I have loved Sylvia Plath since I read "Mad Girl's Love Song" for AP English. Since, The Bell Jar has become one of my favorite novels. So, I finally took the plunge and decided to commit to reading her journals. I came away from the journals with a few thoughts:
1. Sylvia Plath and I are kindred spirits -- or at least she has a way about writing about the emotional human experience (love, heartbreak, loneliness, career pressures, education, etc.) that resonates with me deeply.
2. Plath adored Ted Hughes more than I could have ever imagined, and I felt like I was infringing on her personal space by reading her descriptions of him ("Living with him is like being told a perpetual story; his mind is the biggest, most imaginative, I have ever met. I could live in its growing countries forever.") Very heartbreaking, considering the role Hughes played in her unhappiness at the end of her life, but goes to show how swiftly love can be f'd up.
3. Plath struggled with her self-worth and the quality of her writing, which stuns me considering she is one of my favorite poets. Even the greats suffer from imposter syndrome.
4. Many reduce Plath down to her suicide and the way her life ended. When I mentioned reading this to some friends, the resounding response was "How depressing!". In many ways, these journal entries reveal many other sides of Plath -- joys and triumphs that otherwise would be forgotten.

In sum, learned a lot about my favorite poet, confirmed I will never write journal entries this eloquently ever in my lifetime, and I will one day reread this!
Favorite passages:
"'I love the people,' I said. 'I have room in me for love, and for ever so many little lives.'"
"Why can't I try on different lives, like dresses, to see which fits best and is most becoming?"
"I have, continually, the sense that this time is invaluable, & the opposite sense that I am paralyzed to use it: or will use it wastefully & blindly."

“I don’t believe in God as a kind father in the sky. I don’t believe that the meek will inherit the earth. The meek get ignored and trampled. They decompose in the bloody soil of war, of business, of art, and they rot into the warm ground under the spring rains.”

An unabridged collection of Sylvia Plath’s personal journals. Even at 700+ pages this 6 pound doorstop of a book still has waning gaps of missing time—missing because her journaling was inconsistent, missing because of her hospitalization after a failed suicide attempt (1953), missing because Ted Hughes “lost” at least one journal, missing because Ted Hughes burned her final journal. The editors have done their absolute best to bridge the holes with letters (when available), journal “fragments,” footnotes and a rather extensive appendix. Still, it would be to the reader’s benefit to have a bit of background knowledge about Plath’s life history before tackling this behemoth.

I’m struck by the extent of Sylvia’s crippling codependency with Hughes. There is a distinct change in the tone of her writing once the handsome and talented T.H. enters her sphere of existence. Her focus becomes noticeably less about bettering herself as a poet and a writer and noticeably more about managing and furthering Ted’s career. I’m not suggesting he would have floundered without her, I’m just saying that… well… even though Plath rarely disparages his character, he still comes off looking like a complete asshole.