i know they’re her private journals, and shouldn’t necessarily be used as a rule book of any sort to live by; but being 19 myself, i thought i could gain knowledge from a girl who i assumed would most definitely have more common sense than i do.
i’m almost 200 pages in and am actually growing quickly tired of trying to track the different dates and men and boys. maybe the absence of her father plays a big part in this, but whatever enchantment sylvia has worked up in me is quickly made dull by the beginning of her next entry, which is a complete 180 from the last, in the span of a day (i love him, never mind i hate him, and there’s this other guy).
one day she’s accepted in mademoiselle, eating caviar, drinking champagne staying out late and the next (for no apparent reason) she’s dejected, hopeless. and she says it herself, she has everything and more. and i’m unfortunately not seeing it as “no matter how much you have you’re still empty”, rather than as “this girl has absolutely zero foresight”.
these journals have served only to paint sylvia as an extremely ungrateful person, and unfortunately i’ve gained no insight or found any knowledge to superimpose onto my own life (other than observe how childish and unappreciative one of your favorite authors realistically is)
Personal journals and memoirs tend to be like that. The person writing them often did not intend for them to be seen by others in the first place, unless they specifically wanted their memoir published. They reveal a person at their best and their worst. Thinking that an artist whose art speaks to you must be similar to you in character, compatible with you or a person you should strife to be is a very common misconception. They might be all of that, or they might be not. Someone might be a great artist and a terrible person, and that’s a perfectly realistic combination. Private journals do not exist to be guides to life. Many artists out there were tortured souls whose life was full of trauma, misery, bad decisions and struggles with mental health. It’s great to look up to them in terms of art, but emulating their life or looking to them for actual advice is not healthy. Sylvia Plath wasn’t a therapist, she was a clinically depressed young woman who took her own life. If you do not connect with her and find some of her actions immoral, that’s a perfectly valid opinion to have about someone, but her journals weren’t written to teach other young women how to live their lives, and shouldn’t be treated as such. Use them to make observations about the realities of the time period, life events that might have influenced the writer’s art, or just treat it as a vintage vent blog. It’s better to turn to a professional therapist if you need genuine advice about navigating life as a neurodivergent person.