Tragedies In Verse

Tennant has now written a biographical novel reconstructing the lives of Plath, Hughes and Assia. She has delved deep and discovered a lot of information about Assia that Hughes had evidently suppressed. The result is a portrait of Plath and Hughes which rings true, and is more informative and revealing than their numerous biographies put together.

The sparks flew between Hughes, an upcoming English poet, and Plath, a Fulbright scholar and another poet, at their first meeting in Oxford. They married, finally settled down in England, and the problems began. Plath was emotionally unstable, and had a failed suicide attempt behind her. She had children, became a housewife, and wrote poetry at a furious pace. She wanted to be a famous poet, and she wanted her man by her side. This, the ferociously independent Hughes, his reputation growing apace, was unwilling to do.

Hughes left Plath for Assia. The breakdown drove Plath, whose standing as a poet was also developing, into madness. In 1963, she committed suicide. Hughes married Assia, whose guilt over Plath and neglect by Hughes drove her to kill her child and herself.

Was Hughes responsible for the death of Plath? Unquestionably. But it was not because he was jealous of her poetry, as his feminist critics aver. Plath’s reputation began after her death, with the poetry that Hughes published. If he had resented her genius, he would have destroyed the poems. He was responsible in the sense that, despite his obvious learning and genius, which made him a front-rank poet, he was shallow, devoid of any human sensitivities. If this sounds too harsh, just take a look at Hughes’ subsequent decisions. Marrying again, using the aura of notoriety engendered by the Plath legend, he embarked on serial infidelity, despite all that had occurred earlier.

Tennant rips apart all pre-conceived notions about Plath and Hughes. Ballad is not easy reading, and as Tennant delves into the psyche of her protagonists and the story hurtles towards its inevitable denouement, you will come away from it shaken and horrified. She makes it clear that a genius and a poet need not necessarily be a decent human being.