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Nicholas Hughes was killed by Sylvia Plath, his envious mother
Tortured by the ghost of his envious mother, Nicholas Hughes's suicide was inevitable says Coline Covington
Nicholas Hughes had a nightmare start in life. His mother, Sylvia Plath, had a history of fighting her own inner demons that must have made it especially difficult for her to be there in her mind for her two children, Frieda and Nicholas - born a year apart.
Ted Hughes separated from Sylvia before Nicholas's first birthday and only months later his mother, Sylvia Plath, committed suicide. As a small infant, Nicholas would have been extremely sensitive to his mother's depression and this would leave an indelible fault line in his own personality. Forty-six years after his mother committed suicide, Nicholas has followed suit by hanging himself at his home in Alaska.
Children whose parents have committed suicide - at no matter what age - tend to feel not only responsible for their parent's depression and ultimate suicide but also profoundly rejected by them.
Nicholas may have felt his love was lethal and could only result in death and loss
In short, the parent who kills herself is perceived by the child as not loving him enough to want to live. Any close relationships that might arise subsequently are fraught with trauma, insecurity and dread.
The impotence experienced by the child in not being able to keep his parent alive is also unbearable. If the child is very young, as Nicholas was, it may leave him feeling that his love is lethal and can only result in death and loss. The experience of loving is tainted from the start.
Nicholas Hughes did not marry and had no children. We might speculate that this felt too risky and dangerous an undertaking for him. Nevertheless, he is mourned by family and friends as "an adventurous marine biologist with a distinguished academic career behind him and a host of friends and achievements in his own right."
What is most striking about the timing of his suicide is that it seems to have coincided with his resigning from his university post and setting up a pottery at home. A family friend explained that Nicholas wanted to devote time "to advance his not inconsiderable talent at making pots and creatures in clay". It is possible that this decision was the tipping point in his life.
Although Nicholas struggled with depression for much of his life, he does not seem to have inherited Plath's manic depression - instead suffering from his own psychological conflicts relating to the circumstances of his life.
However, there may be an important clue to the timing of his suicide in a poem that Sylvia Plath wrote about him shortly before her suicide. In Nick and the Candlestick, published in her collection, Ariel, Plath writes, "You are the one/ Solid the spaces lean on, envious./ You are the baby in the barn."
These are haunting lines that convey how precious this baby was to Plath but at the same time there is an envy of him, of the solidity that she sees in him, that she leans on and does not possess herself.
To Plath, this small child who may have seemed self-contained and intact, reinforced her own sense of damage and emptiness, along with her inevitable anxieties about being able to give enough to him when she was embroiled in what Hughes was later to describe as the "hidden workshop of herself".
The prospect for Nicholas of making his own babies ("clay creatures") in the barn may have been overwhelming for a number of reasons. On one level, he may have been aware, unconsciously, that he was embarking on something that he felt would have made his mother painfully envious of him - of the solidity in him that she felt she did not have - the solidity that would have made it possible for him to be creative despite his traumatic beginnings.
At the same time, his desire to express his emotional life creatively in his pottery may have triggered off a deeper awareness of the dreadful and frightening emptiness he most likely would have experienced as an infant with a depressed and self-occupied mother - a mother who would have struggled to hold him in her mind emotionally and who then deserted him in death.
The loneliness, vulnerability and rage that is left by such an experience can be intolerable when it resurfaces. To overcome this and to find a way of living and of being creative can feel like a monumental task, especially in the face of an envious ghost who had not been able to achieve this herself.
In the end, it seems that Nicholas's identification with his mother and the pain of losing her was too powerful to survive. Hughes's poem, following Plath's death, described how his son's eyes "Became wet jewels,/ The hardest substance of the purest pain/ As I fed him in his high white chair." ·
Comments
A strange article indeed for such a well educated and accomplished individual. Absolute drivel from the sensationalized and accusatory headline, right through each paragraph thick with conjecture and judgement.
I cannot add anything new to the litany of disgust and disappointment this article has generated, so, just this... Ms. Covington, perhaps rereading your textbooks and getting acquainted with empathy and compassion would help with your next diatribe against the mentally ill.
This is a projection of your own insecurities and yet its prompted many to react so in the end it may be a blessing in disguise. By writing this article you are killing the memory of both of these human beings, doing the best they can to live in reality in a society that is completely out of touch with reality. After Nicholas's father died, Ted Hughes, an opening was created for Nicholas to express himself authentically, something his father probably discouraged out of love and protection for his son. He began to reconnect with buried parts of himself. Sylvia loved her son and could see his unique potential. His death is completely symbolic and the message is clear, a message he had wanted to live his whole life, "I am my mother's son-I am just as creative and fearless as her". If you can move past your bias and brainwashing by society you can see the beauty of their lives and be inspired to live just as authentically as they did.
Everything in this article, apart from the biographical details and the poetry which are publicly known to be valid, is pure conjecture. You have no more idea than me exactly what it was like to be Nicholas Hughes. The headline should have had you put away for slander. I wonder what would have happened if the shoe was on the other foot and someone wrote this sort of stuff about YOUR inner life and motivations...?
You haven't defended Nicholas, if that's what you were intending to do (I have my doubts, and serious ones at that); you have only insulted his memory, and that of his mother, in order to burden the rest of the world with your skewed opinion of them both.
Grow up and realise that this isn't meaningful writing - it's taking a lazy shot at a sitting duck. Is that really all you're good for? :) I hope to God not...
When I first stumbled upon this article I was appalled.I was angered by the presumptuous stupidity and judgmental idiocy of this author's opinion who has the audacity to blame poor Sylvia Plath for the death of her child Nick.
How this author can presume to know what Sylvia meant by " envious" in her poem is insanity. I myself thought it to be imply that Sylvia was envious of the baby's blissful ignorance.
I saw no evidence of compassion for Sylvia Plath, regarding
the fact that she lost her father at the young age of ten years old and was completely traumatized by his absence in her life. It is obvious she married Ted Hughes , A. because she was madly, head over heels in love with him as a poet and B. he subconsciously reminded her of her father as evident in the poem "Daddy" "I made a model of you Daddy, with a mine camp look and I said I do , I do. " There is no mention of the heartbreak caused by her husband Ted Hughes who cheated on Sylvia after she devoted her life to birthing him two babies and a wonderful home filled with fresh baked bread and pies and tons of endless love.
I cannot imagine the loneliness and abandonment Sylvia must have felt when she discovered Ted's affair. By the way the fact that the mistress of Ted Hughes killed herself as well is unmentioned . Is Sylvia Plath to blame for her suicide as well? Could Colleen have picked any uglier photos of Sylvia? I have seen some that actually beautiful.
Really, where is the editor of this article and who's permission did this Colleen person get to publish such rubbish? When I saw the title, I felt that Sylvia Plath was being called a murderer!
Sylvia Plath may have had some issues.... but don't we all? To this day Sylvia Plath will go down in history for being one of the most talented writers of our time, a woman who got a raw deal and deserved so much more than she received. She shall always remain my heroine and my favorite poetess. Sylvia has made a huge difference in my life and has inspired many of my greatest poems as well.
For more: http://lostmanuscripts.com/2010/08/29/the-ghost-of-plaths-double-exposure/
I could write reams on this but I would hope this was only written to provoke a reaction. It's a cheap shot. Hope your life remains an easy one and everything remains in it's proper place Coline - my own presumptuous speculation.
It is both ridiculous and disgusting that one would blame Sylvia for her child's suicide. He survived all that time without having done it. He obviously had his own issues apart from her suicide. Plenty of people take their own lives and not all of their children go off and do the same thing. In fact, the majority don't. Sylvia was a victim herself and this is another one of those pathetic attempts to blame someone else for something Nicholas, a grown man, made his own decision to do.
It is such an absolute shame that Freudian psychology has left us with absolutely no compassion for the mother and second wave feminism has left us with no respect or means of support for her. Sylvia was a deeply troubled and sick individual with, at that time, little means of real support for her illness. What she did was indeed tragic and selfish but where she was left - utterly alone with two small children and a philandering irresponsible husband - was the emotional equivalent of a handgun. Sylvia might have made better choices. So might have Ted Hughes. There can be no doubt that facing the suicide of your mother at such a young age would leave an indelible mark. But this sort of blatant, heartless unforgiveness of weakness, illness, or inability to mother facing what must have been total isolation and helplessness is cruel, judgmental and incredibly counterproductive for a time that requires healing and hope for the family of this man. What a farce that you call yourself a Jungian analyst and set about writing such callous, cruel and hateful things about someone you have only read about in books.
This is disgusting and speculative. Anyone with any background in mental health sciences understands that suicide is a.) A choice made by the person committing suicide, nobody else, and b.) generally the result of mental illness, which has proven to have genetic components. Is it surprising that the child of a mentally ill woman who committed suicide committed suicide himself? Not really. He had the right combination of genetics and not-good-enough childhood and whatever else factors into the mental illness "perfect storm" that creates a suicide. Nobody, not myself, not the writer of this article--nobody except Nicholas Hughes can even begin to explain why he chose to end his life. But blaming his mother is offensive and absurd. Plenty of people overcome mentally ill parents without resorting to suicide. Look at Nicholas' sister.
There's something so alarming about suicide that makes people want to jump into a blame game. Maybe it makes them feel more in control, less like suicide is chaotic and real and possible for anyone. If there's someone to blame, it's easy to sweep under the rug. In truth, it's more complex than that. If you're going to write about things like this, you should be sure to have your facts in order and not speculate about what the sufferer may have felt, or "did not seem to inherit." How insulting.
Completely agree with Scorp. On what is this analysis based exactly, personal familiarity with the subject? His friends have debunked similar nonsense in the press. Its just more twaddle from Covington. Maybe we could have a psychologist analyse why she has to post this tat. To 'The First Post': if you have to post analyses of various personalities in the news can we have it done by somebody a) who is familiar with the person and b) knows what they are talking about. Alternatively you may want to label articles such as this 'For (poor) entertainment only'.Thanks.
What a completely pointless article, written in nothing but the bad taste of a tabloid. It's overspeculative and contains no solid evidence for any of these absurd claims. Sylvia Plath the woman and mother was not the same as Sylvia Plath the poet, and there is little to be gained by trying to read her poetry to unlike autobiographical clues. Every sentence here contains "seems", "may have" or "might". There is nothing informative or worth reading here. Nicholas Hughes was an individual in his own right and clearly had his own mental health problems; to suggest that these are connected to Plath's own depression is far-fetched and sensationalist.
Please encourage all who bear such pain to seek professional help, they can survive!
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