American Isis by Carl Rollyson Page A

would tolerate her freelancing writer’s life. The idea of a career—the very word—bothered her. She had not entirely abandoned the idea of earning an advanced degree, but like Susan Sontag, born just a year after Plath, she regarded the routines of academic institutions and the paraphernalia of the scholar’s life with ambivalence. How could a creative person function in so much harness? Marriage itself, Sylvia confided to her journal, might drain her of creativity, although she conceded that having children might do just the opposite, making her a more fulfilled artist.
    Marcia Brown, so logical and sensible according to Sylvia, offered solace and companionship, and Sylvia was heartened in May when they both secured summer babysitting jobs in Swampscott, Massachusetts. By this time, after a month or so of rhapsodizing about Dick, Sylvia was beginning to have her doubts. What was behind his jocular tone? She suspected, for all his casual confidence, that he was uneasy about something. On 14 May, she told her mother that she had ripped off part of his irritating “jovial mask.”
    Sylvia took the typical Smith safety route, finding summer employment babysitting the Mayo family’s children, aged six, four, and two. She called them three “adorable” kids, but they seemed far less lovable after a long day of helping with breakfast, making beds, doing the laundry, ironing, and bathing the baby at night. In her journal she lamented the tragedy of womanhood. She wanted to be out in the world, hitting the road and consorting with soldiers and sailors, hanging out at bars—doing the scene like Jack Kerouac. But her mere presence would be taken as an invitation to have sex.
    Sylvia felt awkward in the kitchen, since she knew little about cooking. She now realized how her capable mother had spoiled her by not ever requiring her to learn the rudiments of meal making. It was a lot of work, and she was having murderous thoughts about her “darlings.” By July, she was fed up with the peripatetic schedule that had her going “in spurts” from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. She was well treated and did take some pleasure in caring for her charges, but inevitably she suffered in the role of supernumerary, which brilliant women before her—Marie Curie and the Brontë sisters, among others—had endured in their demeaning apprenticeship years. She had to grit her teeth, as they did, and deal every day with unruly children. In her journal and letters she actually sounds rather like Anne Brontë’s Agnes Grey. What is most unbearable about such situations is that no one notices the beautiful genius in their midst. No one complimented Sylvia on how well she looked. She admitted to Ann Davidow that she felt diminished. The recognition of others was always important to Sylvia, who did not care for the role of solitary genius. She longed to hear from Eddie, but he had fallen silent after she failed to answer his last two letters. To Aurelia, she confessed to feeling “cut off from humankind.” She could do no work of her own, since her main task was always to superintend the children. She had lost her tan and looked hollow-eyed. So no trysts with Dick, she decided, although she eventually did see him when he could get away from waiting tables at the Latham Inn. Marcia had taken a job similar to Sylvia’s with the Blodgett family and saw Sylvia frequently. Even so, in her journal Sylvia reprimanded herself for allowing fear and insecurity to dominate her.
    Sylvia’s forlorn letters after a month of babysitting reflect how much her grandiose sense of herself had been affronted by her employment. Her 7 July letter to Aurelia suggests how keenly she felt the discrepancy between the fan letters forwarded to her from Seventeen and her own uncertainty about herself. Reading fan mail provoked an ironic comment in the third person: “Sylvia Plath sure has something—but who is