There is a tendency to see this mother-daughter relationship as the source of Sylvia Plath's early suicide attempt, her relentless perfectionism and obsession with "greatness." Yet the preface to Letters Home reveals a remarkable woman, a true survivor; it was Plath's father who set the example of self-destructiveness. The letters are far from complete and until many more materials are released, efforts to write Plath biography and criticism are questionable at best. But throughout runs her need to lay in her mother's lap, as it were, poems and prizes, books and babies, the longing for her mother when she is about to give birth, the effort to let Aurelia Plath know that her struggles and sacrifices to rear her daughter had been vindicated. In the last letters Sylvia seems to be trying to shield herself and Aurelia, an ocean away, from the pain of that "psychic osmosis."

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "There is a tendency to see this mother-daughter relationship as the source of Sylvia Plath's early suicide attempt, her relentless perfectionism and obsession with "greatness." Yet the preface to Letters Home reveals a remarkable woman, a true survivor; it was Plath's father who set the example of self-destructiveness. The letters are far from complete and until many more materials are released, efforts to write Plath biography and criticism are questionable at best. But throughout runs her need to lay in her mother's lap, as it were, poems and prizes, books and babies, the longing for her mother when she is about to give birth, the effort to let Aurelia Plath know that her struggles and sacrifices to rear her daughter had been vindicated. In the last letters Sylvia seems to be trying to shield herself and Aurelia, an ocean away, from the pain of that "psychic osmosis."" in the context of "Adrienne Rich Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (1976)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.