Assessing Sylvia Plath’s Tragic Prosopography through Her Family Tree

Thungyani Ovung¹

Ovung, T. (2023). Assessing Sylvia Plath’s Tragic Prosopography through Her Family Tree. InterViews: An Interdisciplinary Journal in Social Sciences, 10(1), pp. 54-63. https://doi.org/10.36061/IV.10.1.23.54.63

Abstract

Tragedy is found not only in the genre of drama as Aristotle’s or Shakespeare’s would propagate; instead, it is an indispensable fact of human existence. It is not a petty imitation or a fantasy but often an unsayable horror as absolute as happiness and misery in the daily affairs of life, and depression is one of the most common comorbid psychiatric disorders in people who die in cataclysmic suicide. It does happen. If so, could such a monstrous thing be genetically inherited or an outcome of social environment? There is growing evidence that familial and transmissible factors, marriage, and stress-festered events contribute to the risk of self-slaughter acts. Even before the turn of the 20^th century until now, its prevention has become a severe effort of every concerned individual. Suicide is on the rise today, which is why we stand in extreme need to put an end to such sad deeds because it is not over-comed yet. Sylvia Plath, a famed American 20^th-century author, is one such representative victim. Therefore, this article attempts to assess Sylvia Plath’s tragic prosopography through her family tree, especially her despondency, depression, trauma, suicide, and finally, the tragic end.

Keywords: Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, family tree, tragedy, depression, suicide

¹Thungyani Ovung is a Research Scholar in the Mahatma Gandhi University, Meghalaya, India. Correspondence regarding this article may be directed to: roseyani07@gmail.com