Read Online American Isis by Carl Rollyson - Free Book Online Page B

himself in the story. It only becomes clear in the conclusion that Elizabeth has daydreamed Henry’s drowning during a gallant effort to retrieve their mother’s brooch, which Elizabeth has dropped on a rock about to be washed by the waves of an approaching storm. In a neat reversal that made the story palatable for a juvenile audience, Elizabeth’s revenge fantasy actually stimulates her sympathy for her brother, who would no longer have anyone to look after him in the slimy, murky depths of the sea. But the story’s saving grace is surely its ironic commentary on the expired, smug male reflected in Elizabeth’s question to herself: “Who would listen to him talk about the way the moon controlled the tides or about the density of atmospheric pressure?”
    Sylvia was working a summer job scrubbing tables at the Belmont Hotel when she received the good news about the Mademoiselle prize in a telegram from Aurelia. Sylvia screamed with delight and hugged the startled head waitress. Plath had just begun her job, but she was already disgruntled, again discovering she was ill prepared to deal with the menial side of life. Even more disappointing, she had been assigned to the side hall because of her inexperience. That assignment meant she would not be getting big tips in the main dining room. More than money was at stake, though, since Sylvia always wanted to be seen and admired. Even waitressing, to her, had rankings, and she realized she did not rate.
    The day before learning of her prize, Sylvia wrote in a note not included in Letters Home that carrying trays one-handed terrified her. She knew nothing about her job, she confessed. She consoled herself by saying she would be harvesting a good deal of the summer for her writing. Indeed, in her journal, she catalogued no fewer than twenty-two characters, each labeled with an appropriate epithet: “Oscar, the birdlike, picayune, humorous band leader … stoic-faced Harvard law student and straight-backed busboy Clark Williams … Mrs. Johnson, the tall, sharp Irish chef’s wife with the acid brogue and the fiery temper,” and so on.
    Even so, it was difficult for Sylvia to overcome the Belmont Hotel experience by turning it into fiction. She felt humiliated by her physical clumsiness and envious of waitresses expertly handling special dishes. She had believed she could somehow fit in. Intelligence and imagination seemed to count for little in occupations and organizations that depended on fast footwork and excellent coordination. Not being a quick study in a summer job is humbling indeed for a writer with a superiority complex. Sylvia Plath wanted not just the praise of the elites, but also the respect of the rank and file. Otherwise, Sylvia could not have written, less than a week after Aurelia’s telegram, that her life seemed awful and the prize “unreal.” The work terrified and unnerved her, although she refused to slink back home to mother—always a temptation when she felt overwhelmed.
    Another troubling concern absent from Letters Home is Sylvia’s disappointment that the other girls did not take to her. Why is not hard to understand. Sylvia assured her mother that she was self-contained and independent enough not to need the girls’ affection. And yet that was probably just the problem: They did not warm to Sylvia because she seemed so self-involved. The other irritation was Dick. He had retreated from his know-it-all stance. Had he read “Summer at the Mintons”? At any rate, Sylvia wished he would “stop being nice and leave me alone.”
    On the one hand, Plath was receiving letters from New York editors expressing interest in her future work and wanting to know what books she planned. On the other hand, she slept through restless dreams that had her waitressing all the time. Ideas for stories continued to occur to her, and she decided to stick it out at for another month—until