Both Sylvia and I were more at ease in writing words of appreciation, admiration, and love than in expressing these emotions verbally and, thank goodness, write them to each other we did! (I held off because as she entered her late teens, her response to my spoken praise would be, “Oh, you think I’m wonderful [or look lovely] because you’re my mother!”)
Sylvia read almost all the books I collected while I was in college, used them as her own, underlining passages that held particular significance for her. In A Short History of Women by Langdon-Davies, among the several sections underscored by her are these two: the first from the section of Contents;* the second from the Epilogue, “The Future.”†
Life began without sex; animals simply divided in two and went their way. What advantage did the life-force gain by the evolution of sex? …
Sex is the result of specialism in performing the labour of living….
Thus the possession of two sexes gives an animal or a plant a start in the race for evolution. Thus sex is seen to be three things, rejuvenation, division of labour, increased ability for variation.
… for once both sexes use their reason equally, and have no unequal penalty awaiting the exercise of their emotions, then women cannot fail to dominate. Theirs is the stronger sex once nature and art cease their cruel combination against them, because it possesses a greater singleness of purpose
… perhaps the world will be happier in the new régime. But all this is of only partial value as speculation on the future; for men and women are purely relative terms, and long before the tendencies of our times work to their logical conclusions, men and women, as we know them, will have ceased to exist; and human nature will have forgotten the “he and she.” According to our own personal feelings we may regret that we shall not live to see that time, or congratulate ourselves on living at a time which antedates it.
I was very grateful for the flow of communication that existed between Sylvia and me, especially during the years of her adolescence; yet I fully expected this to change as she grew more mature and felt that her intimate confidences would then be shared with selected members from among her peers.
The following poem, written at the age of fourteen, was inspired by the accidental blurring of a pastel still-life Sylvia had just completed and stood up on the porch table to show us. As Warren, Grammy, and I were admiring it, the doorbell rang. Grammy took off her apron, tossed it on the table, and went to answer the call, her apron brushing against the pastel, blurring part of it. Grammy was grieved. Sylvia, however, said lightly, “Don’t worry; I can patch it up.” That night she wrote her first poem containing tragic undertones.
I THOUGHT THAT I COULD NOT BE HURT
I thought that I could not be hurt;
I thought that I must surely be
impervious to suffering—
immune to mental pain
or agony.
My world was warm with April sun
my thoughts were spangled green and gold;
my soul filled up with joy, yet felt
the sharp, sweet pain that only joy
can hold.
My spirit soared above the gulls
that, swooping breathlessly so high
o’erhead, now seem to brush their whir-
ring wings against the blue roof of
the sky.
(How frail the human heart must be—
a throbbing pulse, a trembling thing—
a fragile, shining instrument
of crystal, which can either weep,
or sing.)
Then, suddenly my world turned gray,
and darkness wiped aside my joy.
A dull and aching void was left
where careless hands had reached out to
destroy
my silver web of happiness.
The hands then stopped in wonderment,
for, loving me, they wept to see
the tattered ruins of my firma-
ment.
(How frail the human heart must be—
a mirrored pool of thought. So deep
and tremulous an instrument
of glass that it can either sing,
or weep.)
Her English teacher, Mr. Crockett, showed this to a colleague, who said, “Incredible that one so young could have experienced anything so devastating.” When I repeated Mr. Crockett’s account of this conversation to me, Sylvia smiled impishly, saying, “Once a poem is made available to the public, the right of interpretation belongs to the reader.”
In her diary, however, she wrote:
Today I brought a group of original poems to Mr. Crockett…. In class he read aloud four of them, commenting mainly favorably. He liked “I Thought That I Could Not Be Hurt” above the rest and encouraged me greatly by remarking that I had a lyric gift beyond the ordinary.
I was overjoyed, and although I am doubtful about poetry’s effect on the little strategy of “popularity” that I have been slowly building up, I am confident of admiration from Mr. C!
In the poems written between the ages of fifteen and seventeen, there is a long one that explains her somewhat, ending,
You ask me why I spend my life writing?
Do I find entertainment?
Is it worthwhile?
Above all, does it pay?
If not, then, is there a reason? …
I write only because
There is a voice within me
That will not be still.
(1948)
Sylvia had begun writing for the “It’s All Yours” section in the magazine Seventeen. Margot Macdonald, then editor of this section, wrote personal notes on several of the forty-five rejection slips Sylvia received. The editor made the comment that although Sylvia’s writing held promise and present merit, she still had to learn to “slant” her subject matter and treatment toward the requirements of the particular publication from which she hoped acceptance. She advised Sylvia to go to the library and read every Seventeen issue she could find and discover the “trend.” This Sylvia did, and in August 1950 she had her first story published, “And Summer Will Not Come Again,” for which she was paid $15. In November of the same year, Seventeen published her poem, “Ode on a Bitten Plum.”
Sylvia, summer 1949
As she critically surveyed her long list of rejections and the short, but growing, one of acceptances, Sylvia discovered that her exuberant, joyous outbursts in both poetry and prose brought rejection slips, while the story or poem with pathetic twist was found more acceptable. More people would identify with the plain heroine beset with doubts and difficulties. The old adage to “get your hero up a tree, throw stones at him, then let him extricate himself” still held true at this time. Advice and experience in regard to writing led her now into an examination and analysis of the darker recesses of self.
The beginning of the appeal of the tragic muse is heard in a poem written in the spring of 1949:
TO ARIADNE
(deserted by Theseus)
Oh, fury, equalled only by the shrieking wind—
The lashing of the waves against the shore,
You rage in vain, waist deep into the sea,
Betrayed, deceived, forsaken ever more.
Your cries are lost, your curses are unheard by him
That treads his winged way above the cloud.
The honeyed words upon your lips are brine;
The bitter salt wind sings off-key and loud.
Oh, scream in vain for vengeance now, and beat your hands
In vain against the dull impassive stone.
The cold waves break and shatter at your feet;
The sky is mean—and you bereft, alone.
The white-hot rage abates, and then—futility.
You lean exhausted on the rock. The sea
Begins to calm, and the retreating storm
But grumbles faintly, while the black clouds flee.
And now the small waves break like green glass, frilled with foam;
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The fickle sun sends darts of light to land.
Why do you stand and listen only to
The sobbing of the wind along the sand?
Similarly, Sylvia discovered that the “problem” story sold well. In “The Perfect Setup” (Seventeen, October 1952), she handled the problem of religious discrimination (WASP withdrawal from a Jewish neighbor). Her heroine, a baby-sitter, Lisa, reluctantly obeys the WASP mother’s orders to keep her children away from those cared for by Lisa’s newly made Jewish friend, working for a Jewish family. Lisa goes through the difficult task of explaining the WASP mother’s attitude to her friend and ends with a feeling of self-loathing for having allowed herself to become allied with this narrow, hypocritical attitude:
You know how sometimes you could slap yourself for a stupid remark you made or a big chance you missed to do the best you could? Well, right then I wanted to worm my way down into that sand until I was covered all over and couldn’t see the lines of foam Ruth was making out there in the water. I just sat there with the whole summer turning sour in my mouth.
As Sylvia herself explained in the personal note at the close of her prize story in Mademoiselle (August 1952), her summer jobs provided her with an amazing variety of characters “who manage to turn up dismembered, or otherwise, in stories.” This is a keynote to be remembered in connection with much of her writing.
While I considered my children good children, I accepted sibling teasing and rivalry as natural processes in development. There was the usual loyalty to each other against outsiders, but there were many times when each made the other miserable; and Sylvia, as the older, was the more dominant and the more culpable. In my notes about my children, there is this statement made by Warren at the early age of four, “saying scathingly to his sister, ‘You’re the most person who doesn’t know any better!’” Sylvia’s diary entry at fourteen, contains this observation: “It’s so nice to know long words! I’m trying to make them a part of my vocabulary—they’re so-o-o handy. Exemplī gratia: This morning I told Warren that he was ‘ostentatiously, obnoxiously superfluous,’ and he hadn’t the slightest idea of what I meant.”
Throughout her high school years, Sylvia was very uncritical of me. The remark I treasured most and wrote in my journal was made by Sylvia when she was fifteen. “When I am a mother I want to bring up my children just as you have us.” (This charitable attitude, however, was not to last, and I was vividly reminded of my own hypercritical judgment of my parents throughout my undergraduate years at college!)
Between Sylvia and Warren there were often arguments just for the sake of discussion. While she was still an incorrigible tease, they nevertheless experienced periods of very close sharing, too. In her diary, 1947, Sylvia wrote: “Warren and I spent a pleasant evening—he writing poems for his ‘Spring Booklet,’ and I drawing pictures for each page while we both listened to ‘The Fat Man,’ ‘The Thin Man,’ and ‘People Are Funny’ [radio programs].”
When in 1949 Warren went to Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire on a four-year scholarship, the children’s relationship changed completely. In that year Warren grew six inches, generously topping Sylvia’s height, to her great delight. As he won distinction in subjects she herself did not study, she now came to respect and admire him. His appreciation of all her writing and art work, as well as his growing understanding of her as a person, resulted in an ever-deepening concern for each other’s welfare and a friendship that endured.
Sylvia was naturally drawn to people who were interested in literature and in creative writing. Time after time, however, such relationships became strained when Sylvia won a prize or had something published. To outsiders it seemed as though she won so easily; they did not know what constant practice and effort it took. (I remember mailing for her three different “volumes” of poetry and dozens of stories that were all rejected.) We came to realize that it is the rare friend who genuinely rejoices in another’s success.
She was soon to become wary of dating boys who “wanted to write.” Invariably, no matter how able they were in other areas, her appearance in print would inject a sour note in the relationship. Sylvia was conscious of the prejudice boys built up among themselves about “brainy” girls. By the time she was a senior in high school, she had learned to hide behind a façade of light-hearted wit when in a mixed group and, after a triple; date, was exultant as she reported to me, “Rod asked me what grades I got. I said airily, ‘All A’s, of course.’ ‘Yeah,’ he replied, grinning, as he led me out to the dance floor, ‘You look like a greasy grind!’ Oh, Mummy, they didn’t believe me; they didn’t believe me!”
The high school years were such fun. The sharing meant so much, for Warren had gone to Exeter and I missed him terribly. When Sylvia would come home from a dance, I could tell by the way she ascended the stairs how the evening had gone. If she came up slowly and started to get ready for bed, the event had not been “special,” but if her step was a running one and she’d hurry into my bedroom, whispering excitedly, “Mummy, are you awake?” ah, then she’d picture the evening for me, and I’d taste her enjoyment as if it had been my own.
In Sylvia’s scrapbook-journal, the entries illustrated with snapshots, clippings, and various memorabilia, there is her account of the summer of 1950, when she and her brother took a farm job together.
And so there are summers every year, but the one which brought my first job is unique. Warren and I went up to Lookout Farm [in Dover, Mass.] right after I graduated…. Every day we biked up together early in the morning, left our bikes at Wellesley College usually and hitched a ride with one of the other hands. I can never go back to those days spent in the fields, in sun and rain, talking with the negroes and the hired hands. I can only remember how it was and go on living where I am.
But the companionship with my favorite brother is something that was worth more than all the previous summers put together … this Farm Summer will always be The First Job and the sweetest.
This summer of farm work was the beginning of her interest in botany and it was then she found deep satisfaction in working with growing plants and the sweet-smelling earth. In one of her unpublished manuscripts she referred to this summer’s experience:
I am now firmly convinced that farm work is one of the best jobs for getting to know people as they really are. As you work side by side in the rows, your hands move automatically among the leaves and your thoughts are free to wander at will. What, then, is more natural than to drift into conversation with your neighbor? It is really amazing what a receptive ear can do by way of encouraging confidences….
The farm episode produced a poem, “Bitter Strawberries‚” and an article, “The Rewards of a New England Summer‚” both published in The Christian Science Monitor.
In the poem, a discussion between the strawberry pickers dealt with the impending threat of war, the act of human destruction figuratively suggested in the last lines:
We reached among the leaves
With quick, practiced hands,
Cupping the berry protectively before
Snapping off the stem
Between thumb and forefinger.
It was rewarding, at last, to receive not only notice of the acceptance of her poem and article, but the added comment from Herbert E. Thorson, Editor, Family Features Page: “We hope that you will try us again soon with articles and essays for these columns.”
Her article closed with these words:
When you see me pause and stare a bit wistfully at nothing in particular, you’ll know that I am deep at the roots of memory, back on the Farm, hearing once more the languid, sleepy drone of bees in the orange squash blossoms, feeling the hot, golden fingers of sun on my skin, and smelling the unforgettable spicy tang of apples which is, to me, forever New England.
A few closely written, stapled sheets, entitled “Diary Supplement” could have been titled “Reflections of a Seventeen-Year-Old,” and are dated November 13, 1949.
As of today I have decide
d to keep a diary again—just a place where I can write my thoughts and opinions when I have a moment. Somehow I have to keep and hold the rapture of being seventeen. Every day is so precious I feel infinitely sad at the thought of all this time melting farther and farther away from me as I grow older. Now, now is the perfect time of my life.
In reflecting back upon these last sixteen years, I can see tragedies and happiness, all relative—all unimportant now—fit only to smile upon a bit mistily.
I still do not know myself. Perhaps I never will. But I feel free—unbound by responsibility, I still can come up to my own private room, with my drawings hanging on the walls … and pictures pinned up over my bureau. It is a room suited to me—tailored, uncluttered and peaceful…. I love the quiet lines of the furniture, the two bookcases filled with poetry books and fairy tales saved from childhood.
At the present moment I am very happy, sitting at my desk, looking out at the bare trees around the house across the street…. Always I want to be an observer. I want to be affected by life deeply, but never so blinded that I cannot see my share of existence in a wry, humorous light and mock myself as I mock others.
I am afraid of getting older. I am afraid of getting married. Spare me from cooking three meals a day—spare me from the relentless cage of routine and rote. I want to be free—free to know people and their backgrounds—free to move to different parts of the world so I may learn that there are other morals and standards besides my own. I want, I think, to be omniscient … I think I would like to call myself “The girl who wanted to be God.” Yet if I were not in this body, where would I be—perhaps I am destined to be classified and qualified. But, oh, I cry out against it. I am I—I am powerful—but to what extent? I am I.