![]() ![]() “Red Comet” reviews the evidence but offers an apologia from Frieda Hughes, who contends that “my father was not the wife-beater that some would wish to imagine he was. ![]() Another episode, which Plath described in no uncertain terms, occurred in February 1961, when Hughes beat Plath so severely she suffered a miscarriage. “I remember,” Plath wrote, “hurling a glass with all my force across a dark room instead of shattering the glass rebounded and remained intact: I got hit and saw stars.” Clark writes of the passage: “Plath’s colon suggests that she ‘got hit’ by the ricocheting glass, not by Hughes” - a conclusion contrary to the one many other readers have reached. The ensuing altercation caused Plath to report in her journal that the fight left her with a strained thumb and Hughes with claw marks on his cheeks. In May 1958, when Plath was teaching at Smith, she saw Hughes strolling on campus with a student. ![]() ![]() Refusing to read Plaths work as if her every act was a harbinger of her fate, Clark evokes a culture in transition in the mid-twentieth century as she thoroughly explores Sylvias world. Portions of “Red Comet” are deeply moving, but a tendency to downplay Hughes’s violence will likely attract critics. Drawing on a wealth of new material, Heather Clark brings to life the great and tragic poet, Sylvia Plath. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |