Ted_Hughes_Conflicting_Perspectives

As poet Oscar Wilde once remarked, 'the pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple. This quote perhaps best demonstrates the dichotomy of truth, which became evident to me through the study of 'Conflicting Perspectives' – that there may never be a singular, objective truth, but rather a series of perspectives, which more often than not come into conflict. The notion that there may never be a single, objective truth about a relationship or even is made clear in the study of the relationship between Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. In examining the relationship through their poetic works as well as an outside perspective in the form of Christine Jeffs' 2003 film 'Sylvia', the fact that objective, singular truth does not exist is elucidated. Hughes' 'Birthday Letters' are the summation of a thirty-five year silence by Hughes on the subject of his wife Sylvia Plath who suicided on the 11th of February, 1963. Hughes' 'Letters' acknowledge the transience of memory and therefore the changeable nature of perspective in the first poem of the volume, 'Fullbright Scholars.' Hughes employs rhetorical questioning ("Where was it, in the Strand'" and "Were you among them'" in order to highlight the haziness of his memory of the first sighting of his future wife as well as the inherently subjective nature of perspective and memory itself. Ted Hughes released Sylvia Plath’s volume, ‘Ariel’ posthumously in 1965, 2 years after her suicide. The reader must bear in mind that, firstly, this volume has not the advantage of hindsight the 'Birthday Letters' enjoy, and secondly that the volume was released by Hughes and thus may have seen alterations or omissions by his hand. Nevertheless, the autobiographical significance of the volume itself cannot be discounted. Plath narrates the relationship she shared with Hughes as being 'torturous' in nature in her poem, Daddy, through the use of Nazi imagery and allusion to the act of torture itself – I made a model of you A man in black with a Meinkampf look And a love of the rack and the screw. Furthermore, the title and perceived subject of the poem, Sylvia's father Otto Plath, foregrounds the fixation which Sylvia held on the memory of her father, who died when she was eight years old. However it appears that Sylvia sees Hughes as the cause for her mental degradation. Hughes disputes this in his 'Birthday Letters', saying that it was the intensity of Sylvia's nature, which eventually caused him to 'jump the fence' and reach out to other women. The poem 'Sam' is an example of this notion in Hughes' volume. Sam is a horse, which Sylvia had rented out for riding which subsequently bolted on her, as narrated in one of Sylvia's older poems, 'Whiteness I Remember', from the 1958 volume 'The Colossus'. Hughes however takes the horse as a metaphor for their relationship; Sylvia the rider and Hughes the horse which she lost control of. Sylvia's intense nature overwhelms Hughes, causing him to 'start home at a gallop.' Without the control of Hughes, Sylvia herself loses control as Hughes notes, "You lost your reins. You lost your seat", kept alive only to pursue her art, her poetry – "Something in you not you did it for itself". This clumsy, unpunctuated line conveys Sylvia's loss of control through its jarring auditory effect. As for the intensity, which eventually overwhelmed Hughes and caused him to 'bolt', he blames the fixation on Otto Plath evident in Sylvia's poetry. It was this, rather than any action, which Hughes made, which caused her mental deterioration and ultimate death – her father's death being the event, which would irrevocably set her on this path. Hughes characterises Sylvia as a bullet heading towards her ultimate destination of death in his poem, 'The Shot' – You were undeflected. You were gold jacketed, nickel tipped Trajectory perfect. – a trajectory which, ultimately Hughes saw her father as responsible for – Your daddy had been aiming you at God When his death touched the trigger. Christine Jeffs' film Sylvia, however, disputes this and rather sees Hughes as a womaniser and ultimately the cause for Sylvia's suicide. As in Hughes' poem, 'Red', the colour red is a symbol of passion and virility, and the costume of the female characters in the film reflects this theme – Hughes' love interests, Sylvia Plath, a young student, and Assia Weevil, respectively wear red dresses symbolising the shifting focus of Hughes' affections, as interpreted by the film. It is the fear of infidelity, which appears to cause mental instability in the film, and the director, placing the ultimate blame for her death upon Hughes’ shoulders, plays down the role of her father as an underlying cause for her suicide. Ted Hughes ultimately saw Sylvia's suicide, as a means by which she would trip Hughes – perhaps as the ultimate revenge, to which there would never be any reply. This view is narrated in the final stanza of the poem Sam. Due to his infidelity, "When I jumped a fence", Sylvia strangles Hughes for "One giddy moment, then fell off" to her death, with the intention of 'tripping' Hughes into a fall – to which there could be no reply – "over in a flash." Sylvia however appears to reject this in her earlier work, seeing death as a thing which she was ultimately able to overcome. This is created by a biblical allusion in her poem, 'Lady Lazarus' – which affirms her belief to overcome death and rise – just as Lazarus rose by way of a miracle performed by Jesus in the Gospel of John. Sylvia indicates this belief in her ability to overcome death in the first stanza – "I have done it again / One year in every ten / I manage it –" which appears to show that she did not have the intention of dying, but merely rising "out of the ash" like a phoenix – a cry for help, as interpreted by her close friend Al Alvarez. Whatever the cause of Sylvia's suicide, and the extent to which Ted Hughes' infidelity had a negative effect on Sylvia's psyche may never be known, but it is clear through the study of the conflicting perspectives offered on the Hughes / Plath relationship that there may never be a singular, objective truth on a situation, but a collection of perspectives coloured by context, opinion and interpretation. Thus, the relationship of Hughes and Plath only stands to affirm Wildes age defying words – in their case, the pure and simple truth is rarely pure, and never simple.