Ted Hughes

Innocent Victim or Secret Murderer?
Working Draft: Still Under Construction

      Ted Hughes, one of the most controversial and influential British poets of modern time, once “stated that poems, like animals, are each one ‘an assembly of living parts, moved by a single spirit’” (Liukkonen --). Born to a warmhearted carpenter and a mother famous for making jams and gooseberry pies, Ted Hughes was born and raised in Yorkshire on the moors of England. He would often hunt for small game with his mother and was interested in the natural world (The Academy --). After studying at Cambridge University, he met his wife-to-be, American poet, Sylvia Plath. In 1962, the couple decided to separate when Hughes fell for another woman, Assia Wevill, and in 1963, Sylvia Plath committed suicide by means of carbon monoxide poisoning. Wevill, Hughes’ mistress, was a German woman who had been involved in three previous marriages. Hughes never fully recovered from Plath’s death and his damaged reputation would follow him to his grave. Partly because of this, Wevill feared that Hughes was going to leave her. One tragic day in 1969, she gave their four-year-old daughter, Shura, some sleeping pills and turned the gas oven on. Then Wevill and Shura lay together on a mattress, both of them sadly dying of carbon monoxide poisoning. The fact that two of Hughes’ lovers both died self-implicated deaths by carbon monoxide poisoning is suspicious to some critics and because of this, Hughes is one of the most controversial poets of his time (Liukkonen --).
     The early life of Ted Hughes could be described as ordinary, almost benign. But many of these “unimportant” events in his early childhood resulted in some of the deepest poetry recently recorded. Born into a close family in Mytholmroyd, the West Riding district in Yorkshire, Hughes had two loving parents and two supportive siblings: one sister (Olwyn, who was two years older) and one brother (Gerald, who was ten years older). Hughes once stated in a letter that “’ [Gerald] made my early life a kind of paradise’” (Skea --), obviously showing evidence of a close, brotherly relationship between the two preadolescents. In fact, they would often go out together on the moors in search of small game animals; it was upon this dramatic terrain that Hughes became a keen spectator of the natural world.
     Apparently these experiences left a huge impact on Hughes and his future as a poet. In an interview Hughes declared that “’my first six years shaped everything’” (Skea --), indicative of the strong correlation between encounters in his upbringing and works that he would later author. When Hughes was six, his family joined a new neighborhood in Mexborough, where they owned their own newspaper and tobacco shop. It was here that Hughes attended his first school, Mexborough Grammar School, and created his first work at fifteen years old. He entitled his story “Zulus and the Wild West,” written in the style of Rudyard Kipling, one of his favorite childhood writers (Skea --). He received Robert Graves’ The White Goddess as a prize for his work, and was so moved and influenced by the book that he personally sent Graves a letter of appreciation years later (Paul --). Hughes said that “’ [the book] was the Chief Holy book of my poetic conscience’” (Paul --) and therefore was another major influence on him brought upon at this early age. Hughes’ father, William Henry Hughes, fought during World War I in the Battle of Gallipoli. As one of only seven survivors from his regiment, he would share stories of the war and his involvement in it with his family, including his son Ted. This was one of the few isolated examples of a negative influence upon Hughes’ early life. After graduating from high school in 1948, Hughes spent the next two years fulfilling his duty to England by completing his two years of national service in the Royal Air force (Liukkonen --).
     While in the Air force, Hughes found himself spending time studying Shakespeare’s plays. He memorized much of Shakespeare and eventually grew to know much of it by heart. After his national service, Hughes received a scholarship to read English at Pembroke College, Cambridge University, where he spent much of his time reading Yeats and listening to Beethoven (Skea --).
     Then in 1953, he changed his concentration of studies from English to archaeology and anthropology. This switch in major was influenced by a dream about a fox that Hughes had one night. He would go on to write about this fox in later books such as Winter Pollen and Wolfwatching (Feinstein 24). Hughes graduated with respectable grades from Cambridge in 1954. His family asked him to come home, live with them, and possibly work in the family textile business, which his uncle Walt ran, but during all of his time away from home, Hughes had been writing poetry and he knew that was exactly what he wanted to do (Middlebrook 9-10). So in 1956, Hughes moved to London.
     Hughes held numerous occupations in London, including rose gardener, zoo attendant, night watchman, and a school teacher (Skea --). Hughes actually desired a respectable occupation in the industry of film or television, but his scruffy looks created a problem, as appearances are extremely important in the show business. Hughes’ friend Philip Hobsbaum held such a job in the television industry that Hughes desired, and Hughes one day went to meet him at the studio. Says Hobsbaum about Hughes, “’Ted in his hairy overcoat presented a contrast to the tinsel starlets and be-blazered leading men who populated the foyer.’” It was Hobsbaum who actually arranged for Hughes to work for the dramatist J. Arthur Rank, writing summaries of stories that were going to be submitted for potential development into films. On weekends, Hughes would commute back to Cambridge to publish his literary magazine, St. Botolph’s Review, to which he contributed a great number of poems and stories (Middlebrook 10-11).
     This publication is what would ultimately lead Hughes to his future wife, Sylvia Plath. Sylvia Plath was an American who received a scholarship to attend Cambridge. Hughes and Plath met at a student party while Hughes was back at Cambridge for the weekend. Plath had been following Hughes through his poetry publications, and Hughes had heard talk about Plath from his friends, as females were out-numbered ten to one at Cambridge, and each of the males there would scrutinize the females (Middlebrook 11). Their first meeting at the party would foretell their future – Plath bit Hughes on the cheek so hard that it bled profusely and left a permanent scar (Liukkonen --). Hughes was a great man, but when Plath came into his life, a parasitic relationship ensued: Plath’s presence undeservingly scarred both his face and his reputation.
     The two young poets fell in love and were married in June 1956. Plath had a great passion for her husband’s work, and it was in fact Plath that encouraged Hughes to enter his first manuscript (The Hawk in the Rain) into the Poetry Center’s First Publication contest. He won the competition and his book was published the next year. The relationship between Hughes and his wife was a loving one. They were similar yet different at the same time, of the same mind and spirit, yet opposites. They had two children together, Frieda and Nicholas, and taught together at Amherst and Smith College. Trouble arose in the summer of 1962, however. Hughes fell in love with another woman, the German-born Assia Wevill. This event, according to most Hughes’ experts, prompted Plath’s suicide in 1963. She died of self-induced carbon monoxide poisoning. Hughes received the blame for Plath’s death, yet he still loved her. These factors contributed to his mistress Wevill’s suicide/murder in which she killed herself and their four-year-old daughter, Shura. They both also died of self-induced carbon monoxide poisoning (Academy --). Hughes never quite recovered from Plath’s death, which set him searching for another woman. He had relationships with at least two more women. After his mother passed away in the 1970’s, Hughes married Carol Orchard (Paul --). He also had a four-year love affair with Australian Jill Barber, who revealed their affair in 2001. Says Barber of Hughes, “’he looks like Heathcliff; he is rough, passionate, forceful’” (Azam --). Hughes would go on to write many more famous works of prose, poetry, and children’s stories. He succumbed to cancer in 1998 when he passed away at his home in Devonshire, England (Academy --)
     Hughes’ works reflected his hard life put upon mostly by himself. Writing throughout all of his hardships, through his national service, through college, through meeting and losing the love of his life, and through all of the criticism he received for Plath’s death, Hughes’ work can be considered almost autobiographical in nature. The violent ambiance of some of his poems were, according to Hughes, influenced by the stories of his father in the war and his own experiences upon the moor, hunting small game with his brother (Academy --). He was also an avid observer of the natural world, creating many poems featuring animals, the most famous being “Crow,” a set of story-poems in which the protagonist, a somewhat of a mixture of god, bird, and man, is “an embodiment of vitality that challenges all supremacy of ‘death’” (Liukkonen --). His work “[uses] both lyric form and dramatic monologue to give voice to the intense struggle between the hunter and the hunted, the human and the divine” (Academy --). Shamanism, hermeticism, and astrology also appeared to be influences upon Hughes and his writing. He talks about survival and the destructiveness of the universe in some of his “animal works.” Hughes’ writing ranges from free verse to complex forms and rhyme schemes. He said once “that there is no ideal form of poetry or writing” (Liukkonen --), which is visualized by the various writing techniques and structure he experiments with. Many of his most famous works are biographies of animals, such as “Crow” and Wolfwatching, but much of his writing catalogs his and Plath’s lives. Ariel, Plath’s final collection, was edited completely by Hughes. Hughes destroyed and “misplaced” many key entries from the journals and re-ordered many of them, possibly trying to keep himself from looking bad by demolishing any evidence of his mistreatment of Plath. Hughes’ final collection, Birthday Letters, records every chapter of his relationship with Plath, including their meeting, marriage, separation, and her suicide. This work re-ignited the famous controversy over whether or not Hughes had anything to do with Plath’s suicide although it was published 35 years after her death (Academy --).
     While living, Hughes met widespread critical acclaim. His first publication, The Hawk in the Rain, was published 1957 as a result of his winning the Poetry Center’s contest. The book “established Hughes as an important and innovative poet of his generation” (Academy --). His final collection, Birthday Letters, met only mixed critical review, but was an immediate best-seller. For some reason, the mysterious controversy between Hughes and Plat excited and intrigued many. The fact that we will never know all the details of the situation pulls people into the hullabaloo of the scandal (Academy --). Hughes won many awards during and after his lifetime, including being appointed Poet Laureate (1984), receiving an honorary degree from Exeter University (1982), receiving an honorary DLitt from Cambridge University (1986), and receiving the Order of Merit (1998) (Paul --). He actually received every major European award except for the Nobel Prize. Even though Hughes met such great critical acclaim during his life, he was also highly criticized by feminists, who claim that Hughes drew Plath and Wevill to their suicides. Many publications have been produced exemplifying Hughes as a murderer, trying to get Hughes convicted of some sort of crime. Hughes always blamed Plath’s death on herself, arguing that he had nothing to do with her suicide. It is interesting, however, that Plath committed suicide as a result of her separation with Hughes, which he encouraged while Wevill, his mistress, committed suicide because of his ex-wife’s death and the controversy surrounding that circumstance. It is almost a catch-22 situation in which both of the women involved with Hughes ultimately committed suicide as a result of each other, but the indirect connection between them was Ted Hughes.
     It is hard to describe Hughes’ place in British literature today, as he passed away so recently, but much of his work has already inspired others. For example, one of his children’s stories, The Iron Man, is the basis of Pete Townsend’s concept album of the same name and the animated motion picture, The Iron Giant (Liukkonen --). Hughes’ writing will live on as a testament to his ability to overcome the “worst case scenarios” many will never have to face. His dynamic life led him to compose some of the greatest everlasting writing of all time, offering a small glimpse into the psyche of this interesting man, the likes of which this world shall never see again.

--written by K.A.C. and edited by A. Baylor

Works Cited

The Academy of American Poets. Ted Hughes. 1 March 2004. <http://www.
     poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=114>.
Azam, Nadeem. Ted Hughes: A Talented Murderer. 1 March 2004. <http://
     1lit.tripod.com/june2001.html>.
Feinstein, Elaine. Ted Hughes: The Life of a Poet. New York: W.W. Norton &
     Company, Inc., 2001.
Liukkonen, Petri. Ted Hughes (1930-1998) - byname of Edward J. Hughes. 1
     March 2004. <http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/thughes.htm>.
Middlebrook, Diane. Her Husband: Hughes and Plath - A Marriage. New York:
     Viking, 2003.
Paul, Sylvia. Ted Hughes: Centre for Ted Hughes Studies. 2 March 2004
     <http://www3.sympatico.ca/sylvia.paul/hughes_index.htm>.
Skea, Ann, Ph.D. The Ted Hughes Homepage. 1 March 2004. <http://www.
     zeta.org.au/%7Eannskea/THHome.htm>.