Sylvia Plath’s mother was the daughter of two German immigrants who lived in Massachusetts. She grew up highly educated and became a high school English teacher. Sylvia Plath’s father had a doctorate in classical languages at Boston University. When Sylvia’s mother decided to earn her Masters degree at Boston University, Otto and Riri were married after a brief courtship, January 1932, in Carson City, Nevada. By mutual agreement, the mother immediately quit her job and became a homemaker. Her first child, Sylvia, was born October 27, 1932. Sylvia’s brother Warren was born one and a half years later on April 27, 1935.True to her word, Riri Plath was a devoted mother and wife. Otto Plath devoted himself to writing a book, so that the family had very little time for social life. Otto was also twenty years older than Riri and insisted on ruling the household with an iron hand. In fact, he even controlled the finances of the house to the degree that he insisted on doing all the shopping, groceries and otherwise. As controlling as he was, he was also a very loving and proud father and Sylvia and Warren grew up feeling loved by both parents.However, in 1936, Otto began to get extremely sick. He refused to go to see a doctor and he continued to work through much of his illness, which the family believed to be lung cancer. Then in 1938-1939, Warren also became sick. First with pneumonia, then later with asthma and other bronchial ailments. Riri Plath exhausted her resources trying to take care of the two sick men in her family. So Sylvia was often left with her maternal grandparents, whom she was very found of. In particular, she was very close to her grandfather, who she called “grampy”. In fact, she often in later writing would speak about him as if he was really her father. The following excerpt comes from her story “Among the Bumblebees” and describes an incident that actually occurred, accor...
