Sylvia Plath: the Woman Behind the Word

Sylvia Plath was a gifted writer, poet and verbal artist whose personal anguish and torment visibly manifested itself in her work. Much of her angst stems from her warped relationship with her father. Other factors that influenced her works were her strained views of human sexuality, her sado-masochistic tendencies, self-hatred and her traditional upbringing. She was labeled as a confessional poet and biographical and historical material is absolutely necessary to understand her work.
Syliva Plath was born on 27, 1963, in Boston, Massachusetts to Otto Emil Plath and Aurelia Schober. Otto Plath was a professor of biology and German at Boston University. He was of German descent and had emigrated from Grabow when he was fifteen. Her mother was a first generation American; she was born in Boston to Austrian parents. Their common Germanic background indirectly led to their meeting in 1929. Aurelia Schober took a German class taught by Otto Plath. Aurelia was working on a master's degree in English and German at Bosto n University. Otto Plath was guided by his principles of discipline. Their background was one major source of for Sylvia's poetic imagery.
Sylvia's brother, Warren, was born on April 27, 1935. After Warren's birth, the family moved to Winthrop, Massachusetts just east of Boston. Otto's health began to fail shortly after Warren's birth. He thought he had cancer as a friend of his, with similar symptoms, had recently lost a battle with lung cancer. "He refused to seek medical care due to the lack of a cure or effective treatment at that time. In 1940 after suffering ill health for years, Otto was forced to see a doctor for an infection in his foot. The doctor diagnosed the illness Otto has been suffering from as not cancer, but diabetes- -and not do advanced that it threatened his life. Otto's leg had to be removed in October after he developed gangrene, and he spent the rest of his days in the hospital rapidly declining." (Nuerotic