Plath miscarried after Hughes beat her, letter claims
SYLVIA PLATH told her therapist that Ted Hughes had beaten her two days before she miscarried their child, according to previously unseen correspondence at the centre of a legal battle.
The 14 letters are said to allege “physical abuse and psychological torture” at the hands of her husband and shed new light on the turbulent relationship between the two poets.
They will also fuel the anger of Plath supporters who have long described Hughes as emotionally abusive and believe his behaviour – including his infidelity – drove her to take her life.
Plath died in February 1963, aged 30. She killed herself as her young children slept in an adjacent room after leaving out milk and bread for them.
The letters were written to Dr Ruth Beuscher (later Barnhouse), the therapist who began treating the writer in 1953 and became her close confidante.
The doctor was the model for Dr Nolan in Plath’s semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar.
The letters begin in February 1960, when Plath was living with Hughes in London, and end a week before her death.
Little is known about the last months of Plath’s life because Hughes destroyed her final journal, claiming that he wanted to protect their children from the contents.
Plath regarded Barnhouse as a mother figure and wrote to her regularly. In 1962, she discovered that Hughes was having an affair with Assia Wevill.
Barnhouse, who called Hughes an “evil” man, said shortly before her death in 1999 that she had burnt all of Plath’s letters.
However, Harriet Rosenstein, a feminist scholar, claims the doctor passed her the letters as research for a book. They came to light last month when Ms Rosenstein tried to sell them at a New York book fair through Massachusetts bookseller Ken Lopez.
Mr Lopez said: “There are 45 pages of Plath’s writing. The first portion is not especially dramatic – she was writing about life in England, their house, a meeting with TS Eliot. But after her marriage breaks down and she discovers Ted Hughes’s infidelity, they become very dramatic and very personal.”
It is reported that, in one letter, Plath claims Hughes beat her and that shortly afterwards she miscarried their second child. She also reportedly said that Hughes wished her dead.
Ms Rosenstein offered the letters for sale to Smith College, Massachusetts, Plath’s alma mater, which holds the Barnhouse archive.
But negotiations broke down and the letters were put up for sale for $875,000 (£700,000). The letters were withdrawn from offer when Smith College launched legal action, claiming they belong to the Barnhouse collection.
‘After she discovers Ted Hughes’s infidelity, [the letters] become very dramatic’