It seems ironic that Plath used this phrase given that so much of her life since her suicide has been characterized by this double: before and after her breakdown before and after her marriage to Hughes before and after her suicide. The thesis is explained by its subhed-“a study of the double”-and has rather more metaphorical value to readers of Plath, given her life story.
The thesis-surprisingly small compared to the 15,000-word dissertations of today-is a slim, terse work meticulously and logically unpacking the double motifs in Dostoevsky’s books, the writing similar to the curt, sometimes ironic voice of The Bell Jar. Whether or not the college gave the publisher, Ted Hughes, or Aurelia Plath (Plath’s mother), permission is unclear.Īnd so when the slim thread-bound manuscript arrived, I did what I had done years before and locked myself in my room, devouring the rare Plath work. And for some inexplicable reason, the publisher was given the rights to publish Plath’s honors thesis. Since I bought my copy of the Plath thesis, the publisher has folded and is no longer listed online, apparently selling off what they had left of the obscure material they published in the 1980s and 1990s. With what small funds I had at the time as an undergraduate student, I decided to “invest” in an unbound, printed manuscript printed in the late 1980s. As I navigated their antiquated website-all Times New Roman and black text boxes-I discovered they had copies of the thesis for sale. But after some more thorough searches I discovered an obscure British printing house that had a few copies listed online.
I began to remember the elusive manuscript, one that had already few listings on the Internet and seemed to only exist by a limited number of copies kept in a scattering of Plath archives.
(Strangely enough, Plath was never on the syllabi for courses I took.) I was motivated because I was toying with the idea of doing my own dissertation, encouraged to spend the year like Plath did married to an esoteric subject that had little currency beyond the sandstone pillars of my university library. I put aside the thought of Plath’s thesis for a little while, only coming back to it in my third year at college, majoring in English literature. Given that her academic project was interested in looking at doubles-more implicitly, the divided self-in Dostoevsky’s writing, I found it hard not to see the parallels: Plath unpacking double selves in literature, having only experienced a similar struggle in her own life the year before. It was only the year before that Plath attempted suicide and was hospitalized for depression, her nervous breakdown seeing her installed at MacLean Hospital, taking time away from her undergraduate studies. Whether it was endless ambition for success in the literary world, or her struggles to reconcile the expectations placed on her as a woman wanting to be a poet, Plath offers a multitude of themes for young artists to identify with. Since her death, Plath has become a symbolic touchstone for many young writers-this writer included-many who continue to identify with the themes that frame Plath’s image, including that of the tortured artist. Few recent writers have enjoyed this kind of publication history, as only two works were published during Plath’s lifetime: a collection of poetry and a novel released under a pseudonym. The revered American writer, sometimes known more for her suicide in 1963 than her searing confessional poetry and “pot-boiler” novel, The Bell Jar, has a vast catalogue of published writing, ranging from children’s books to diaries to letters to her mother. Sylvia Plath is so ingrained in popular literary culture that her mythical status can often cast a wide shadow over the details of her actual writing.
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