Suicidal from a young age, she endured, at various times, electroshock and psychotherapy. She married the poet Ted Hughes, who went on to become England's poet laureate. The marriage lasted seven years, but failed when Hughes left her for another woman. Months later, Plath killed herself with cooking gas. In a macabre twist of irony, the woman for whom Hughes left Plath also gassed herself to death.
Suicide is, after all, the opposite of a poem.
And this is why I bend and congeal, I know no better than to stretch outward with my mind . . . to drift and drift to the endless end . . . to drift and drift, all quite contentedly . In 1836 he married his thirteen year old cousin, Virginia Clemm, whose frail beauty, delicate health, and childlike temperament appeared to embody the morbid ideal that marked his poems. The blasting away of visions and encouragements to prayer, the singling out of probable saints, the corruption of children, pummeling, beseeching, poking fire and tossing sand like rice at a stilted wedding - these are the tasks. I cannot whipsaw the shattered tabletop, I seek to grasp it, to whisk it away like a magician's veil, but my fury is not succinct . . . I'm banging away at the door, beseeching the penitentiary - allow me entry, I want to understand the corruption of solitude . . .