Ted Hughes

With Ted Hughes’ passing (“Britain Loses Poet Laureate Ted Hughes, 68, to Cancer,” Oct. 30), perhaps his brilliant literary legacy will, at long last, surpass his feminist-appointed role as “villain” in the ongoing Sylvia Plath/Hughes drama. For nearly four decades, Hughes has been excoriated for his relationship with Plath, when what has been sorely lacking is a more balanced view of her mental illness and the effect it had upon their marriage.

Though Plath herself was a gifted poet, she was no saint. Indeed, she was a deeply disturbed woman, given to fits of jealous rage and vitriolic behavior. She once destroyed all of Hughes’ work-in-progress, burning his papers in a bonfire. One can only imagine the extreme exasperation and frustration Hughes must have felt living with Plath in a time when mental illness was still treated with the most barbaric methods, such as lobotomies and electric shock therapy. Perhaps now Ted Hughes will simply be remembered as “the hawk in the rain.”

VALERIE E. WEICH

Pasadena