War II, she did real well in school. She wrote a lot. Although her junior high school years (1944-47) were Sylvia’s awkward years, it just meant that she would throw herself into academics more. She was 5’9”, thin, and with a large nose, and years later she would say that she was glad that she was not pretty at that time because she won all kinds of writing awards instead. Sylvia and her family were all very close and in fact between the years of 1950- 63, Sylvia wrote 696 letters to her family.During her high school years, Sylvia remained uncritical of both her mother and her father in her writing. At the same time, she was submitting and having stories and poetry published in such magazines as Seventeen, and the Christian Science Monitor. Sylvia’s enormous potential was recognized by many, including Mrs. Prouty, an established and published novelist who along with others funded Sylvia’s education at the Ivy League Smith College. Feeling an obligation to all those that supported her, she strove to be perfect in every aspect of her life. This put enormous pressure on the young girl. This pressure she really never admitted to until after having read an article in a newspaper about the suicide of one of Warren’s classmates at Exeter. In a letter dated November 19, 1952, she very lightly discussed committing suicide over a difficult science class. She began to write for more serious magazines until she was finally offered a position in New York as a writer for the “Mademoiselle” Magazine.She became a guest editor for “Mademoiselle” for a month. After a month, she came home exhausted to be told by her mother that she had not been accepted to a creative writing class that she had applied to. It caused her to go into a deep depression that nothing could seem to draw her out of. Until one day Riri Plath “…noticed some partially healed gashes on her(Sylvia’s) leg. Up...
