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Plath's Journals

In 1953 when Plath was a patient at McLean Hospital, her therapist, Ruth Beuscher, helped her to obtain a diaphragm. Plath became sexually active when she return to college the following spring.

During the winter of 1958, when Plath was living in Boston, she began to see her therapist again and kept a detailed record of these sessions. The first three pages of this journal, typed on pink Smith memorandum paper, focus on the double standards of the 1950s, Plath’s rebellious behavior, and her relationship with her mother. “This is what I feel my mother felt”:

She’s not my daughter. Not my nice girl. Where did that girl go?

She gave her daughter books by noble women called “The Case For Chastity.” She told her any man who was worth his salt cared for a woman to be a virgin if she were to be his wife, no matter how many crops of wild oats he’d sown on his own. What did her Daughter do? She slept with people, hugged them and kissed them. Turned down the nicest boys whom she would have married like a shot & got older and still didn’t marry anybody. She was too sharp and smart-tongued for any nice man to stand. Oh, she was a cross to bear.

Sylvia Plath. Journal,
12 December 1958–
15 November 1959.

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Sylvia Plath Collection
Mortimer Rare Book Room

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