Sylvia Plath death: How did Sylvia Plath die? Why did she kill herself?
Clinical depression drove Sylvia Plath to her death. On 11 February 1963, the poet Sylvia Plath, distraught at the break-up of her marriage to Ted Hughes, committed suicide.
Plath died of carbon monoxide poisoning with her head in the oven, having sealed the rooms between her and her sleeping children with tape, towels and cloths.
At approximately 4:30 a.m. Plath had placed her head in the oven, with the gas turned on. She was 30 years old.
She left behind her children, four-year-old Frieda and one-year-old Nicholas.
Sylvia Plath death aftermath:
Six years after Sylvia Plath death, her husband Ted Hughes faced more tragedy when his mistress Assia Wevill – who had lured him away from Plath – killed herself and their four-year-old daughter Shura.
In March 1969, Assia had dragged a bed into the kitchen of her Clapham flat, dissolved sleeping tablets in a glass of water and gave the drink to her daughter before draining the rest herself. Then she turned on the gas stove and got into bed with the child.
Hughes eventually married his wife, Carol Orchard in 1970 and they were married until his death in 1998.
Ted Hughes died 28 October 1998 (aged 68) in London, England. His cause of death was Myocardial infarction (heart attack)
Nicholas Hughes, the son of poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, killed himself on 16 March 2009, 46 years after his mother committed suicide and almost 40 years to the day after his stepmother, Assia Wevill, did the same. He was 47 years old.
Frieda Hughes, the daughter of poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes is still alive.
Unfortunately, I have an electric oven. So I’ll have to think of another ticket to the afterlife.
are you okay? if you’d like to talk!!
Only my dogs forbid me from doing such a thing. I’m scared to leave them alone.
just no
I think this is so crazy about how every girl even in contact with the husband killed themselves the same exact way, and that poor baby 🙁
All nutters by the sound of it. Shame about the kids though.
Or they are sad people engulfed by a horrible mental illness and could no longer go on…
I knew about Plath’s death but not about the others connected with her. Whatever the reasons are for the deaths to her and her husband, it’s certain to be complicated and it would be interested to know what the investigations revealed.
OMG!! :O
Sometimes it is just too painful to stay. But you may have an unknown, to you, reason to stay. So stick around for awhile, and you may be pleasantly surprised.
You never know how your smile may change a strangers way of thinking. Not many things are free these days, but smiles certainly 😊 are.
Thank you, Rea. I needed that.
I feel sorry for people who take their lives…those people on the inside are screaming out in pain for what ever reason. They are not nut jobs, or crazy. These people need others to help them. Not belittle them or make fun of them… unfortunately I see this everyday specially in the work place environment..
i agree. like isnt that so weird how not one but TWO of his wives died the same way and nobody bothered to question the guy…
People die cause they want to thinking there is no way out but there is you just need to ask for it I think Plath became distraught of not being with her husband anymore but still she was a peot who had a life and children to take care of she probably thought no one would want her later with her children and she let her depression get the best of her depression is hard to get over I don’t know if they had medication back then but anyhow people usually dieby suicide in a state of an
People die cause they want to thinking there is no way out but there is you just need to ask for it Im thinking but not sure Plath became distraught of not being with her husband anymore but still she was a poet who had a life and children to take care of she probably thought no one would want her later with her children and it is hard taking care of them and she let her depression get the best of her depression is hard to get over I don’t know if they had medication back then but anyhow people usually die suicide in a state of anger
Laura: are you okay? Please, please PLEASE don’t do it. Talk to a friend, family member, go get a cup of coffee with a loved one, take a short walk outside with an adult you know and talk to someone you can trust. If you’re THAT deep in depression right now, CALL 911. PLEASE do not take your life, honey. We don’t even KNOW YOU but we all want you to be happy. I will pray now that you feel better.
If I wanted all these things in this life I would not bother with writing! I have another life coming…
But Sylvia Plath wanted all these things, saw only this life, and stuck her head in an oven, after taping off the rest of the kitchen and leaving her two children, Frieda and Nicholas, asleep in their bedrooms. “All the shades, tones and variations of mental…experience…” She seemed to get that wish, at least on the dark side of those shades and tones. Clinical depression is a bitch with multiple litters, and enough sour milk and chewed-up teats to feed everybody.
I don’t fault Sylvia for her desires not to live. Been there…didn’t do that. Came very, very close. More than once. And I’ve had my head in worse places than an oven-unless, of course, you turn it on and stay there. Be careful what you long for. Be careful with delineation between what’s possible and what’s not. Most importantly, learn to respect boundaries and limitations, natural and spiritual. We are God’s image; WE ARE NOT GOD.
I know in my deepest, darkest places, that there is only one final reason for why I did not go the way of the Sylvias and Vincents and Robins and Ernests who took their lives not to find something better, but to escape what they did not understand was TEMPORARY. That reason is not a mantra; it is not a lucky charm. It is not a destiny I set for myself, or even self worth (though that in itself is a derivative). I am here because of Jesus. The Man who died for me, that I might live. The Man who took my wife from me, and told me to grow the better half I lost by trust and obedience, while enduring the seemingly never-ending pain.
A wise counselor once told me “not to place faith in my feelings, but to place my feelings in faith.” That didn’t make sense until I focused faith on the right Person. That counsel works equally well for ambition, for dreams, for the future, for the NOW. And the now is nothing more than life uninterrupted, until NOW becomes then. And when the quietus comes, I will wait in sleep for the next and final and limitless NOW.
Until then, I cling. Not to my ambitions, or dreams, or feelings, but to the hope in things I have not seen, yet know are more real than tape, towels, filthy rags, and the smell of rotten eggs and the desperate, dying thoughts of sleeping children.
“For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin?
I, with God’s help, will bear these things, and let Him decide the shuffle. It’s neither chance nor necromancy; not my will, but His. Today, I surrender both feelings and flex to faith. I, like many before me, and I’m sure, many after, have been an escape artist. I am not called to escape; I am called to endure. So, instead of carbon monoxide, I will use my oven to bake fish. And bread. And cookies. And other lovely things that help us all endure this life until that day. And I will write about it.
Thankyou for this!
know how you feel
honestly kind of irresponsible to say ‘Wevill lured him away from Plath’, he cheated on his own accord. No one else has more responsibility than him to be faithful to his wife.
I did not know about her son. The people who think that these silly aphorisms i.e. ‘things will get better” or ‘you have so much to live for’ are unhelpful things which people say. I dislike the term mental illness as all the configurations of what has to happen to bring on clinical depression, are in the brain. And the brain controls everything in our bodies. Unless you have experienced extreme ongoing major depression, you may not be able to understand why the idea of suicide, and carrying it out are prevalent in our lives. It’s not that I wanted to die, it’s just that dying is the only way to stop the pain.