[R. S. Gwynn]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/b...dium=twitte r

[ross hamilton hill]

I'm have some sympathy for Freida's position, but going public will only stir up the whole debate again.
She'd do better to maintain a dignified silence.
She is dragging herself and other family members back down to the level of those power-seeking feminists who latched onto her parent's tragedy for their own self-serving purposes.

[Ann Drysdale]

Hang about a bit, Ross. I am with you in principle, but this isn't Frieda dragging the thing up for her own purposes. This is a response within an interview by the BBC, who "set out to produce a complete overview of Hughes life, works and inspiration". Straight question, honest answer.

And I feel sure that she would not have responded so openly if she still felt responsibility for her beloved brother, Nicholas, who died by his own hand in 2009.

Nicholas, who became a marine biologist and wrote "...large fish swim further from the bank to avoid wave drag, the resistance associated with the generation of surface waves when swimming close to the surface..."

[ross hamilton hill]

Ann, yes I remember reading about the brother. I see your point, if she doesn't give an interview her side of the story will never be heard. I feel the whole subject is a bit tired, why do people want to know 'who slept with who' isn't it enough to just read the poems?

[Ann Drysdale]

Alas, for some people, no, it isn't. But such prurient interest is, in itself, relatively harmless. It is the hate campaign that pursued Frieda's father to his grave that she is evaluating here and I still find that unforgiveable.

A straight answer at a more than decent interval is not out of place, I reckon. And in the context of the rest of the interview, it comes across as honest and seemly.
.

[Siham Karami]

And hate campaigns usually come out of purist ideological fever. Feminism, as applied here, acted like religious zealotry. Ignore the nuances and nothing is sacred but one's own straitened narrow.

[Michael F]

Yes, it's clear to me that Plath had a fractured psyche before she met Hughes. Was that part of what attracted Hughes, and did he aggravate it? Natural questions to pose, but who would claim to chart all the features and currents in a human soul?

It seems a story of terrible pain, from many angles. If that's the cost of being a large fish, perhaps it's better to be a sand crab.