Her Husband: Hughes & Plath a Marriage

Rating:
Summary: The Yin & The Yang Of A Creative, Destructive Pair - Superb!
Review: Diane Middlebrook's book about the ill-fated marriage of poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes is an extraordinary combination of biography and literary criticism. Rather than focusing on Plath's depression and subsequent suicide, the author offers a valuable, unsentimental analysis of both their work and the influence they had on each other's lives and creative processes.

She portrays Hughes, not as an egotistical, philandering husband who abandoned his wife and family, but as a man and a poet, struggling with his failed marriage. In fact, how marriages fail, and the men and women who fail in making their relationships work, are part of the book's central theme. Hughes' inspired and encouraged his wife's creativity, but he also contributed to the anguish which led to her suicide. Living with Sylvia Plath was not an easy task though. Her work, her life and her death profoundly changed Ted Hughes' perspective on his own life and work.

Plath, more than thirty years after her death, has evolved into an icon of martyred feminism and is revered by her passionate following. Many believe that her tragic suicide was a result of the overwhelming societal demands placed on a woman/wife/mother/artist at the midpoint of the last century. However, Sylvia Plath is, foremost, one of the most brilliant poets of that century, with her roles as daughter, wife and mother taking second place to her art. Her death was a tragedy, not a personal statement or rebellion. Her history of mental illness, and the barbaric treatment she received for the disease, is a known fact. Her pain was a violent presence in her life, especially during the last months. There was nothing passive, quiet or calculating about it. Plath was a victim of her demons, perhaps the Furies, who finally claimed her.

During his lifetime Hughes was very reluctant to disclose information about his turbulent relationship with his poet wife, especially about their break-up and her months alone with her two children during a terrible London winter. He explained his silence as wanting to protect his children. Finally, in 1998, "Birthday Letters" was published, a volume of verse-letters about his relationship with his wife. Weeks after publication Hughes died. In this volume, Hughes breaks his silence and responds to critics, scholars, and in a sense to Sylvia. This material provided literary scholars with the perspective they had lacked for so long. Hughes, at last, describes his struggle to love and live with a beautiful, talented woman suffering from serious clinical depression. Middlebrook draws heavily on the book, as well as Hughes' papers at Emory University, Sylvia Plath's journals and papers at Smith College, and an abundance of written material heretofore unavailable.

Ms. Middlebrook also analyzes the profound effect both poets had on each other's work. She writes, "One of the most mutually productive literary marriages of the 20th century lasted only about 2300 days. But until they uncoupled their lives in October 1962, each witnessed the creation of everything the other wrote, and engaged the other's work at the level of its artistic purposes. They recognized the ingenuity of solutions to artistic problems that they both understood very well." Hughes believed that he and Plath had similar dispositions and often felt as if he was drawing on a "single shared mind." They shared tastes in literature, authors and poets. They sketched together, wrote together and were physically a passionate, well-matched pair. The author documents the descent of their happiness to drama and despair, while showing the effect of these emotions on their work.

Diane Middlebrook's insightful, literate, well-crafted biography must have been difficult to write. The amount of grief and pain contained in the literary work she researched and the lives she wrote about boggles the mind - and hurts the heart. She is a partisan of poetry - not of Ted Hughes nor of Sylvia Plath. She remains as objective as possible when drawing her conclusions. And most importantly, her focus is on the impact that Sylvia Plath's life and death had on her husband and his writing, allowing Plath's legacy to live on posthumously.
JANA

Rating:
Summary: Finally, a biography about the artists Plath and Hughes
Review: Having read biographies and criticism about Plath for the past 15 years, this is the first book that gives an unsympathetic account of Plath and Hughes' lives as artists, as mentors to each other, and as a couple. If you are interested in Plath and Hughes as writers, not merely the circumstances surrounding Plath's suicide, then this is a book you must read. Middlebrook is a wonderful biographer. She gives insights into poems, intellectual interests and belief systems of Plath and Hughes. By the end of the book, I felt I had a more well-rounded view of their lives together, as well as Plath and Hughes as artists and individuals in their own right. Well done.

Rating:
Summary: Don't bother reading anything else!
Review: Having read just about everything on the Plath/Hughes partnership I have to say that Diane Middlebrook's book is simply the best in the lucid intelligence and even-handedness with which she tackles a subject which has hitherto excited a great deal of sensationalistic biography and shallow "analysis" . Her understanding of both poets' work and placement within the culture is a tour de force. I can't praise it highly enough!

Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable - but still lacking in areas
Review: I first read about 'Her Husband' on Salon.com - and was very excited to read a detailed study on the Plath/Hughes dissolution.

The book is excellently detailed. Middlebrook does a fantastic job in showing the slow-to-rapid erosion of the marriage. And its clear that Middletook took great pains not to take sides in her presentation.

But that's where the problem lies. This push to remain objective and neutral seems, at times, forced. There are several instances where it would have been smart to provide some sort of critique of either Plath or Hughes' behavior - but Middlebrook remains maddenenly neutral - and therefore robs the book of any emotional content.

In any relationship, there are key flashpoints that contribute to a dissolution - but Middlebrook shies away too much in an effort to appear impartial.

Despite that, the book is well detailed in the specifics of what went on. And to touch upon the above criticism - she doesn't resort to pointless (and unfair) finger-pointing.

A good read if you are interested in either poets.

Rating:
Summary: Overrated!
Review: I like Diane Middlebrook's writing, but this book is not one of her best. In general I thought it thin and shallow, and not very well structured. She didn't seem to have a point except gossiping and giving us a bland narration of the events. I felt like a voyeur reading this. I really felt she needed to do more analysis rather than just report on Plath and Hughes. For example, why did the birth of their son Nicholas send Hughes into such a tizzy? Its evident from several sources she cites that Hughes rejected the child unaccountably, and it seems that was a key event in the unravelling of their relationship. Well, why? She merely cites this evidence without analyzing it. Why did Hughes want "ten daughters" but could not tolerate one son? It seems rather obvious that the guy couldn't bear to have a male "competitor" in the family. If you're going to do a biography, then don't hold back! I felt Middlebrook repeatedly dropped the ball on a full analysis of Hughes and his psychology/behaviour.

For example, the way he treated Plath's estate was mind-boggling. Just randomly leaving it floating around his house so others could steal parts of it? Why does she not comment more on this! What a flagrant disrespect this shows for Sylvia Plath! That material should have been stored properly, at the very least! I've never read any in depth narrative of their marriage: this is the first one. I must say I formed an extremely negative view of Hughes from it--he seemed like a pure egomaniac underneath it all, and Middlebrook simply won't take a stance towards the evidence. Certainly, one could formulate a stronger critical stance without going to the extreme of blaming him for the behavior of the women who attached themselves to him. She seems blinded by a need to defend him while on the contrary, most of the material she cites paints a much more negative picture.

It bothers me that in some passages of the book Middlebrook celebrates the way Plath's poems after Hughes left her were able to help her heal and take responsibility for attaching herself to "dominant males," and for "collaborating in her own oppression" --yet then she goes on to (subtly) defend Hughes. Well which is it? She's read "Daddy"--it seems that Middlebrook wants to grant a feminist power to Plath for that poem and its sentiments but at the same time completely deny their truth. "Oh, he wasn't really that bad."

In general, a fuller account of the psychology and dynamics of both the main protagonists is needed in this book. Plath, also, is often rendered in a shallow and gossipy light.

I felt Middlebrook didn't have a clue about how to analyze the way Plath and Hughes helped each other write, and what the function of writing was in their relationship. I've read much much better analyses of creative marriages (i.e., by Susan Rubin Suleiman for example.) This was just superficial.

Another thing I found problematic was how Middlebrook does not do a better analysis of some of the events leading to Plath's suicide, such as, the publication of the Bell Jar. Why did this trigger Plath's last depression, as the evidence suggests, and why did Hughes resent that "damn" book so fiercely? The argument that it was just "brain chemistry" I found not convincing at all! Again and again I felt Middlebrook just drops out pieces of information but does not fully discuss them.

I think her bio of Anne Sexton is a much better book which I have read several times. This one I will never read again. For a better analysis of Sylvia Plath I think Rose's Haunting of Sylvia Plath is excellent.

Rating:
Summary: Is Hughes a Teddy Bear?
Review: Reading this biography (as well as Middlebrooks' earlier biography of Anne Sexton's life and untimely death) was like cozying up to a crackling fire under a thatched roof in the English countryside. Despite the fact that the book is about two of the most brilliant, enigmatic and tragic literary figures of the twentieth century, it is nonetheless highly readable and immensely entertaining. In light of what we now know about the chemical nature of suicidal depression and the arsenal of antidepressants available, it is all the more poignant that two of the women who loved Ted Hughes passionately and ruinously saw no other way out when he turned his attentions elsewhere. While much has been written about the fragile, luminous light that was Sylvia Plath's during her brief lifetime, much less has been known about the man that the public generally agreed was a cad for his unfaithfulness to her. The truth is, with his mysterious, magnetic charm, irresistable dark good looks, and penetrating intelligence, Sylvia never had a chance. The man who eventually became the Poet Laureate of England and thus belonged to all the people, could never belong to just one woman. This story is as much about Plath as it is about Hughes. They will forever remain inseparable in death, as they once were in life.

Rating:
Summary: Her Husband: Hughes and Plath, a Marriage
Review: The marriage of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes has been written about for decades, the riveting aspects of their relationship splashed tabloid style across the pages of popular biographies and recorded for posterity in more scholarly tomes of journals and letters. But Middlebrook (Anne Sexton) offers the reader and Plath/Hughes-ophile something new, exploring their working relationship in terms of their intimate one. Looking into what she refers to as their "call and response" poetry, Middlebrook discovers how some of Hughes's and Plath's most famous poems are linked with or responses to each other's writing. She traces the roots of their literary relationship to the beginning of their romance and continues through to Hughes's death in 1998. By opening up their poetic life, she finds what drew them together and what, in turn, keeps readers fascinated with them. Her impartiality to this polarizing subject is refreshing and perhaps aided by her bicontinental status. Recommended for all literature collections.

Rating:
Summary: We did whatever poetry told us to do...
Review: This is the first biography that doesn't portray Ted Hughes as a monster,
but as a man with weakness like anybody else, although, he may have had more weakness than others. But then, Plath knew this before she married him, didn't she? This may have been a part of the fascination, attraction. After all, Plath was no angel herself.

"Her Husband" begins with the famous 'Meeting'... Plath sees Ted at a party, flirts with him, recites some of his own poetry from across the room.(Now,this would turn a man on!)
He rips off her headband, trys to kiss her, she bites his cheek, drawing blood. A lusty, sexual,intense first meeting. A memorable first meeting. Ted had the scar to prove it.

Middledbrook has broken her book down chronologically...the first meeting,the romance,struggling artists,prospering,
separating,etc...

I have read everything about Plath ... but this book adds new and fresh details into her intriguing life. For instance how she and Ted would annoy one another during the writing process..he picking his nose, she twirling the ends of her hair. Absolutely adore those kind of real-life elements.

"Her Husband" has allowed Ted Hughes to come out into the world as a human being, not just be remembered as the man who betrayed Sylvia Plath, caused her to throw her head into an oven, generated her darkness. No. He was more that that, and that is why Plath loved him.

My favorite chapters are those where Plath and Hughes are together, reading to one another, cooking great meals, talking about literature, having great sex, loving one another.

But... to be honest, Plath would not have written "Ariel" without the darkness and hopelessness that consumed her. She says so fittingling in her poem 'Edge' ... The woman is perfected/her dead body wears the smile of accomplishment.

Did you accomplish what you wanted Sylvia?

Sexton says in the book, "That was my death! She took it before I could." But then she took hers later, didn't she?

Loved "Her Husband" and would recommend it for all who appreciate Plath...

But beware...

you may appreciate Ted Hughes in this one too,
but that's alright.
With him and without him... Plath did her most brilliant work!

Rating:
Summary: The Myth they Created to Outlive Them Both
Review: When I first began reading Diane Middlebrook's "Her Husband," I was disappointed.

"This is all the stuff I already know," I thought. "St. Botolph's...black marauder...pushy American girl...I've read this all before. Where's the new stuff?"

Plath fans like myself, who've read every biography and scrutinized every poem, need to hang in there for a bit. It takes a while to tap the riches in this book, but once you hit pay dirt, you'll be buried in it. You can expect nothing less from Diane Middlebrook's exhaustive research and crisp, yet sensitive writing.

The book is essentially a biography of Ted Hughes, but it is a biography of Hughes in relation to Plath -- possibly the only kind of biography that could ever be written about Ted Hughes.

Middlebrook takes what has been said over and over about Hughes and Plath -- that they were larger-than-life, highly charismatic, very intense people -- and digs deep with research and literary analysis. The result is two fully-fleshed mythical figures, with the history of -- and reasons for -- the shaping of their mythic status.

Speaking of the literary analysis, it is incredibly detailed, dissected to a dizzying extent. Middlebrook is quite a scholar, and makes bold connections between various Plath and Hughes poems (some of which were written on opposite sides of the same piece of paper -- a practice Middlebrook calls Plath & Hughes's "hand-to-hand combat"). The poems take on squirming new life in the illumination Middlebrook provides.

Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes were complex, inscrutable people. They believed their relationship was fated, and that indeed seems to have been the case. They goaded each other to produce writing that was better and more unique than anything else being written at the time. The destruction of their marriage was the catalyst for Plath's final poems, the ones that would guarantee her immortality.

It's hard to know how to feel about Ted Hughes. I have a lot more interest in, and respsect for, him after reading this book. One thing is certain -- he is the only man who could have endured life in the shadow of Sylvia Plath. A hunter, a creator of myths, only his questing, questioning nature could have been strong enough to stand up to all Plath threw at him, in life and in death.