Conflicting Perspectives - Birthday Letters

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Conflicting perspectives are integral to all representations, since every perspective is based on selective and often biased information. This understanding can be gained by a study of Ted Hughes’ Birthday Letters and the 2003 film Sylvia directed by Christine Jeffs. Through selective memories and powerful, emotive, negative representations of Plath and her state of mind, Hughes paints a vivid portrait of an unbalanced woman, and of himself as an innocent victim. By contrast, the film Sylvia shows a vibrant, imaginative and intelligent woman who is crushed by 1950’s social constructs and by her husband’s insensitivity. A comparison of Hughes’ poetry considered with the representation of both poets in Jeffs’ film provides readers with conflicting perspectives on Plath’s personality and state of mind as well as on her marriage to Hughes and ultimate suicide in 1963. The poetry collection Birthday Letters was created by Ted Hughes as a personal contemplation of his relationship with Sylvia Plath. It consists of 88 poems, of which all but two are addressed to Plath, and presents his perspective in what was publicly viewed as a tumultuous relationship. In 1998, he described his purpose in writing the collection to ABC Book Talk as “A gathering of occasions in which I tried to open a direct, private, inner contact with my first wife.” The collection explores selected memories and how they affect the representation of an event, personality or situation. For example, Fulbright Scholars is a poem in which Hughes recalls the first time he may have seen Plath, and reveals how his mind worked as a twenty-five year old man. This gives two different perspectives in one poem: the experience of a young Hughes and the hindsight of the older Hughes. The younger Hughes is evident in the arrogant and dismissive language of the poem, “Maybe I noticed you”, and the older Hughes is
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