Quotessence
Home / Books / The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes

The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes

Book by Janet Malcolm · 2 quotes · Critics, Posthumous, Privacy

Filter quotes by topic

AllCriticsPosthumousPrivacyTed HughesWritingArmed RobberyArtArt IsArtistAuthorCriticismDoneGivingGossipHeartJanet MalcolmLockedMotherMotiveMurderer

The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes Quotes

“Critics established the right to say whatever they pleased about the dead. It is an absolute power, and the corruption that comes with it, very often, is an atrophy of the moral imagination. They move onto the living because they can no longer feel the difference between the living and the dead. They extend over the living that license to say whatever they please, to ransack their psyche and reinvent them however they please. They stand in front of classes and present this performance as exemplary civilized activity—this utter insensitivity towards other living human beings. Students see the easy power and are enthralled, and begin to outdo their teachers. For a person to be corrupted in that way is to be genuinely corrupted.”

CriticsPosthumousTed Hughes
Book:The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes
Create image

“The old are still accorded human rights. The dead, however, lose all rights from the very first second of death. No law protects them any longer from slander, their privacy has ceased to be private; not even the letters written to them by their loved ones, not even the family album left to them by their mothers, nothing, nothing belongs to them any longer.”

PrivacyPosthumous
Book:The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes
Create image