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Nicholas Hughes, Son of Sylvia Plath, Commits Suicide

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lil red
03/23/09

In reply to Nicholas Hughes, Son of Sylvia Plath, Commits Suicide
This is my least favorite week of the year. The entire week, I wait for the other shoe to drop. What great tragedy will the world be forced to face? It is probably far more subjective than I admit, but suicide does seem to be a running theme of this annual agonizing week. I keep reminding myself... April is only one week away.
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BookishLookish
03/23/09

@lil red: Hang tight, lil gal.
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pufflehuff
03/23/09

In reply to Nicholas Hughes, Son of Sylvia Plath, Commits Suicide
This is sad. Very sad. At least he made it to a later age than his mother, and achieved a lot academically, even if perhaps he avoided intimacy (I'm extrapolating here: no partner or children).

Plath's suicidal depression was one terrible thing; but then her death, Wevill's murder-suicide, the cult of Plath and Hughes, having the genes for terrible depression yourself and having no real memories of your mother because you were too small when she died... I wouldn't have been able to do much with that. He had a go. It seems as though he tried.

Poor Frieda, all alone. I've always enjoyed her writing and her viewpoint on her parents' image. I hope she has a hell of a lot of support right now.
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BookishLookish
03/23/09

In reply to Nicholas Hughes, Son of Sylvia Plath, Commits Suicide
This is very sad.

I recommend Freida Hughes's book Forty-Five. It's small, but there is a lot of clarity there.
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FormerEnglishMajor
03/23/09

In reply to Nicholas Hughes, Son of Sylvia Plath, Commits Suicide
As a mother, it is hard, very hard for me to imagine killing myself, knowing I would be leaving my children to someone else (like their deadbeat dad, in Plath's case) to raise.

I don't know if there are depressive mothers reading this, but do your thoughts change in any way when/if you have children? The literature on what parental suicide does to children is so horrific, and Christ, Nicholas and Freida were TINY.

Revenge against the dad, or overwhelming sadness over what he did (and it would devastate me if my husband left me for someone else) - I'm ready for the flames - isn't it selfish to take the suicide option over living the day-to-day and seeing your kids to adulthood?
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Trollopean Tubes
03/23/09

@FormerEnglishMajor: Until I became a mother, I never understood murder-suicide of your child and yourself. Horrific though it is, I now think it's kinder than saddling your child with the lifetime of misery and guilt that is inevitably the lot of the one orphaned by suicide.
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britneyspearstears
03/23/09

@Trollopean Tubes: I respect such cold honesty.
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LulaMaeBarnes
03/23/09

@FormerEnglishMajor: i understand where you're coming from. as a mother of two daughters, it was difficult for me to comprehend how Assia Wevill would've taken her daughter with her when she committed suicide. however, just as you said above, after reading about Assia Wevill & her daughter Shura's treatment by Hughes (who always called Shura "Assia's daughter" even though she was his biologically) it made me understand better Assia's torment of her daughter basically being raised by people who didn't give a shit about her. although the book i read ("Lover of Unreason") stated that Nicholas and Frieda loved their younger sister Shura greatly, it seemed as if she would never been cared for properly if Assia left her alive after her suicide.

i also wonder how much Assia's suicide and Shura's death affected Nicholas in the long run. not that he would not have committed suicide is if Assia hadn't, but i am sure that these were huge events in his life. Assia was Nicholas' caregiver after Plath's death, and she even set herself up in Plath's room.
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FormerEnglishMajor
03/23/09

@LulaMaeBarnes: More and more@hot_cops_or_hot_se....: @Trollopean Tubes:

Sylvia Plath's suicide. made MORE sense to me before I had children.

This makes me loathe Ted Hughes all the more. Calling Shura "your daughter" (I didn't know this), and all the other verbal and nonverbal torture he meted out.

Sylvia Plath was barely 30. Whole life ahead of her. For the LIFE of me, I don't understand why she didn't pick up her kids, get on a plane, and move away from her unhappiness. Maybe it wouldn't have helped. But DAMMIT - TRY. I was kinda self-pitying and not mature at 29 myself, every little thing over-magnified. And I wasn't in what seems like an abusive relationship.

I can't claim to understand or relate to major chemical imbalances, but putting your 3-year-old and 1-year-old children in a room while you go end it all is incomprehensible to me. Just incomprehensible.
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PandoraSpocks
03/23/09

In reply to Nicholas Hughes, Son of Sylvia Plath, Commits Suicide
"In a family where one person has committed suicide, other family members (on average) have a risk about four times higher than the general population of following suit."
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gobblegirl
03/23/09

In reply to Nicholas Hughes, Son of Sylvia Plath, Commits Suicide
This is deeply sad. That family has seen too much tragedy and heartbreak, it doesn't seem fair.
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levari
03/23/09

In reply to Nicholas Hughes, Son of Sylvia Plath, Commits Suicide
as a plath fan and someone who has struggled with suicidal depression since i was eight, i find this unbelievably troubling. you always think, well, perhaps out of this pain some sort of fundamental emotional lesson will be learned by her survivors, making it in however fucked-up a way worthwhile. it's not. it's just a sad, lonely, miserable world, and the best we can do is try to help each other out and, to paraphrase kierkegaard, forget hope and focus on the joy. bless you all. these are really difficult times. let's try to stay sane, or at the very least to stay here.

and for the record, i always liked ted hughes. he was a douche, but at least he was a talented douche. plath would have killed herself even had she never met him.
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rajmahall
03/23/09

@levari: I find this comment a bit self-contradictory. It's important for us to be kind to each other, but it's okay that ted hughes was a douche, because he was talented?

If a person is unkind, then what is the point of talent?
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CumaeanSibyl
03/23/09

@rajmahall: I guess forgiveness is also important. It's not as though we could fix him, now.
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peperony and chease
03/23/09

@levari: She would have killed herself even without Hughes? Funny then that his Plath-era mistress also offed herself, taking their daughter with her I believe. The man had as great a talent for pushing women over the edge as for poetry.
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Understater
03/22/09

In reply to Nicholas Hughes, Son of Sylvia Plath, Commits Suicide
This is profoundly sad on so many levels. It really is.
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Banjo-Sea Kitten
03/22/09

In reply to Nicholas Hughes, Son of Sylvia Plath, Commits Suicide
Plath's children were the saving grace, the exception to the rule. This is wrong. And to think how long he had suffered.

I remember Plath writing of Nicholas' birth. Just a baby then....
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Smitros
03/22/09

In reply to Nicholas Hughes, Son of Sylvia Plath, Commits Suicide
Fucking awful.
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Private Hangnail
03/22/09

In reply to Nicholas Hughes, Son of Sylvia Plath, Commits Suicide
I remain uncertain about reincarnation, however I hope he (and Sylvia and Assia and, hell, everyone else) has an easier time next go around.
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Senator Sully
03/22/09

In reply to Nicholas Hughes, Son of Sylvia Plath, Commits Suicide
Sad sad sad.

The London Times obituary you quoted-- is that from Ted Hughes' death? What ever came of him after his second wife committed suicide? Apart from being hounded by feminists and Plath devotees, I mean.
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Ryan Tate
03/22/09

@Senator Sully: Actually that was in Nicholas' obit. And it has a pretty good overview on Ted, maybe 2/3rds of the way through -- apparently he didn't show much outward emotion but left behind some unreleased poems written for Wevill or in her memory that surprised people.
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jrhys
03/22/09

In reply to Nicholas Hughes, Son of Sylvia Plath, Commits Suicide
Well that is horrible. Poor man.
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