Rethinking A Marriage From Hell

Newsweek, October, 2003 by Mark Miller

In the four decades since Sylvia Plath gassed herself to death in London, critics, biographers and readers have argued about who was to blame. Plath's chilling, raging last poems led feminists to accuse her philandering husband, fellow poet Ted Hughes, of pushing her to the edge. Hughes's defenders portrayed Plath as cruel and emotionally unbalanced. Today, with mental illness so openly discussed, it all seems a little quaint. But it is a measure of the ferocity of the Plath wars that only now can someone say the obvious. As Diane Middlebrook puts it in "Her Husband," a new biographical account of the couple's marriage: "Depression killed Sylvia Plath."

Middlebrook's excellent book is one sign that we've come far enough for a balanced appraisal of the Plath-Hughes marriage....

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