That Fierce Inner Struggle: The Journals of Sylvia Plath and Jeon Hyerin

Abstract

Sylvia Plath and Jeon Hyerins biographies exhibit surprising similarities. Both women were born one year apart (Plath was born in 1935, Jeon in 1934) and died two years apart (Plath died in 1963, Jeon in 1965). They were both noted for their extraordinary intellectuality, writing talent, and creative energy. They both attempted suicide in their early twenties, experienced failed marriages, were passionate mothers, and committed their final suicides in their early thirties. Sylvia Plath wrote a number of books of poetry including Ariel and a novel, The Bell Jar, while Jeon Hyerin wrote several collections of essays in addition to translating works of German literature. These two writers also left many volumes of journals that record the tremendous inner conflicts they underwent as women writers. From her teenage days Plath had already recorded her apprehensions about being a woman writer. Her journals disclose the difficulty of juggling marriage and writing. Her marriage to poet Ted Hughes and the deterioration of the marriage aggravated by Hughes's infidelity drove her into deep depression, anger, hysteria, and near madness. Jeon Hyerin also had her share of enormous inner conflicts, which included the struggle between her creative self and her identity as a woman in post-war Korean society. Even though she was extraordinarily fortunate to be able to study in Germany during the 1950s, when Korea was experiencing postwar social turmoil, her journals unveil a tortured soul. The binding element of the journals of Sylvia Plath and Jeon Hyerin, who never knew each other in spite of their sister-souls, is their fierce struggle as women to realize their creative potential and literary self-definition. It is notable that their posthumous status as female muses to other creative women writers hereafter stems largely from this fierce struggle they wholeheartedly engaged in even to the point of self-annihilations.