Initiation

Content Warning: This section includes a discussion of suicide, self-harm, and depression.

Sylvia Plath was born on October 27, 1932, in Boston, Massachusetts, to parents Aurelia Schober Plath and Otto Plath. Plath showed an early talent for writing and academic achievement, graduating from Smith College in 1955 and receiving a Fulbright scholarship to Cambridge, where she met her future husband, Ted Hughes.

Plath experienced depression throughout her life, and many of her experiences and struggles reflect in her writing, including the death of her father when she was eight years old. Between 1953 and her death by suicide in 1963, when she was 30 years old, she underwent electro-shock therapy, a common treatment for mental health conditions in the 20th century. Her experience with therapy and the effects of mental health treatments on an individual’s identity and mental state is directly portrayed in her novel, The Bell Jar, through the character of Esther Greenwood. Many of her works have similarly been read as autobiographical, as characters such as Millicent in “Initiation” experience intense feelings of isolation and despair. Indeed, Millicent’s questions about acceptance and belonging mirror those Plath experienced as an intern at the magazine Mademoiselle, as fictionalized in The Bell Jar.