i know they’re her private journals, and shouldn’t necessarily be used as a rule book of any sort to live by; but being 19 myself, i thought i could gain knowledge from a girl who i assumed would most definitely have more common sense than i do.
i’m almost 200 pages in and am actually growing quickly tired of trying to track the different dates and men and boys. maybe the absence of her father plays a big part in this, but whatever enchantment sylvia has worked up in me is quickly made dull by the beginning of her next entry, which is a complete 180 from the last, in the span of a day (i love him, never mind i hate him, and there’s this other guy).
one day she’s accepted in mademoiselle, eating caviar, drinking champagne staying out late and the next (for no apparent reason) she’s dejected, hopeless. and she says it herself, she has everything and more. and i’m unfortunately not seeing it as “no matter how much you have you’re still empty”, rather than as “this girl has absolutely zero foresight”.
i understand she severely struggled with mental health issues (as do i) but i personally see her as someone who thrives in drama, and is also unfaithful to people she apparently cares for.
these journals have served only to paint sylvia as an extremely ungrateful person, and unfortunately i’ve gained no insight or found any knowledge to superimpose onto my own life (other than observe how childish and unappreciative one of your favorite authors realistically is)
edit: was thinking more in terms of memoirs, not journals. have been reading a lot of memoirs lately
by Naive-Hovercraft7505
17 Comments
She wasn’t an ungrateful person those are the highs and lows of a depressed person who tired multiple times and finally succeeded in taking their own life.
Art is selection. Probably one poem is better to read than 200 pages of diary.
I think you’re missing the point here. You are reading Plath’s journals, about her in the moment thoughts and feelings. She wasn’t writing to give knowledge for anyone to “superimpose” on their life; she was writing for herself with zero intention of it ever being read by anyone but herself.
Sylvia Plath was not okay. A big part of what people, especially non-readers, know her for is her mental health issues and ultimate suicide. Have you read *The Bell Jar*? She was deeply unwell. While she was aware of it to various extents throughout her life, awareness doesn’t always translate to being able to break out of the cycle of depression.
>one day she’s accepted in mademoiselle, eating caviar, drinking champagne staying out late and the next (for no apparent reason) she’s dejected, hopeless
The “no apparent reason” is her major depressive disorder, which is a pretty legitimate reason.
eta- I suppose if you’re looking for insight to apply to your own life, it’s that mental health issues can impact anyone and can appear small from the outside, especially if the sufferer is considered successful, but they are all-consuming to the person experiencing them.
I think you might have gone into this with a misunderstanding of who Sylvia Plath was.
You’re reading the journals of a woman with depression who eventually committed suicide. She isn’t ungrateful and lacking in foresight – she’s lacking in serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine because depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain.
What you’ve discovered is that depression sucks. That you can have caviar and champagne and all kinds of fun and you *still* feel horrific.
Journals aren’t the same as memoir or works where someone is genuinely trying to reframe periods of their life as having some kind of narrative that they can gleam insight from. A journal is simply shit that happened, when, and with a bit of reflection. They’re useful to us trying to build a portrait and a timeline of someone’s life, but more often than not none of us were ever meant to see them.
In the case of Sylvia Plath, you basically have a seriously mentally ill person navigating being a WASP amongst WASP culture and feeling constricted by it. And that’s what a lot of those entries keep coming back to
Ungrateful? Her brain chemistry didn’t work correctly. She had a medical condition…depression. Sylvia Plath is *known* for her depression and eventual suicide. Why do you think you would gain common sense from reading unedited journals of anyone? They’re just our most private thoughts, as they happen.
> these journals have served only to paint sylvia as an extremely ungrateful person, and unfortunately i’ve gained no insight or found any knowledge to superimpose onto my own life (other than observe how childish and unappreciative one of your favorite authors realistically is)
The problem lies in your expectation that these diaries should be “useful” to you in any way, let alone as a 1:1 guide for your own life.
I would argue though that you did gain some knowledge – that the private diaries of one of an author who was famously depressed and committed suicide require some adjustment from how you would approach their other writing.
What’s interesting is through your own conclusions you’ve demonstrated exactly what you attribute to her: a childish and unappreciative outlook. If you’re trying to learn something, this is it. This is the moment. And your response to these comments, what you do with them, will also be a growth opportunity. You’re missing the lessons by thinking they’re going to be obvious rather than taking every opportunity to be mindful, exploratory, and thinking critically.
So you started reading published private diaries of someone who is also young at the time they were written, someone with severe enough mental issues that she later dies because of them, and you’ve added the expectation that they should be a roadmap to insights?
That is just not how this works.
And frankly the vast majority of the insights I have into life come from just living life, and reading books can sometimes help illuminate experiences in a more elegant manner for me to reflect upon.
Insight from Plath? She was neurotic.
Besides, these journals were not written for publication.
feel you. I thought that I would read sth amazing…nope. dnf-ed and didn t look back after. I was really disappointed. I didn t even like The Bell Jar so idk why I still bothered. maybe bc it s so praised (for nothing). but yeah, I m glad someone else dislikes it
All people are just people. There is nobody with any special insight into being alive, and the people who claim to have special insight into being alive are either wrong or lying.
hmm this is actually making me feel better about the drivel I journal about…. I’d come back from the grave and then promptly die again of embarrassment if anyone released my journals, though….
I read the Colossus and thought I loved Sylvia Plath. Then I read Ariel and realized she kind of sucked both as a writer and as a person. Sorry she had depression (so do I), but I don’t think that explains all the ways she was a somewhat odious person. She seemed to revel in drama and bitterness and negativity- which is not a requirement of being depressed, it’s a choice. Her casual use of the N-word when there were better choices even at the time bothered me, among other things. I don’t think she’d be popular today if she wasn’t already revered.
I dont like how critical you are being
Its actually rather selfish and entitled to trawl through a writers never meant to be published private thoughts, and instead of reading them to get more in-depth knowledge of their distilled work you pick it apart expecting them to help you with your issues.
Thats what a therapist is for. All this is doing is looking for justification for your own nonsense, and then blaming them for not agreeing with you, or being helpful
Read it just for the fun of it, she was a girl writing in her journal.
I guess I’m confused why you thought a nineteen-year-old who eventually kills herself due to her perceived hopelessness would have more common sense than you. Sylvia Plath, for all the gripping art she constructed, is one of the last people I would turn to for common sense.