Sylvia Plath | Autograph letter signed, to Edith & William Hughes, on admitting her marriage, 12 November 1956

Sylvia Plath

Autograph letter signed, to Edith and William Hughes ("Dear Ted's mother & dad...")

on admitting her marriage to the Cambridge authorities, the latest acceptances of their work in magazines, and her excitement at their new flat, 4 pages, 8vo (177 x 140mm), blue writing paper, autograph envelope, [Whitstead, Newnham College, Cambridge,] 12 November [1956]

"...I've spent a gruelling time telling Fulbright people & countless grave Newnham Victorians about my marriage & convincing them I could still think while cooking for Ted. The Fulbright people were lovely, treated me like Grace Kelly having just been married to a Dark Foreign Prince - my grant will continue till June, praise be! Newnham was much tougher, I felt like an orator on the creative virtues of marriage before a jury of intellectual nuns. But I won - the Council decided this week I could go for my degree..."

SYLVIA PLATH ON HER RELIEF AT HER NEW LIFE WITH TED HUGHES. The acceptance of her marriage relieved a tension that had burdened her heavily over the previous month, and she was delighted to be living with Ted and looking forward to living openly as Hughes's wife. She had, however, been bed-ridden following a slipped disc, and she admits to her in-laws her "plain sick grief over the rebel Hungarians & rage at Eden". Her disgust at Britain's role in the Suez Crisis was one reason for her wish to return to America, much as her revulsion at the execution of the Rosenbergs had earlier encapsulated her loathing of Eisenhower's America.

LITERATURE:

The Letters of Sylvia Plath: Volume Two, pp.11-13