favorite. Partly historical overview, partly philosophy, the course required a term paper about a belief system. Sylvia’s was about Unitarianism. The most interesting assignments, however, were the precourse and postcourse “personal history” essays. In the precourse paper, Sylvia discussed what she called her unorthodox religious background — her mother’s having left the Catholic faith, her own lack of interest in religion until she joined a “vital” Unitarian congregation the previous year. Then she had become convinced that “religion was life.” She described her ideas as “anti-Christian,” even pagan. She believed that people were born without purpose, that there was no “kind Father” and no such thing as an inborn conscience. Each person therefore was responsible for his or her destiny. People were not perfectible, and there was no afterlife.
Sylvia’s postcourse essay was much the same, although she admitted that she was more sympathetic to Christianity than she had been before taking the course. She still defined herself as an “agnostic humanist”‘ who agreed with Nietzsche’s criticism of the “weak and passive” elements of religion. “Heaven, hell, original sin, and redemption, as commonly thought of, do not have any part in my philosophy,” Plath wrote. For Sylvia, religion remained a curiosity, something of interest intellectually, but not a matter of faith. Her friend Ellie Friedman attested to Sylvia’s interest in Judaism, and described Sylvia’s effervescent questions — “300 at a time” — when she was interested in a topic.
What interested Sylvia more during this sophomore year was Ortega y Gasset’s The Revolt of the Masses . When he said that out of struggle and hardship came a strong, vital nature, she wrote in the margin, “My own philosophy.” She also underlined many places that said, in effect, that the mass crushes beneath it everything that is different — ”excellent, individual, qualified and select.” Part of Sylvia’s hesitation about adopting a religious belief beyond her Unitarianism was that she saw such belief as a leveling process. She liked being what she saw as different.
She used these ideas in essays about both Thomas Mann and Dostoevsky. Both men believed in a creative dialectic by which a person makes his or her own purpose on earth, “striving always for a dynamic becoming.” For Mann, conflicts between his father’s materialism and his mother’s artistic nature led to what he called “the artist’s bad conscience.” Plath felt that Mann’s story “Tonio Kroger” reflected this philosophy. Although adolescent depression had led Mann to plan suicide when he was twenty, his later work shows his secure sense of self. He continued, however, to acknowledge what he called “the magnetic attraction” of death.
Margaret Mead’s Male and Female was another important book for Plath during this sophomore year. Much of chapters 12 through 18, Mead’s analysis of gender differences in America, is underlined; and Sylvia used that information as her Bible. Mead championed the need for an integrated person, “high and low, animal and spiritual, body and spirit.” She insisted that people recognize that sex drives have a place in human personality: “We are creatures who are made not only to be individuals, but to continue the human race.” She lamented the American lack of “skin sensuousness” and what she saw as a tendency to idealize the Puritan code of restraint. Mead described the plight of the well-educated American housewife, infernally busy but “not working,” questioning what she has done with her life. Heavily underlined, Plath’s copy of Male and Female contains ideas that Plath would enthusiastically embrace: “the misfits are the gifted.” “In educating women like men, have we done something disastrous to both men and women alike?” “Women will see the world in different ways than men.”
In long journal
Sylvia’s postcourse essay was much the same, although she admitted that she was more sympathetic to Christianity than she had been before taking the course. She still defined herself as an “agnostic humanist”‘ who agreed with Nietzsche’s criticism of the “weak and passive” elements of religion. “Heaven, hell, original sin, and redemption, as commonly thought of, do not have any part in my philosophy,” Plath wrote. For Sylvia, religion remained a curiosity, something of interest intellectually, but not a matter of faith. Her friend Ellie Friedman attested to Sylvia’s interest in Judaism, and described Sylvia’s effervescent questions — “300 at a time” — when she was interested in a topic.
What interested Sylvia more during this sophomore year was Ortega y Gasset’s The Revolt of the Masses . When he said that out of struggle and hardship came a strong, vital nature, she wrote in the margin, “My own philosophy.” She also underlined many places that said, in effect, that the mass crushes beneath it everything that is different — ”excellent, individual, qualified and select.” Part of Sylvia’s hesitation about adopting a religious belief beyond her Unitarianism was that she saw such belief as a leveling process. She liked being what she saw as different.
She used these ideas in essays about both Thomas Mann and Dostoevsky. Both men believed in a creative dialectic by which a person makes his or her own purpose on earth, “striving always for a dynamic becoming.” For Mann, conflicts between his father’s materialism and his mother’s artistic nature led to what he called “the artist’s bad conscience.” Plath felt that Mann’s story “Tonio Kroger” reflected this philosophy. Although adolescent depression had led Mann to plan suicide when he was twenty, his later work shows his secure sense of self. He continued, however, to acknowledge what he called “the magnetic attraction” of death.
Margaret Mead’s Male and Female was another important book for Plath during this sophomore year. Much of chapters 12 through 18, Mead’s analysis of gender differences in America, is underlined; and Sylvia used that information as her Bible. Mead championed the need for an integrated person, “high and low, animal and spiritual, body and spirit.” She insisted that people recognize that sex drives have a place in human personality: “We are creatures who are made not only to be individuals, but to continue the human race.” She lamented the American lack of “skin sensuousness” and what she saw as a tendency to idealize the Puritan code of restraint. Mead described the plight of the well-educated American housewife, infernally busy but “not working,” questioning what she has done with her life. Heavily underlined, Plath’s copy of Male and Female contains ideas that Plath would enthusiastically embrace: “the misfits are the gifted.” “In educating women like men, have we done something disastrous to both men and women alike?” “Women will see the world in different ways than men.”
In long journal
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