MEDICAL ASPECTS IN SYLVIA PLATH’S FINAL YEAR
MEDICAL ASPECTS IN SYLVIA PLATH’S FINAL YEAR

Summary/Abstract: The medical element has been a cardinal feature of Sylvia Plath’s oeuvre, present in all areas of her work, from poetry to prose and correspondence, feeding on her vast experience as a psychiatric patient. The Bell Jar (1963) her only novel, published under pseudonym shortly before her death in February 1963, details her experience as a patient in one of America’s most renowned psychiatric hospitals, McLean, situated near Boston. Moreover, her relationship with her doctors, especially her GP in London, Dr. John Horder, and Dr. Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse, the psychiatrist who treated her at McLean, proved essential in the maelstrom of events that culminated in her suicide at age 30. I intend to discuss some relevant medical aspects in the writer’s final year of life and in some writings from that interval.

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