Plath’s daughter: I’d ‘unwrite’ mum’s book
IT’S considered one of the greatest novels of modern times – but the daughter of author Sylvia Plath has revealed how she’d like to go back in time to ‘unwrite’ her mother’s most famous work – The Bell Jar.
The startling statement by Frieda Hughes, whose father was poet laureate Ted Hughes, comes in a new documentary about the semiautobiographical novel, which charted Plath’s depression and mental illness.
Esther Greenwood, the main character, attempts to take her own life. The novel draws heavily on Plath’s own failed suicide attempts and her battles with mental illness, including electric shock therapy. She eventually took her life in 1963.
In her first ever on-camera interview about her mother, Frieda, 58, said: ‘I suppose being her daughter it would be great if one could go back in time and unwrite it.
‘When I read it, I didn’t want it to be real. I wanted it to be fiction. Why would anyone want their mother to be going through such unhappiness, such thought processes?’
Frieda, an accomplished poet and artist in her own right, said she knew little about her mother’s mental health problems when she was a child. She said: ‘I wasn’t aware she was mentally ill until I was in my teens. It was more of a voyage of discovery over the years.’
She said she did not want the manner of her mother’s death to detract from the other aspects of her life. She said: ‘There was so much that was positive in her life and I think that her end overshadows that sometimes.’
Life Inside The Bell Jar is on BBC2 on Saturday at 9pm.