Quote Of The Day: Want Everything And Nothing

Image by Freepik

Quote Of The Day #80

“Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.”

This quote can really summon up the two books I have been reading: “The Silent Woman” by Janet Malcolm, which I bought from a discount second hand book store, and “Red Comet” by Heather Clark. The first book is about how biography authors struggled to write Sylvia Plath’s story after her death, sometimes resorting to trickery and sensationalism, and how Sylvia’s husband tried to stop them, often with comic as well as tragic effect. The second book is about the life of Sylvia Plath, an audible book, which I’ve only listened 30% so far.

Anyway, the more I read about her life, the more I am convinced that her tragedy was due more to her mother’s inflexible views and standards, and less to her husband’s infidelity and their divorce. I mean if we have to assign guilt, the guilt definitely lies more on her mother, her upbringing, and the social pressure. Her irresponsible husband Ted Hughes was the final trigger in this tragedy of course, but long before that trigger came into her life, Sylvia had been trying so hard to push and pull herself in every way possible to fit her mother’s standards and the social expectations–which was impossible for her to meet. And this caused her continuous anguish and bouts of mental breakdowns.

Aurelia, Sylvia’s mother, born in 1906 in Boston, was an ambitious woman who got her college degree and master degree. In those days, there were very few opportunities open to women and she aspired to become a high school teacher and administrator. She met Otto, who taught her classes at the university, and they got married. She immediately gave up her career in language and teaching, and stayed home to help her husband preparing teaching material. Since Otto was 20 years her senior, he died when Sylvia was only eight, leaving no money, a wife without job, and two small children–Sylvia and her younger brother Warren, who had many health issues. The family was plunged into dire economic conditions after Otto’s death. Aurelia had to go back to teaching to earn money. Fortunately the grandparents came to live with them and they were very dedicated to helping babysit the kids. They all lived in a cramped house and the grandparents also had to work to help with the household expenses.

Aurelia had a very close relationship with her daughter Sylvia, and wanted her to succeed in everything and fit in all social standards. Sylvia, being gifted in poems and writing even in primary school, worked very hard to excel in every subject in school, including the art courses. I really don’t understand why she had to do this, but I guess women were happy (in those days at least) to try hard to fit in whatever impossible bars their families or the larger society set for them. She tried so hard that she would, since her teenage years, periodically became ill and stayed in bed for days or a couple of weeks.

In high school, the demands on her increased. She had to work hard to submit poems and short stories to various magazines; she had to excel in schoolwork so that she could get a scholarship to college, which her family couldn’t afford to send her; she had to work as a babysitter or on other odd jobs to earn extra money; she had to participate in school activities; she had to communicate with her mother–the two had a very close relationship–in a way that her mother approved–which forced her to lie and to say a lot of things she didn’t believe. No wonder she had mental breakdowns–she worshiped too many deities in her life and wanted to be a good slave to too many masters.

She got a scholarship to Smith College, which made her physical and mental condition worse. In Smith, girls were all from rich families, and she and another girl were the only two people from poor families. She had to continue to submit poems and short stories; she had to excel in courses so that she could keep her scholarship (including art courses and philosophy courses); she had to take up editor roles for one or two school publications; she had to participate in social events, in which being poor was looked down upon; she had to date boys even if she thought she was too poor and too overworked to enjoy the dating experience; she had to work for a demanding editor in Mademoiselle to earn experience and recommendation letter; she had to work as a babysitter to rich families to make money during school breaks; she had to keep up the correspondence with her mother, in which she pretended to be cheerful and happy and healthy, in which she faked her interests in things her mother wanted her to do, in which she professed her admiration for social customs that she despised.

How could anybody cater to so many demands? I don’t know. I think one has to be crazy to even think about satisfying so many demands. And one thing that particularly annoys me is that her mother wanted her to marry the eldest son of a family friend. Dick was his name and after college, he attended the Harvard Medical School. How naive were those parents in those days? I guess people in those days were unbelievably unsophisticated in judging each other’s suitability. How can a poet be a suitable spouse for a medical doctor? One wants imagination and the other wants to deal with physical reality; one excels in vagueness and ambiguity while the other has to be clear and precise. Anyway, Sylvia wanted a breakup but couldn’t bring herself to do so for fear of disappointing her mother and Dick’s family.

It was no surprise that she had a total meltdown in her senior year in college.

(To Be Continued Here)