Ahead of Her Time

I just read a fantastic biography. Paul Alexander, a famous biographer, wrote about Sylvia Plath, someone I remembered from high school. I read The Bell Jar by Plath on my own and really appreciated it way back then. I saw this book, Rough Magic, in a box in my neighborhood and decided to learn more about Plath.

The book, first published in 1991, was fabulous. I not only learned about her life and suicide, but I also learned more about what it was like to be female just before I was born. I also learned what a jerk she married! Ted Hughes was BAD NEWS...

It's better now for women, in my view, but then (in the 50s), ahead of abortion being available and ahead of birth control, women lived in fear of getting pregnant. This was a big issue for Plath, who grew up in the Boston area and ended up attending Smith College.

I learned a few things about her that I had not known before. First, both of her parents were German. Her father's name, Plath, had been changed from Platt. He was a professor who died when she was very young. Her mother, who worked with the author, seemed like a great person. I also learned more about her first suicide attempt, when she was in college. I think Alexander did a good job of explaining how she ended up with Hughes.

I have grown to be more sensitive to feminism as I have aged. I was never one who thought that white males should run the world, but I never really took the time or had the interest to think deeply about the issues that women face. As a Jew and being adopted, I have always been sensitive to others, and this goes further than the issues of women.

For example, I grew up in a very white part of Houston, Piney Point Village, and I went to a very white school, Kinkaid. As a young person, I never had any troubling issues with non-whites at all, and this has continued to be the case as an adult. We had several Black housekeepers, and I really liked them. I learned a great deal from one, Lillie. One thing that bothered me was that we lived two houses down from Elvin Hayes, a star of the Houston Rockets, but our family never had any interaction with his family. Well, that's not exactly true, as I spent time with Elvin Jr.

When George Floyd was murdered in 2020, I began to give more thought to what I feel have been shortcomings in my effort to make the world a better place. While I haven't had negative interaction with Blacks or other minorities, I feel like I haven't done enough to build friendships with Blacks or other minorities. To be fair to myself, though, one of my best friends is Indian, a person who lived next door to me my freshman year of college.

Fran and I have raised our kids to not be racist, which makes me proud of us. A funny story took place two decades ago or so. Shayna, our daughter, was attending the Post Oak School, and she had a Black friend that she wanted to have over to our house for a visit. We still remember her outreach to us, asking if she could have her friend over. She told us that she was Black like Dad. We laughed hard about that later, as clearly I am not Black.

This Sylvia Plath biography by Paul Alexander is highly informative, and I really enjoyed reading it. I don't remember the details of The Bell Jar precisely, but I do recall liking it back then. Fran and I had never talked about that book or its author, but we did recently. Fran read it in college, part of her curriculum. If you know a little about Plath, this is a chance to learn a lot more about her. If you know nothing about her, read it, but you should also read The Bell Jar.

My big takeaway from this is that we can all do more to make the world a better place. It's very sad that such a brilliant woman as Plath killed herself, especially at such a young age. Let's try to understand and appreciate that people can be very different from us.