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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What was the name of Sylvia Plath's mother?

2. Toward the end of her life, according to Alvarez, Sylvia Plath developed a problem with ___________.

3. What did Sylvia Plath leave for her children when they awoke the night she killed herself?

4. In the second version of The Journals of Sylvia Plath, Hughes avoided blame for what?

5. What is the term used for a novel describing real life, behind a façade of fiction?

Short Essay Questions

1. Where did Olwyn and Malcolm go together in Part One: Chapter VII? What did Malcolm learn there?

2. Ted Hughes wrote two introductions to The Journals of Sylvia Plath. What did he write in the first introduction, and when was this edition published?

3. How old were Sylvia and Ted when Sylvia died? How did she die?

4. What portrait of Sylvia Plath did Anne Stevenson paint in her biography of Sylvia? Why did critics refute that image?

5. What was the first official bad review of Bitter Fame? Who wrote it?

6. What memoir did A. Alvarez write about Sylvia? What was Ted Hughes' response?

7. What did Aurelia Plath have published regarding Sylvia after her death? Why?

8. What friend of Sylvia Plath's commented negatively about her life and death in Part One: Chapter II?

9. What did Olwyn Hughes offer Anne Stevenson if she would write a biography about Sylvia?

10. How did Janet Malcolm know Anne Stevenson in their youth? What was Malcolm's opinion of her?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Discuss the aftermath of Bitter Fame's publication. Should Anne Stevenson have published the book, considering her apprehension about its validity? Why or why not?

Essay Topic 2

Describe and discuss The Savage God. When and where was this work first published? What was Ted Hughes' reaction to the piece and why?

Essay Topic 3

Discuss the suicide of Sylvia Plath and its impact on Ted Hughes. What led to Hughes' separation from Plath?

(see the answer keys)

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