Euphoria - Elin Cullhed (2021)

 

Rating: Admirable

Sylvia Plath was a brilliant writer of both verse and prose and even the most casual reader of literature would know something about her. Her only novel, The Bell Jar (1963) made a huge impact on me when I read it some eighteen years ago, it seemed brilliant and radiant in its intensity, despite its challenging subject matter. Plath was married to English poet, Ted Hughes, and during her last year she was living in Devon whilst pregnant with their second child. Their marriage unraveled and Plath ended up living in London with her two children whilst Hughes pursued his need for ‘freedom’ (as quoted in the novel) with another woman. Plath’s tumultuous relationship with Hughes is well documented and for most of the rest of his life Hughes was attacked by feminists and critics for having treated Plath poorly or for even being the cause of her death. Elin Cullhed, in an interview, relates how she read Plath’s journals during a trip to England when she was twenty, which made a big impact on her. Then years later, during a period in which Cullhed was diagnosed as having extreme exhaustion, she was inspired to write a novel about Plath’s last year before her untimely suicide at the age of thirty. In Euphoria’s forward it is noted that the depiction of Plath is a fictional one, a 'literary fantasy' as Cullhed puts it, a notion that the reader should remember while reading the novel. 

Hughes and Plath

Euphoria is a novel intense with emotion and inner psychological tension and in this sense Cullhed has succeeded in portraying both a troubled individual and a marriage compromised by interpersonal and professional struggles. Written in the first person point of view of Plath, the prose is ripe with a heightened state of self-awareness, of neurotic desperation and self-sabotage. The portrayal of Plath's state of mind is suffocating and unrelentingly neurotic and, as a result, Cullhed has done Plath no favours, as she comes across as impossibly demanding and impossible to live with. Ted Hughes was undoubtably flawed, but the Plath of Euphoria weakens her position as a hard done by literary genius who battled depression while not getting the sympathy or help she needed from a husband who ultimately cheated on her and left her caring for two young children. Hughes comes out of the novel in quite a sympathetic light and with Euphoria so heavily weighted toward Plath's first person perspective it seems very unbalanced. Ultimately it’s an exhausting read and in the end I was speed reading just to get it over and done with, which is, obviously, never a good sign. I'm also troubled by the moral implications of putting words and thoughts into the mouth and mind of such a well know literary figure and portraying Hughes' and Plath's relationship in such a skewed manner. Despite the 'literary fantasy' warning at the beginning of the novel, I can't help but feel that readers will come away from the Euphoria with the notion that they have an accurate perception of Plath in her final year and her relationship with Hughes. Ultimately I admire the quality of the writing, but didn't enjoy the novel overall, an impression shared with many of the book club members, although some did enjoy it unreservedly. Euphoria is a flawed novel with dubious moral standing, so read with caution!