Aurelia Frances Plath (née Schober; April 26, 1906 – March 11, 1994) was the wife of
Otto Emil Plath, the mother of the American poet
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath (; October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for two of her published collections, ''The ...
, and her brother Warren, and the grandmother of
Frieda Rebecca Hughes and
Nicholas Farrar Hughes.
Aurelia Plath was born in
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
,
, the daughter of Franz (Frank) Schober of
Bad Aussee
Bad Aussee (Central Bavarian: ''Bod Ossee'') is a town in the Austrian state of Styria, located at the confluence of the three sources of the Traun River in the Ausseerland region. Bad Aussee serves as the economic and cultural center of the Styri ...
,
Styria
Styria (german: Steiermark ; Serbo-Croatian and sl, ; hu, Stájerország) is a state (''Bundesland'') in the southeast of Austria. With an area of , Styria is the second largest state of Austria, after Lower Austria. Styria is bordered to ...
, and his wife Aurelia Grünwald (Greenwood). She grew up in Jamaica Plain and Winthrop, Massachusetts.
In 1928, Schober graduated with a Bachelor of Secretarial Sciences (B.S.S.) degree from Boston University's College of Practical Arts and Letters, opened in 1919 to prepare women for secretarial careers. Aurelia Schober was president of the college's German Club, vice-president of its Writers' Club, editor-in-chief of the college yearbook, and class valedictorian. Schober received a Master of Arts degree in English and German from Boston University in 1930. Her thesis topic was "The Paracelsus of History and Literature". She married Otto Plath in 1932 and subsequently gave birth to daughter Sylvia in the same year and son Warren in 1935. Otto Plath died in 1940. To support her children, in 1942 Mrs. Plath took a job as an instructor of medical secretarial skills at Boston University, attaining the rank of associate professor. Mrs. Plath taught there until her forced retirement in 1971.
In 1975, Mrs. Plath published her daughter's letters from 1950 to 1963 as ''
Letters Home''. Playwright
Rose Leiman Goldemberg
Rose Leiman Goldemberg (born May 17, 1928) is an American playwright, screenwriter, poet, and author of fiction and non-fiction books and stories.
Goldemberg's ''Letters Home'', about the life of Sylvia Plath and her mother, has been translate ...
in 1979 successfully adapted Mrs. Plath's book for the stage, and the play's Paris production formed the basis for the French-language movie Letters Home (1986), directed by
Chantal Akerman
Chantal Anne Akerman (; 6 June 19505 October 2015) was a Belgian film director, screenwriter, artist, and Film studies, film professor at the City College of New York. She is best known for films such as ''Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 108 ...
.
In 1977, Indiana University at Bloomington's Lilly Library acquired for its archives Mrs. Plath's collection of Sylvia's letters, childhood diaries and memorabilia, and early poems and stories. Mrs. Plath donated other papers to Smith College's Plath archive in 1983.
Sylvia Plath made reference to her maternal grandmother by making "Esther Greenwood" the name of the heroine in her 1963
semi-autobiographical novel
An autobiographical novel is a form of novel using autofiction techniques, or the merging of autobiographical and fictive elements. The literary technique is distinguished from an autobiography or memoir by the stipulation of being fiction. Bec ...
''
The Bell Jar
''The Bell Jar'' is the only novel written by the American writer and poet Sylvia Plath. Originally published under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas" in 1963, the novel is semi-autobiographical with the names of places and people changed. The book ...
''. The relationship between Aurelia Plath and her daughter was a rather problematic and ambiguous one, for on the one hand they were exceptionally close to each other, and on the other hand Sylvia Plath often claimed that she hated her mother. Sylvia Plath portrayed their relationship in the poems "The Disquieting Muses" and "Medusa" and in the novel "The Bell Jar." Aurelia Plath called "cruel" the novel's characterizations of herself, family, and friends.
Aurelia Plath died March 11, 1994, aged 87, of complications from Alzheimer's disease in
Needham, Massachusetts
Needham ( ) is a town in Norfolk County, Massachusetts. A suburb of Boston, its population was 32,091 at the 2020 U.S. Census. It is home of Olin College.
History
Early settlement
Needham was first settled in 1680 with the purchase of a ...
.
Aurelia Schober Plath, Educator, Dies at 87 - New York Times
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References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Plath, Aurelia
1906 births
1994 deaths
Sylvia Plath
Deaths from Alzheimer's disease
People from Needham, Massachusetts
American people of Austrian descent