Sylvia and Ted by Emma Tennant: book review

Sylvia and Ted (2001), now called Ted and Sylvia (2003), is the story of the lives of temperamental poets and writers Sylvia Plath and her husband Ted Hughes.

Sylvia committed suicide in 1963, after a series of jealous outrages due to her husband’s infamous infidelities; firstly with their 15 year-old baby-sitter and then with a rival poet and magnificent Russian beauty, Assia Wevill.

Tennant reveals the emotions in Plath’s life from 1935 when she was a two-year-old, continuously separated from her German parents and cared for by her grandparents in America. A gifted student, Sylvia wrote at an early age. At twenty-one she moved to England after she failed to be admitted to Harvard University

In England, Sylvia strives for two goals, one to produce children and another to produce brilliant writing. She fails in both for a long time, and with great anguish, until the two goals converge at the same time. The stress of the two creative forces and the competing pressures for priority take their toll. At a time when she should be fulfilled, she fails at her marriage.

The writing tries to link Sylvia’s relationships with her father and grandfather to her relationship with her husband, intermittently overlaying references to her poetry. It only partly achieves this while falling short of detailing the complexities of the tortured lives of ambitious artists. The novel is primarily for Plath devotees as the poetry references are rather obtuse. As a story it leaves many unanswered questions for the general reader.

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