Sylvia Plath Effect--I Am Doomed To A Future At McLean Hospital

OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

In case you didn't already guess, I'm very startled and upset by a recent discovery I made.

Sylvia Plath Effect.

This is named after the poet/author, Sylvia Plath. She was born in Massachusetts in 1932. She went to Smith College, and while there got a position at Mademoiselle magazine, and spent a few weeks in NYC. It was actually a pretty awful experience for her, and made her outlook less... well, good. She was driven to taking an overdose of sleeping pills underneath her house. She was then sent to mental hospital McLean. (other famous clientele, James Taylor and Susanna Kaysen, who wrote the book, Girl, Interrupted about her stay there.)

She seemed to make a successful recovery and graduated from Smith. Sylvia married the poet Ted Hughes, and moved to London with him. Plath and Hughes had two children, Frieda and Nicholas.

One night, she went into the kitchen, turned on the gas, and stuck her head in the oven. Her death was named a suicide the next day. She was thirty years old.

There are rumors that Hughes was abusive towrd his wife and children because his next wife, Assia Wevill, killed herself the same exact way, six years later.

That's who Plath is, a wonderful talent who died before her time, but left a poetic legacy.

The effect is basically that creative writers are more likely to suffer from mental illness. Female poets are more susceptible to mental illness than any other class of writers.

While I mainly do write in prose on my blog and for school and that kind of stuff, i consider myself to be a poet/lyrical writer above features, profiles, essays and proposals.