Aurelia said—at Sylvia’s urging. The following day, more good literary news arrived—a letter from Harold Strauss, editor-in-chief of Alfred A. Knopf, who had just read proofs of “Sunday at the Mintons’,” forwarded to him by Mademoiselles managing editor, Cyrilly Abels. Strauss was so impressed by the story that he urged Sylvia to consider writing a novel for Knopf. Flattered, she wrote back to say that she would keep his offer in mind. Days later, Sylvia felt well enough that, when an ad in The Christian Science Monitor for a mother’s helper caught her eye, she responded. Her potential employer, Margaret (Mrs. Michael) Cantor, oflFered to interview Sylvia for the twenty-five-dollar-a-week job, which entailed sitting for two small children and acting as a companion to an older teenage daughter. When they met, Mrs. Cantor oflFered Sylvia the job without hesitation. On July 19, Sylvia arrived for work at the Cantors’ home at 276 Dorset Road in Chatham, Massachusetts. Unlike the Mayos, the Cantors went out of their way to include Sylvia as part of the family. From the start, they let her drive their two Chevrolets; encouraged her to take the children—Joan, Sue, and Bill—on outings, such as the weekly town concert; and gave her plenty of time off. In all, Plath worked at the Cantors’ for six weeks, during which the most memorable event was the publication of “Sunday at the Mintons’ “ in the August Mademoiselle. Plath first saw the issue on the 2nd, when Grammy and Grampy, having driven to the Cantors’ to visit Sylvia on her day off, brought a copy to her.

  A longish, cleanly written story, “Sunday at the Mintons’ “ focuses on an elderly brother and sister, Henry and Elizabeth Minton. A day-dreamer, Elizabeth is exasperated with Henry, whose mind is so practical that he can actually plot out on a mental map the direction in which he is moving as he travels. At the story’s climax, which finds the couple taking a stroll on a boardwalk, fantasy and reality merge when Elizabeth in her imagination “kills” Henry who has descended from the boardwalk onto rocks to retrieve a brooch she dropped. Dreaming, Elizabeth pictures Henry struck by an unusually large wave that drags him out into the ocean. But the last lines of the story firmly root it in the real: “ ‘Come along home, Elizabeth,’ Henry said. It’s getting late.’ “ And Elizabeth answers: “ ‘I’m coming.’ “

  While she wrote the story in March, Plath had based Henry and Elizabeth on Dick and herself. Indeed, once the story appeared in print, she was concerned that Dick would decipher her characterizations and become angry. Could Dick discern “his dismembered self? she asked her mother in a letter. If he did, he did—this was what she decided—for all creative pieces have a “germ of reality,” regardless of how “fantastic” they are. Aurelia did not comment on the underlying reason that, as she structured “Sunday at the Mintons’,” Sylvia felt compelled to have Elizabeth (Sylvia) “kill” Henry (Dick). Nor did Sylvia.

  Unlike her previous two summer jobs at the Mayos’ and at The Belmont, Sylvia did not want to leave the Cantors, which she did on August 31. The sentiment was mutual. “Sylvia is an exceptionally fine girl/’ Margaret Cantor wrote to Smith’s Vocational Office. “Her manners and deportment are beautiful. Her consistently sunny disposition and her ability to express herself in . . . vivid language make her a most interesting and welcomed person.” Her work behind her, Sylvia tried to rest. Early in September, Sylvia, Warren, and her mother vacationed on the Cape; then, back in Wellesley, she sunned, wrote, saw Philip, and visited Mr. Crockett. During one afternoon talk with Crockett, Sylvia suddenly realized that, after she graduated from Smith, she wanted to go to Oxford or Cambridge. She also dated Dick in September. He had pressed her to marry him during much of the summer, but she had resisted, now because she did not want to marry into the Norton family (she never said why) and because she considered herself and Dick too similar. Blissful and free—these were the words Sylvia used to describe the way she felt when she decided (once again) that she would not marry Dick.

  4

  On September 23, 1952, Dick drove Sylvia back to Smith for the fall term of her junior year, for which her roster of classes included Howard Patch’s Medieval Literature, R. G. Davis’s Style and Form, Kenneth Sherk’s World of Atoms, plus Honors hours. In her first days on campus, Sylvia heard about “Sunday at the Mintons’” from a number of people—friends who loved it; Olive Higgins Prouty, who detailed its many virtues in a letter; Maiy Ellen Chase, the novelist and Smith professor, who sent a note from Maine—she was on leave—to convey her congratulations; and Allen T. Klots, of Dodd, Mead, who wrote to inquire if Plath would like to submit to him a longer project, such as a novel. While assuming her new role of star writer—recently she had also published a poem, “White Phlox,” in The Christian Science Monitor—Sylvia adjusted to a new private life as well. In the spring her application to Lawrence, a “self-help” house, had been accepted. To meet her house obligations that fall in Lawrence, Sylvia—star writer or not—had to wait tables at lunch, log in one hour of watch per week, and perform various weekend duties. Since Marcia had moved off campus to live with her mother, who had relocated to Northampton, Sylvia had a new roommate too—a brilliant, scientifically inclined girl named Mary.

  Within days of the beginning of the semester, her workload so overwhelmed Sylvia that, in an act that indicated just how little she understood her own substantial intellectual abilities, she described herself as “pitifully stupid,” “inadequate and scared.” This negative view of herself foreshadowed a more ominous development. As the term progressed, Sylvia would gradually slip into one of her worst depressions yet. Her perception that she was inadequate, which caused her to be fearful, only forced her to descend more deeply into her darkening emotional state.

  Presently, Sylvia wrote Eddie—the first time since early summer—to ask him to return the many letters she had sent him over the last two years. (She did not tell him so, but she wanted the letters to write a short story based on them.) “I was a little taken aback at receiving your chummy little mash note this morning,” Eddie answered, not fooled by Sylvia’s pleasant prose, “for I had long ago given up searching the mailbox on the theory that you had either married Allan, gotten a psychiatrist, or put me on your Shit List for one reason or another. . . . [Or] can it be that suddenly falling into fame and fortune has made you too good to associate casually with everyday, run-of-the-mill college journalists?” Eddie refused to promise to return the letters.

  Meanwhile, Plath was contemplating other literary ambitions. In September, she applied for Mademoiselle’s College Board, the first step in an arduous process that could end with her winning a prize of which only now, following her success with “Sunday at the Mint
ons’,” she dreamed—a guest editorship at the magazine for the coming summer. According to contest rules, a young woman applied to join College Board by writing a fifteen-hundred-word criticism of the magazine’s latest August college issue, starting with an overview of the whole thing and then zeroing in on the section that most appealed to her. If a girl was chosen to the board (and about 750 out of the two thousand who applied would be), she became eligible to pursue the twenty guest-editor slots. To do that, she wrote three assignments during the academic year. One prize of fifty dollars and nine prizes of ten dollars were given for each assignment, which created a pool of thirty from which the Mademoiselle staflF would choose the guest editors. Winners were paid a salary “plus expenses (room, travel, and most meals)"— so read a contest advertisement—to live in New York City and work at the magazine for the month of June. Hopeful, Sylvia initiated her application soon after the fall term began. In October, she received definite encouragement when Seventeen published “The Perfect Setup” and awarded another of her stories, “Initiation,” the two-hundred-dollar second prize in its fiction contest.