Sylvia Plath's Tragic Myth Explored in Smithsonian Exhibition

The National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., has opened 'One Life: Sylvia Plath', the first major museum exhibition dedicated to the poet. Running until May 20, 2018, the show traces Plath's life through letters, manuscripts, drawings, paintings, family photographs, and personal objects from the Plath archives at Smith College and Indiana University's Lilly Library. It contextualizes her private world within mid-20th-century American bourgeois codes, highlighting the struggle of emancipated women, wives, and intellectuals. Plath, who died by suicide at age 30 in 1963, left behind a legacy of fiery poetry collected posthumously in 'Ariel'. The exhibition also touches on the dualism in her work, reflected in her undergraduate thesis 'The Magic Mirror: A Study of the Double in Two of Dostoevsky's Novels'. The article recounts her tragic biography: her marriage to poet Ted Hughes, his affair with Assia Wevill (who also died by gas suicide in 1969), her friendship with poet Anne Sexton (who died by suicide in 1974), and the suicide of her son Nicholas Hughes in 2009. Plath's poem 'I Am Vertical' is quoted, expressing her desire to lie horizontal and commune with the sky.