by Sylvia Plath
Most of all I am concerned about you working this summer. Really, mother, if Warren gets a big enough scholarship, I don’t see why you have to work. I can swing Harvard, and my expenses next year, and work the summer after my senior year if I don’t get a big enough scholarship to grad school. You could just stay home and rest, and let both Warren and me take care of ourselves financially. I am appalled to think that my going to summer school means that you’ll have to slave in town in the heat of the day. Really, I promise to pay for everything myself, out of my Harpers money and Hamp Gazette earnings.
much love,
sivvy
p.s. let me know when you and grammy are coming so I’ll be mostly packed. Better bring several suitcases and cartons.
xxx
s.
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Wednesday 13 May 1953
TLS with envelope, on Smith
Review Make-Up Sheet letterhead,
Indiana University
Wednesday, May 13
Dearest mother . . .
Needless to say, I’ve been eagerly awaiting news of Warren all week, and your letter with the news of Harvard has set me on topmost peak of the world. I sat right down this morning and wrote him a long 3-page letter of congratulation. I’d give anything to go to his graduation, but the expense and mechanics of the trip are rather prohibitive. We can talk about that when I see you. Does this scholarship mean you won’t have to apy anything? I hope so, because I want to be independent, too, next year. I want very much to talk over finances and get an overall family picture when I come home next week.
Your advice about New York was most appreciated. I am not going to get another hat. I love the white one, and will wear it all the while I am there, and if they get tired of it they can buy me another one. You advice about the food is also agreed wholeheartedly with. I am not going to starve my stomach to put clothes on my back.
I did buy a very lush raincoat yesterday, not black, as I first thought, but the same wide-cut style in a beautiful gray mixture with a lovely rose-pink lining and matching scarf, which looks enough like a coat to be worn even when it doesn’t rain, and will not show spots the way the black would have. I am beautifully pleased with it.
I will buy one pair of nice p.j.’s, as I have two blue pairs and a nylon nightgown, and a nice quilted robe, which I need anyway, to go over them. Also I’ll need to shop for necessaries like a new garterbelt, more stockings (I guess I’ll be wearing them all the time), a new lipstick . . . and I’ll have to hunt up that black powder case you once gave me, so I can powder shiny noses (plural because mine is fat!) and I’m going to experiment with wearing my hair back in a neat net, so it won’t get all fuzzy and out of place while running around on busses and in offices.
PLEASE PUT A GOODLY SUM OF MONEY IN MY CHECKING ACCOUNT AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, AS I AM DOWN TO ONE DOLLAR . . . one hundred dollars would not be amiss, and you could withdraw it from my bank account. Let me know when I can start using my check book again.
I have spent as much money this year on clothes as I spent my freshman year on everything combined, but I feel that as far as the New York trip goes, I’m investing in my future. I’ve always wanted to try “jobs on like dresses and decide which fit best”, and now I’ll have the chance to see what it’s like living in the Big City, plus working on a magazine! As you say, the intangibles are most exciting and important. I could work as a secretary for years before I got a break at experience like this one. And I’m going to put myself completely and willingly in the hands of the magazine, and, as you say, be as cooperative and eager as I was at the Cantors.
Now that Warren is set in college, his first choice, and me loving every precious minute of beautiful, stimulating Smith, with the wonderful girls in Lawrence House, and the fun-job at the News Office, and the marvelous instructors in my department and out . . . and the gala weekends at Columbia Med and Yale, I am most happy for our little happy-family.
I only hope that summer teaching doesn’t prove too much for you. I gather you’ve had ulcer trouble recently, and hope that you don’t let anything the Nortons do or say throw you off balance. Once Dick gets out of that Place, I can talk to him directly again, without all this meddling. I can understand the Norton’s position, but do think that Mrs. Norton’s maternalism is making her, as Bob Modlin said, like a mother animal with unreasoning concern for the welfare of her young at the expense of everyone else.
From what I gather, Mrs. Norton has decided, as I said, that I am selfish in not sacrificing MLLE and summer school (not even considering that I have to have a pre-requisite course for future work) and working as a waitress or mother’s helper, or some such, again. I hope seriously that I can write this summer, maybe sell an article to the Monitor about my month in New York, or a story written for O’Connor . . . and also hope that if I don’t get a prize from True Story, that I can send the story out to other magazines, and earn some money that way. So if Mrs. Norton feels that I am such a beast, she should be relieved that I feel the same way about Dick now that I felt before he was incarcerated. His circumstances have put this whole normal friendly situation in an artificial light, and I don’t want you to have to bear the brunt of their pressure group.
I believe in being honest at all costs, except that of hurt feelings, and I can hold up my head and say that I have played straight through this whole thing. I exacted no promises when Dick was so dead certain that his future was selfishly all set with no room for change or flexibility, and when he thought I wanted too much out of life. Now that he is more humble and ready to snatch at the nearest security, which is me, I don’t see how I can do more than be a continuous friend, write frequent letters (they take up a good part of my time and thought) and act toward him the way I always have, with No Strings Attached. I am fond of him as a person, but as I have said a million times, there are innumerable reasons why it would be suicide to be “serious” about him. I just hope that with all her resentful talk about my selfishness in not slaving to be near her son while she runs around Europe won’t spoil my tentative and embryonic friendship with Myron, who, by the way, is very emotionally insecure and uncertain of who he is. I wonder so often how many people are capable of reciprocal love today. His talk is all of himself, and his problems.
I don’t want you to get unduly concerned over this Dick affair. After all, I can’t fake something I don’t feel just for the sake of the Nortons’ convenience and peace of mind. Your safest bet if they prod you for information as to my feelings is to say that I feel the same way about him as I did before he went away, emphasizing the fact that I dated other boys all last summer, and that he knew about it. You might also bring up innocently that it seems strange Dick never mentioned his “love” or wanted to commit himself before he went away. And after all, I disagree with the Nortons’ policy of working at jobs, like waiting, with no future except immediate cash. Phil McCurdy needs money even more than they do, and is insuring his future with his summer jobs at the Jackson lab. Mike is doing what he loves and getting paid for it. I think it is shortsighted to waste summers at work which prepares one for nothing if there are other possibilities of earning a little and getting experience at the same time. Which is what I am doing by going to MLLE and summer school. (Which I also hope will help develop my technique and knowledge of the short story.)
In addition, you can say that you feel uncapable of making statements of my ideas and attitudes, that the grapevine which the Nortons have nurtured with such avidity runs the risks of distortion and misrepresentation, which I certainly feel, after talking with Bob Modlin last weekend. Mr. Norton may be stiff and awkward, but it is Mrs. Norton that I will never be able to forgive for what she has said about me. It was very uncalled for, and she should be more mature than that.
I just hope that if my going to summer school makes it necessary, in your mind for you to work, that you resign work immediately on grounds of doctor’s orders and your ulcer, because, I plan, as I said, to be indepen
dent next year. I can pay the $600 from my bank account, and with the money in my bank here ($300) and my earnings next year on Press Board (should be well over $150) I can take care of expenses.
Enough about that family. I can just imagine that if I were in Dick’s place that Mrs. N. would smile sweetly, shake her head, and say that a doctor couldn’t risk the liability of a tubercular wife. And she’d also emphasize the fact that he’d never even gone steady with me, but liked me as a “cousin.” Well, a cousin is all I’ll ever be to That family. I really am most disgusted with them.
I look most forward to seeing you and grammy Thursday. I plan to wash, iron, starch, and get all my clothes hanging up in the closet in readiness to be packed the following saturday when I come home. I’ll have to discuss the baggage problem with you, too. Hope it’s nice so you can have a walk about the lovely Smith campus. All the dogwood is out this week.
Much love to you all. Can’t wait to see the papers for the house . . .
xxx
sivvy
TO Warren Plath
Wednesday 13 May 1953*
TLS (photocopy) on Smith College
News Office letterhead, Indiana University
FLASH: FLASH: FLASH: CONGRATULATIONS!
CONGRATULATIONS! CONGRATULATIONS!
Dearest Harvard Man . . . .
“Oh, I on-ly date a man if his shoes are white” . . . I am so proud of you that I can hardly keep from leaping up and down and shouting liddle ’ip-’oorays all over the Smith campus. So Harvard came across with a National! And best of all, they Won’t Let You Work during the year. That is what I call princely.
After seeing the freshman scholarship boys at Yale in White Coats waiting on the Rich Ones and their dates all weekend, I am very glad you don’t have to undergo the strenuous work program they have, because in order to keep up your marks you would have to work at studies all the time you weren’t working at a job. This way, at Harvard, you should be able to try for all A’s, or something close to it, while going out for a sport (That is really a Must, as you no doubt know . . . colleges don’t want Just Brains all the time.)
At least you won’t make the mistake I did my freshman year by innocently not taking a paying job at school (no one told me or suggested it) and thusly having my scholarship lowered the next year because I was “lazy and didn’t work”. Thank God I have this News Office Job now, because it’s lots of fun and experience, and I’m in continual contact with the town paper, plus the fact that I’ve cleared about $150 at it this year. Should do about the same next year.
Tell me, now, how much is left for you to cover? Will mother have to pay anything? I hope not, because she is really down to rock bottom, and I gather from her letters that she is having ulcer trouble, although she is very brave and gay about eating baby foods again. I hope that I too can pay for everything next year, in spite of summer school (I just wish Harvard would come across for me too on June 1!) and New York.
Now, I think you and I should have a plan to make mother rested and happy this summer, in spite of the fact that she is teaching. As you know, the house is being decorated (for which I’m infinitely glad, as now I can bring boys home without keeping the lights down very dim and hoping they won’t see the spots and tears in the wallpaper . . . and you can feel proud to bring girls home during college.) And obviously this is a big financial chunk out of mother’s almost nonexistent bank account. So if we can continue to completely support ourselves these next years (if ONLY my True Story would pay, I’d keep our pot of caviar boiling by writing more such sordid money makers. Ironically enough, all my attempts to earn money by prostituting my talent, e.g., by writing hundreds of Lucky strike jingles, have been silent, while Big Money has come from all my attempts at artistic satisfaction without care for remuneration, e.g. MLLE and Harper’s.)
One thing I hope is that you will make your own breakfasts in the a.m. so mother won’t have to lift a finger. That is the main thing that seems to bother her. You know, as I do, and it is a frightening thing, that mother would actually Kill herself for us if we calmly accepted all she wanted to do for us. She is an abnormally altruistic person, and I have realized lately that we have to fight against her selflessness as we would fight against a deadly disease. My ambition is to earn enough so that she won’t have to work summers in the future, and can rest, vacation, sun, relax, and be all prepared to go back to school in the fall. Hitherto, she’s always been rushed and tired, and her frailty worries me.
She can’t take big problems or excitements without staying awake all night, and so our main responsibility is to give her the illusion (only now it hardly seems like an illusion) that we’re happy and successful and independent. After extracting her life blood and care for 20 years, we should start bringing in big dividends of joy for her, and I hope that together we can maybe plan to take a week down the cape at the end of this summer . . . what do you think about that?
If we could go after I get out of summer school at the last week in August, or right after labor day when expenses are down, we could read, relax, and just be together. I don’t know where the car will be, or what you think about it, but we could both chip in and treat her to a week in a cabin, maybe around Brewster, or Falmouth, or somewhere. Let me know what you think about this little light bulb of a plan.
In a way, I’m awfully sorry I won’t be home in june to help with the house and cooking, but as mother probably told you, being one of the 20 winners in the U.S. of this month in New York is a dream of an opportunity for invaluable job experience, and I feel like a collegiate Cinderella whose Fairy Godmother suddenly hopped out of the mailbox and said: “What is your first woosh?” and I, Cinderella, said: “New York”, and she winked, waved her pikestaff, and said: “Woosh granted.”
I’ll be working on a five-day week schedule, doing grubby work, getting experience, meeting my favorite famous person and having my picture taken with him or her (I sent in a list of my pet writers whom they’re going to try to get me an interview with one of . . . lovely syntax, wot?) and going to a theater opening, a starlit roof, and all sorts of clothes places. I should be a veteran of subways, busses, and New York modes when I come back to the bucolic pastures of home.
After the fabulous weekend with Ray, which included filet mignon and wine a la Petite Maison, lobster at the Gloucester House, “Carmen” at the City Center, “Camino Real” by Tennessee Williams and “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller, plus a tour of the medical center and a dance overlooking the Palisades, I’m excited to death at the prospect of living there for 4 gala weeks.
I get home at the end of June, and will have a week to recuperate, talk endlessly and tell you all about it. Then 8 weeks of living in you future home town at Cambridge, coming home on weekends to study, help around the house, and visit with you. Also will have to start reading for my thesis topic.
So glad you read Joyce . . . it’ll be such fun having someone special to discuss my problems with.
(next page, if you have the strength)
After last weekend in the sunny beer-and-blanket-and-beach-party atmosphere at New Haven with Mike, I came back with a great sunburn, plenty of salt air in my lungs, and a jolly guilt complex, as I had two papers to write Monday. Stayed up way after midnight typing an 11-page paper on the light and music symbolism in Milton’s “L’allegro and Il Penseroso”, and collapsed in bed after writing and typing at a furious pace all day. Really, I have only had about five or six really tense times like that during the year (that’s enough, brother) and the rest of the time is chock full with News Office Work, and Smith Review (did mother tell you I’m Editor of that luminous lit mag next year? I’m most happy, cause I love the work) and waitressing, and shopping, and all sort-s of menial labor.
Really, you and I have it good. Food, clothes, best schools in the country . . . our first choices, and all sorts of prizes, etc. Seems we lead a charmed plathian existence. Just hope the world doesn’t blow up and queer it all before we’ve had our good hard live
s lived down to the nub.
So much remains to talk about: philosophies of life, aims, attitudes. At least we can be best companions, all honesty and help to each other. I am so proud of you, and want the very best for you in the world. Hope that you can profit by all my mistakes, and a few of my lucks and successes!
Be good, and keep a cool and level head (soaking it in beer often helps).
One thing, when you get all success like us, you have to be damn careful because many people secretly would like to see you fall off your proud stallion into the mud, because, no matter how good friends they are, they can’t help but be a bit jealous. I find it expedient to keep quiet about the majority of my publications, for instance, because friends can rejoice with you for just so long without wishing they were in your place, and envying you in spite of themselves. It’s sad, but that’s the way it goes.
One exam remains, at the end of May, and the interim will be taken up with sunning, studying on back work for it, getting a printer for next year’s magazine, and working in the News Office . . . all very pleasant liesurely tasks.
Here’s hoping I see you within a little over a month.
Much much love
and more felicitations,
your very proud
Sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Thursday 14 May 1953*
TLS/ALS on Smith Review
Make-Up Sheet letterhead,
Indiana University
thursday night
dear mother . . .
just a note to say that life goes on fast and furiously, as if on a constantly accelerating record turntable. tuesday I had a lovely cheap ($1.30) steak dinner at a favorite diner with marciandcarol after which we took a therapeutic drive out in the lovely greenery of the evening country side and blew off steam acquired while writing papers under top heat. now there is a blessed interim betwixt papers and my exam. college is beautiful, dogwood verdant, and full of lovely brilliant talented people.