Conspircy of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes

Conspircy of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes

Janet Malcolm’s book The Silent Woman contains a lot of the controversy that surrounds Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. Her opinion of there being no love in the relationship causes unrest with others who thought to know the details differently. I will be comparing her entry on pages 133-34.
Sylvia Plath often wrote diary entries that were later released (or what was left of them after some becoming lost and others censored) that talked about her feelings and how the daily activities impacted on her life. I will be comparing her diary entry at Paris (26 march).
In Janet Malcolm’s article uses a part of a biography that has much emotional language that engages the reader, but she then confronts our normal beliefs with the fact that the reliability of a firsthand account can be faltered by memory or ‘evil will’. This then makes us question the validity of Plath’s journal entries.
Plath discusses her events in detail, as though she were re-enacting them for our purpose with mention of anything that comes to her mind. In the first paragraph, she gives an impression of slight joy. One that is content with what she has received. “... The people in the hotel are delightful...”
Whilst the first paragraph has a tone of being content, the second is more of a laid back tone, even though there are matters of great concern: “... Washed my battered face, smeared with a purple bruise from Ted and my neck raw and wounded too...” How she casually places this in the middle of the paragraph makes it seem as though it is a regular event, and at this point it has no more impact on her than walking alone in Paris. This is a different tone, and it begins to give some substance to Janet’s claims. Since there is no way of disproving her notes, it is immediately taken as fact but can be manipulated for selfish reasons or lost with memory. This way, people’s perceptions of what the truth is, are often blurred by the misdeed of others.
In the next few paragraphs she...