All Sylvia Plath Short Stories and Prose Writings Summary

Introduction

The novel’s autobiographical and confessional element finds its echoes and parallels in the short stories and prose writings and journals by Sylvia Plath. The prose writings and the journals provide important clues to the understanding of Plath. They show her obsessions and compulsions. They hold a mirror to the life of Plath. They are very frankly written. In his introduction, Ted Hughes observes: “Sylvia Plath herself had certainly rejected several of the stories here, so they are printed against her better judgement. But in spite of the obvious weaknesses, they seem interesting enough to keep description of neighbours and friends and daily happenings is mostly too personal, her criticisms frequently unjust”. Ted explains how true they are when he writes. “The limitation to actual circumstances, which is the prison of so much of her prose, later poems”

The stories have very little theme or anything of general interest with the result that they cannot be strictly considered fictional pieces. On the other hand, they are full of her own experiences, her fears and her dreams, her obsessions and her own views of people are all reflected in the prose writings. Ted Hughes divides her prose writings into 4 parts.

Section I

Under this section 12 stories and prose writings are included.

Johnny panic and the Bible of Dreams

“Johnny panic and the Bible of Dreams” is a prose piece written by Plath while she was working in the Massachusetts general hospital writing up case histories. She worked in the psychiatric wing of the hospital and this gave her an opportunity to relish her dreams. She writes. “There is not a dream I’ve types in our record books that I don’t know by heart. There isn’t a dream I haven’t copies out at home into Johnny Panic’s Bible of Dreams. This is my real calling”. She had a recurrent dream of putrescent lake of water. She gets always a dream in which she sees a gothic vision of a cellar with skulls and bones, and dead bodies. Her boss Dr. Miss Taylor has a lame foot like her own father. Health is reflected upon asalien condition by Plath. She secretly copies down the case histories. She loves Johnny Panic. Johnny Panic is her own love of the weird, the out-of-the-way dangerous elements, the sick dreams of human beings. It is her own obsession with death.

America: America

“America: America”; is a prose piece about her own childhood and her tenure at Bradford High School. She refers to the American Dream in the prose piece and the song of America and how the children were made to sing it every day. Plath resents girl guidance counseling. She also resents the utilitarian approach to life cultivated by Americans. She rents “Sorrorities” and “Subdebs” and writes: “We even in our democratic edifice nursed to academic relics of snobbism-two sororities subdeb and sugar ’n’ spice. Teachers preached against initiation week, boys scoffed but couldn’t stop it”

She does not like being tailored to an okay image. She castigates the accent placed by elders on superficial values.

The Day Mr. Prescott Dies

“The Day Mr. Prescott dies” is a piece about the death of neighbours. Plath exposes how the wife did not resent or mourn the death of Mr. Prescott while her own mother instructed her the right kind of mournful attitude when she took Plath with her to the house of Prescotts. The story is based on the real life incident of the death of a neighbor.

The Wishing Box

“The Wishing Box” is a story in which Ted Hughes also appears along with Plath. They narrate their dreams to each other. Plath is plagued with nightmares, Ted dreams of meeting people like Robert Lowell, William Carlos Williams etc., The dreams of Agnes are so frightful that: “Agnes realized with a pang of envy, that her dream life would cause the most assiduous psychoanalyst to repress a yawn . The story is a reminiscence of her childhood when she thought wishing boxes grew on trees. Plath clearly comes out in this story when she describes the mental condition of Agnes. When Agnes could not read she started attending movies round the corner and for relaxation she drank sherry against the advice of Harold. In real life Ted Hughes tried to prevent Plath from drinking sherry whenever she felt depressed. The sherry never worked wonders. Agnes does not bother about sleeplessness any more. She feels condemned to vacancy. She felt as if the tables and chairs might assault her and her only means of escape is death which seems to be far off. She commits suicide swallowing pills. We find an echo of Plath’s suicide in this tragic incident. Originally Published in https://www.eng-literature.com/2021/08/sylvia-plath-short-stories-summary.html