Assia Wevill is the dark lady of the Plath/Hughes agon. As Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev put it in "Lover of Unreason" (Carroll & Graf, 268 pages, $27.95), "Assia was reduced to the role of a she-devil and an enchantress, the woman alleged to have severed the union of twentieth-century poetry's most celebrated couple."
When I saw the last word of the last sentence the same as the last word of the first sentence, I rolled my eyes. Especially since it is such a recognizable word and so specific. Just because it’s uncommon (dare I say pretentious) doesn’t make it the right word. I also don’t particularly agree with the usage which is maybe why it sticks out so much to me. If the agon is pointing to a struggle or contest between Hughes and Plath, I’m not really sure what they were trying to win. Two different prizes? Hughes: Assia and Plath: Hughes. I don’t think that is a agon. In some ways I guess agon references the spectacle that Plath and Hughes marital explosion became.
When Sylvia Plath and Assia first met, they liked each other. Assia, a part-Jewish refugee from Hitler's Germany, bore, in Plath's words, her "passport on her face." She had lived the suffering that Sylvia had imagined in poems like "Daddy." Plath was happy that Assia and her husband David, a fine poet, would occupy the flat she and Ted were relinquishing to pursue their passion for poetry and for each other in the Devon countryside.
Then the Wevills were invited to Devon, and the world went terribly wrong. Later Ted Hughes would accuse Assia of being the "dark destructive force that destroyed Sylvia." Several biographers say Assia boasted to friends she was putting on her war paint to seduce Ted Hughes. She was on her third marriage and had a reputation as a femme fatale.
“The World” makes the whole situation much more epic and potentially worthy of being written about.
The world makes the marriage sound more meaning and make it sound more grand
Using the word “world” in this instance, gives the relationship a mythical presence. It’s usage, coincides well with the quote from Ted Hughes.
It also frames Plath and Hughes as a couple that were “meant” to be together such that the demise of their relationship is reflective of how “the world went terribly wrong.”
By describing Assia as a femme fatale, she’s made out to be the tempting yet dangerous “bad guy,” as opposed to the “hag” Sylvia Plath.
To describe Assia this way is to give a very detailed description of her. Anyone would know it.
But what exactly happened in Devon is hard to say. Even Olwyn Hughes, a staunch defender of her brother, could tell Anne Stevenson (commissioned by the Hughes Estate to write "Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath" [1989]), no more than what Assia told Olywn: There had been a "sexual current" between Assia and Ted that enraged Sylvia. In "Rough Magic: A Biography of Sylvia Plath" (1991), Paul Alexander reports: "Strong-will and determined, Assia — apparently — made the first move with Ted." Diane Middlebrook in "Her Husband: Hughes and Plath — A Marriage" (2003) follows a similar line, suggesting Assia had Ted "under a spell."
This paragraph gives more credential to Assia’s reputation as a femme fatale intent on stealing Hughes.
And yet Elaine Feinstein's "Ted Hughes: The Life of a Poet" (2001) presents evidence that confirms the story in "Lover of Unreason": Ted Hughes was "a sexual stalker by nature" and no longer enraptured with Sylvia, who had become a housewife and mother — a "hag," as he called her in one of their arguments after the Wevill visit to Devon. According to Ms. Feinstein, Hughes eventually tired of Assia too because, in the words of William Congreve's "Way of the World," she had begun to "dwindle into a wife."
The literary allusions want to portray other point of views about Ted Hughues that had be written about.
Whatever the alluring Assia did or did not do during that fateful rendezvous in Devon, she became the vessel of Ted Hughes's desire to shuck off his domestic duties and seek some haven where he could recapture his poetic spirit. Assia did not make it easy for Hughes, since she still cared a great deal for David Wevill and continued to live with him off and on. Meanwhile, Hughes attempted to square himself with his disapproving parents and settle on some kind of domestic routine with the two young children Plath had been careful not to gas when she took her life on February 11, 1963.
But if Assia was slow to forsake David — as David has made clear to several biographers — she could not have been simply the she-devil enchantress of legend. Perhaps the most telling part of "Lover of Unreason" concerns Hughes's search for a home that he and Assia could share. A man who had never previously had trouble making up his mind about where to live, Hughes repeatedly found fault with the houses he and Assia inspected. Indeed, he led her on, for during this house-hunting period he had several other women on the side — it was Hughes's practice to create the conditions that provoked women to leave him.
It seems like he created/encouraged instability to prolong the pre-wife period and to make it easy to end relationships. But he probably just didn’t know how to proceed between seeking his “poetic spirit” and caring for his two children. (I’m also a little confused about the children. His child with Assia was born before Plath committed suicide? I think that is beyond the scope of this review though.)
No biographer would be willing to state that Ted Hughes was a very bad man, for to do so is to invite the biography to be read as an indictment. Ms. Feinstein feels the need to mitigate Hughes's appalling behavior — destroying some of Plath's work, essentially erasing the record of Assia's important role in his life, and in so many ways attempting to control the telling not only of his biography but those of Plath and Wevill. To Ms. Feinstein, Hughes had a "granite endurance" to go on writing after so many tragedies. Of his cover-ups, she suggests he took the "harsh road of a survivor." Yehuda Kore and Eilat Negev are careful not to condemn him, but they eschew such rationalizations.
I don’t think that the reviewer is taking any particular position just stating the position of other biographers. This paragraph has a slightly forgiving tone towards Hughes, but only because the reviewer is referencing the work of someone who does excuse Hughes. Also, I don’t think the reviewer was particularly harsh towards Hughes in previous paragraphs, not as harsh as they could have been.
The worst of it is that on March 23, 1969, Assia Wevill took not only her life but also that of her 4-year-old daughter by Hughes. As her biographers show, such acts are not uncommon among single mothers in their 40s who are so disturbed at the horrible nature of the world that they cannot imagine a better one for their offspring. Except for a few periods and poems of self-blame, Hughes never could confront his culpable role in the lives of Plath and Wevill; instead, he issued his apologia in the form of a poetry collection, "Birthday Letters" (1998). So it is fortunate indeed to have "Lover of Unreason," an impressively researched and well-told biography that will occasion, I believe, yet another rewriting of the Plath/ Hughes agon.
If this was said in the beginning of the review it would throw the reader off and not inform them the true meaning.
to aggravate the emotion of the readers. Wevills did a terrible affair, most of people don’t understand. so the writer has to explain for why she is doing that before. It is like a ending of a story, to make another high point.
icons on the left to see existing comments.
0 archived comments