Greta As Sylvia Plath | ‘Fragmentary Girl’ by Remi Rebillard

Sylvia Plath was a poet and writer, mother of two children and wife of one — though separated — when she stuck her head in the oven at age 30.

Clinically-speaking, Sylvia Plath suffered from depression. Thoughts of death permeate the journal kept by the highly-educated Plath from age 11 until the day in 1963 when she put her genius to sleep for good in the above-mentioned domestic baking unit.

Sylvia Plath is also a feminist writer, a muse who articulated women’s condition in 1963. Her words are an oracle that resonate beyond her identity as a clinically-depressed woman.

I can say that Plath captured my own mother’s deep frustrations, angst and daily anger about her life in the 60s. Living in our small town in Minnesota, mom wasn’t at all the happy homemaker that Schlafly writes about in her new book. She was preoccupied with what she could have been, rejecting the idea that her many talents as a homemaker and mother gave her life meaning.

Feminism is not another educated, Eastern liberal conspiracy to bring down the nation, as Schlafly argues. Going back to the good ‘ol days, as social conservatives intend for American women, will come at a high psychological price.  Perhaps Sylvia Plath’s words are more important now than ever.

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”  ~Sylvia Plath in The Bell Jar

My friend Remi Rebillard shot the beautiful, blue-mood Greta in ‘Fragmentary Girl’ to honor Sylvia Plath and to remind us that art and fashion photograhy can deal with the realities of women’s lives. A member of Remi’s inner circle of friends and family suffers from depression, prompting him to make this artistic photographic statement with ‘Fragmentary Girl’, styled by Don West.

Building on Remi’s intention, we share Sylvia Plath herself reading ‘Daddy’ and also ‘Lady Lazarus’, a few weeks before her death. Anne

Sylvia Plath Reads ‘Daddy’

Sylvia Plath Reads ‘Lady Lazarus’

via tp