SOURCE: Dinnage, Rosemary. “Kicking the Myth Habit.” New York Review of Books 42, no. 6 (6 April 1995): 6-8.

In the following review, Dinnage agrees with Malcolm that myths surrounding Sylvia Plath's life and career have overshadowed actual history. Dinnage judges The Silent Woman as offering a truly unique perspective as a chronicle of the lives of those affected by Plath's suicide.

Why the “silent woman”? Among the vast number of words generated by the suicide of the poet Sylvia Plath (which [in The Silent Woman] are hereby being added to) is an account of a scene in Yorkshire in 1960. Olwyn Hughes, sister of Plath's English husband, Ted Hughes, and a crucial figure in the wretched cause célèbre that the girl's death became, called her brother's wife badly behaved, inconsiderate, and rude—the kind of sisterly-in-law remark that can crop up in family gatherings. Sylvia “glared accusingly [and] … kept up...