lesbiaphrodite
Literotica Guru
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- May 29, 2007
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About 46 years ago, Sylvia Plath committed suicide, and last week her son followed suit by hanging himself. This makes me wonder the extent to which depression runs in families and the long-lasting, far-reaching effects of a parent's suicide on their children.
As someone who has been in the depths of depression myself on more than one occasion, I find the story deeply saddening, just as I found Plath's own short life story sad.
Nicholas Hughes, 47, Sylvia Plath’s Son, Dies
By ANAHAD O’CONNOR, New York Times
Published: March 24, 2009
Nicholas Hughes, the son of the poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, killed himself on March 16 at his home in Alaska, four decades after his mother and father’s lover took their own lives. He was 47.
Sylvia Plath's sister, Frieda Hughes, announced his death, by hanging, over the weekend. Friends and family said he had long struggled with depression.
Mr. Hughes was a fisheries biologist who studied stream fish and spent much of his time trekking across Alaska on field studies. Shielded from stories about his mother’s suicide until he was a teenager, Mr. Hughes had lived an academic life largely outside the public eye.
Mr. Hughes’s early life was darkened by shadows of depression and suicide. Plath explored the themes in her 1963 novel, “The Bell Jar,” which follows an ambitious college student who tries to kill herself after suffering a nervous breakdown while interning at a New York City magazine. The novel reflected Plath’s own experiences, including her early struggles with depression and her attempt at suicide while working at Mademoiselle in New York as a college student.
After a stay at a mental institution, Plath went on to study poetry at Cambridge University, where she met Ted Hughes, who was on his way to world fame as a poet. The two were married in 1956 and had two children — Nicholas and Frieda — but separated in 1962 after Hughes began an affair with another woman, Assia Wevill. On Feb. 11, 1963, Plath killed herself at the age of 30 by sticking her head in an oven in her London home as Nicholas and Frieda slept nearby.
Six years later, Wevill, who had helped raise Nicholas and Frieda after Plath’s death, killed herself and her 4-year-old daughter, Shura. Wevill committed the murder-suicide in the same manner, using a gas stove.
Hughes, who became the British poet laureate in 1984 and was regarded as one of the greatest poets of his generation, resisted speaking openly about the deaths for many years. But in his last poetic work, “Birthday Letters,” published in 1998, he finally broke his silence and explored the theme. He died the same year, even as the book — considered in some ways a quest for redemption — was climbing best-seller lists.
Hughes was said to have protected his children from details about their mother’s suicide for many years. But in at least one poem he seemed to indicate that Nicholas, who was only 1 at the time of her death, was pained even as a small child. In one stanza he recalled how Nicholas’s eyes “Became wet jewels/The hardest substance of the purest pain/As I fed him in his high white chair.”
Nicholas Hughes had a passion for wildlife, particularly fish. As a young adult he studied at the University of Oxford, where he earned a bachelor of science degree in 1984 and a master of arts in 1990. Afterward, he traveled to the United States, earning a doctorate from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where he became an assistant professor at the School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, carrying out research in Alaska and New Zealand. He resigned from the faculty in 2006 but continued his research, the school said.
On a memorial page on the university’s Web site, Lauren Tuori wrote of Mr. Hughes, recalling how he would often “seek out a larch tree in a forest of spruce.”
As someone who has been in the depths of depression myself on more than one occasion, I find the story deeply saddening, just as I found Plath's own short life story sad.
Nicholas Hughes, 47, Sylvia Plath’s Son, Dies
By ANAHAD O’CONNOR, New York Times
Published: March 24, 2009
Nicholas Hughes, the son of the poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, killed himself on March 16 at his home in Alaska, four decades after his mother and father’s lover took their own lives. He was 47.
Sylvia Plath's sister, Frieda Hughes, announced his death, by hanging, over the weekend. Friends and family said he had long struggled with depression.
Mr. Hughes was a fisheries biologist who studied stream fish and spent much of his time trekking across Alaska on field studies. Shielded from stories about his mother’s suicide until he was a teenager, Mr. Hughes had lived an academic life largely outside the public eye.
Mr. Hughes’s early life was darkened by shadows of depression and suicide. Plath explored the themes in her 1963 novel, “The Bell Jar,” which follows an ambitious college student who tries to kill herself after suffering a nervous breakdown while interning at a New York City magazine. The novel reflected Plath’s own experiences, including her early struggles with depression and her attempt at suicide while working at Mademoiselle in New York as a college student.
After a stay at a mental institution, Plath went on to study poetry at Cambridge University, where she met Ted Hughes, who was on his way to world fame as a poet. The two were married in 1956 and had two children — Nicholas and Frieda — but separated in 1962 after Hughes began an affair with another woman, Assia Wevill. On Feb. 11, 1963, Plath killed herself at the age of 30 by sticking her head in an oven in her London home as Nicholas and Frieda slept nearby.
Six years later, Wevill, who had helped raise Nicholas and Frieda after Plath’s death, killed herself and her 4-year-old daughter, Shura. Wevill committed the murder-suicide in the same manner, using a gas stove.
Hughes, who became the British poet laureate in 1984 and was regarded as one of the greatest poets of his generation, resisted speaking openly about the deaths for many years. But in his last poetic work, “Birthday Letters,” published in 1998, he finally broke his silence and explored the theme. He died the same year, even as the book — considered in some ways a quest for redemption — was climbing best-seller lists.
Hughes was said to have protected his children from details about their mother’s suicide for many years. But in at least one poem he seemed to indicate that Nicholas, who was only 1 at the time of her death, was pained even as a small child. In one stanza he recalled how Nicholas’s eyes “Became wet jewels/The hardest substance of the purest pain/As I fed him in his high white chair.”
Nicholas Hughes had a passion for wildlife, particularly fish. As a young adult he studied at the University of Oxford, where he earned a bachelor of science degree in 1984 and a master of arts in 1990. Afterward, he traveled to the United States, earning a doctorate from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where he became an assistant professor at the School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, carrying out research in Alaska and New Zealand. He resigned from the faculty in 2006 but continued his research, the school said.
On a memorial page on the university’s Web site, Lauren Tuori wrote of Mr. Hughes, recalling how he would often “seek out a larch tree in a forest of spruce.”
