Ariel by Sylvia Plath
Ariel was published after Sylvia Plath committed suicide through the efforts of her ex-husband, Ted Hughes. Plath’s manuscript for Ariel and Other Poems was set on the coffee table just before she killed herself, as if it were her last proclamation to the world. Hughes altered this original manuscript, adding fifteen poems and discarding twelve of the poems Plath originally intended to be in the book. Many of Plath’s followers, especially the feminist literary critics, despised Hughes and accused him of rearranging the poems to protect his own reputation. However, some now believe that Hughes reconstructed Ariel for the better.
Plath was an iconic poet because she was such a different writer. She discussed painful topics including shock treatment, suicide, and dysfunctional relationships with this control. She paints surreal pictures, one after the other, to portray the larger image of suffering, an ultimately unsettling experience for readers. Also, she was able to write poems about self-loathing, elemental female anger and sexual voracity in 1963! In the early 1960s, many publishers did not want to publish Plath’s poems because of their content, but Hughes’ rearranging helped Ariel become as well-known as it is today.
