I know you have probably heard of Sylvia Plath…and it probably had something to do with an oven. The suicide of the poet and writer Sylvia Plath has been perpetually linked to her work ever since her suicide in 1963, but in honor of her birthday on October 27th I am going to talk about when she was a college student studying at Smith College, Massachusetts. On the outside she looked like how Taylor Swift might have looked if she had lived in the 1950s, (think tall, blond, red-lipped and dripping with boys) and Sylvia might have described herself with one of the aforementioned singer’s most famous lyrics, “A nightmare dressed like a daydream.”
On the outside, she was flawless, popular and effortlessly fit in with the girls around her, but on the inside she was deeply introspective, self-critical, emotionally tortured and fighting a losing battle against 1950s conformity and sexism. She would fight this battle for the rest of her life, and of course we know how it ended. But in honor of her birthday, let’s take a minute to appreciate her unique, rebellious mind, and be inspired to cultivate our own unique and rebellious talents and encourage others to do the same.
Here are ten of her loveliest quotes from her Unabridged Journals, which are a highly recommended read, (especially if you are not terribly into poetry). Here are words more than fifty years old; words written by a young woman our age who many critics, historians, and scholars now agree to be one of the most defiantly brilliant female writers in modern American history. She was perhaps not so different from us after all, and I defy you not to find a quote that you can identify with!
“I too want to be important. By being different.”
“I am jealous of those who think more deeply, who write better, who draw better, who ski better, who look better, who live better, who love better than I.”
“I am still so naïve; I know pretty much what I like and dislike; but please, don’t ask me who I am. A passionate, fragmentary girl, maybe?”
“I like people too much or not at all. I’ve got to go down deep, to fall into people, to really know them.”
“Before I give my body, I must give my thoughts, my mind, my dreams. And you weren’t having any of those.”
“I can change, whittle my square edges to fit in a round hole…I hope I’m never going to massacre myself that way.”
“Why can’t I tray on different lives, like dresses to see which fits best and is most becoming?”
“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in the skills I want. And why do I want: I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited.”
“Let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences.”
“And by the way everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”