Some People, Honestly
by checkeredfoxglove
(Please read this post and the comment thread starting with D’s post first, for to facilitate understanding.)
So this is in response to the Sylvia Plath suicide comment thread on Captain Awkward, which The Captain seems to be Finished Discussing Thank You, so I’ll be putting it here instead of there.
Basically: Sylvia Plath’s suicide has nothing to do with her work.
All of her works were written before her suicide. She did not know at the time that she was going to commit suicide. The Bell Jar quote in question is clearly by a person who knows what it feels like to suffer from paralysis of choice. When she wrote that, she DID NOT KNOW that her paralysis would kill her. The meaning of that quote: This is what it feels like. Other people have been through this. Having too many wonderful choices is a real struggle, and even though some people #firstworldproblems you for being in pain over this, it really does hurt and I understand.
Her eventual suicide has nothing to do with it.
If it did, the meaning would be: Sylvia Plath was destroyed by this struggle, but you don’t have to be. Here are some options that you have that she didn’t.
Sylvia Plath DIDN’T KNOW SHE WAS GOING TO KILL HERSELF. She probably knew she might, but she didn’t know she would. Therefore, her suicide has nothing to do with her work. Thank you.
checkeredfoxglove 
Here’s the direct link to the thread in question.
Like I said there, I actually do think that reading Plath’s work with her life circumstances and eventual fate in mind is a valuable exercise. She wrote about her own suicidality, after all. The Bell Jar itself explores how much paralysis of choice and mental illness were, for her, inextricably linked with the sexism she grew up saturated in.
But then, my essential understanding of suicide is really different than “it’s a bad life choice” so to me, accepting that someone was mentally ill and committed suicide doesn’t mean they’re less of a person.
It reminds me of Virginia Woolf’s musings on Shakespeare’s sister–the idea that women geniuses will be born, and cut off from their full potential, because of the incredible weight put on them by society. Woolf and Plath both saw quite clearly the shape of all the things pressing on them, and managed to work in spite of them, and also used their experience of that struggle to create transcendent art. The fact that neither of them eventually saw any way out other than suicide shouldn’t, I think, invalidate them as people; instead it’s a testament to the overwhelming nature of the burdens they were carrying.
That’s a good point. The problem I’m having is, how do you take their whole life story into account without saying that their work is made better by their eventual suicide? Because that seems wrong, too.
Their work, or my experience of their work? Their suicide, or my knowledge of their life experiences? I think they’re always going to be the same writers as they ever were, whether they lived or died or became sassy undead characters in a paranormal romance. Their work is separate from that; it stands alone and can be read and enjoyed on its own merits.
I just come at this as someone who’s studied psychobiography and as a woman who writes and lives with depression. I can try to vaguely understand how their art functioned in the struggles of their lives. So when I think, “Who are other women who have struggled with mental illness and sexism when trying to write? How did they do it?” then Plath and Woolf have a lot to tell me, and the fact that their struggles played out in a lot of arenas other than art just add to that. That would happen no matter what their lives looked like, because sometimes we look to history and the lives of people we admire just to learn that we’re not alone.
I can’t glean any easy, simple answers, but I can get a feel for possibilities. I might find a lot of food for thought in the idea that in a less sexist world, women might be able to write with fewer personal problems. A friend who’s suicidal might gain comfort that even if her family thinks she’s “stupid, weak and useless” for attempting suicide, being unable to instantly and completely fight off mental illness does not automatically prevent her from being an artist with valuable things to say.
That kind of sounds like what I was thinking, only articulated better. Thank you.