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thelovelygods · 3 years

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As a teenager, Sylvia Plath vividly understood the extent to which her body steered her. "If I didn't have sex organs, I wouldn't waver on the brink of nervous emotion and tears all the time," she wrote in her journal in 1950. Ten days before her death, she had come to believe that "fixed stars/Govern a life." It turns out that Plath was probably right -- more right than she could have possibly known -- about her biology and her fate. But when Plath's journals were first published in 1982, what was most obvious about her was the supercharged nature of her emotions. Whatever causal agents may have been governing Plath's life, they were blown back by the force of her personality.

As unmistakable as were Plath's volatile emotions in the 1982 journals, the heavy editing of the text necessarily made it hard to discern the patterns to her moods. Even so, there did seem to be a detectable pattern, and it did not seem then, nor had it seemed to the people closest to her during the last years of her life, to be merely a function of temperament. In the weeks before her suicide, Plath's physician, John Horder, noted that Plath was not simply deeply depressed, but that her condition extended beyond the boundaries of a psychological explanation.

In a letter years later to Plath biographer Linda Wagner-Martin, Horder stated: "I believe ... she was liable to large swings of mood, but so excessive that a doctor inevitably thinks in terms of brain chemistry. This does not reduce the concurrent importance of marriage break-up or of exhaustion after a period of unusual artistic activity or from recent infectious illness or from the difficulties of being a responsible, practical mother. The full explanation has to take all these factors into account and more. But the irrational compulsion to end it makes me think that the body was governing the mind."

For at least the past 10 years it has been generally assumed that Plath fit the schema of manic-depressive illness, with alternating periods of depression and more productive and elated episodes.

The hypothesis that Plath suffered from a bipolar disorder is persuasive. But in late 1990, another, even more intriguing medical theory emerged. Using the evidence of Plath's letters, poems, biographies and the 1982 journals, a graduate student named Catherine Thompson proposed that Plath had suffered from a severe case of premenstrual syndrome. In "Dawn Poems in Blood: Sylvia Plath and PMS," which appeared in the literary magazine Triquarterly, Thompson theorized that Plath's mood volatility, depressions, many chronic ailments and ultimately her suicide were traceable to the poet's menstrual cycles and the hormonal disruptions caused by PMS.

Thompson pointed out that Plath unwittingly recorded experiencing on a cyclical basis all of the major symptoms of PMS, as well as many others, including low impulse control, extreme anger, unexplained crying and hypersensitivity. She also suffered many of the physical symptoms associated with PMS, notably extreme fatigue, insomnia and hypersomnia, extreme changes in appetite, itchiness, conjunctivitis, ringing in the ears, feelings of suffocation, headaches, heart palpitations and the exacerbation of chronic conditions such as her famous sinus infections.

Thompson compared Plath's reported mood and health changes with the journals, letters and biographies and found that her symptoms seemed to appear and disappear abruptly on a fairly regular schedule, with clusters of physical symptoms and depressive affect followed by dramatic changes in outlook and overall physical health. Those patterns can be directly linked to the dates of Plath's actual menses, particularly in 1958 and 1959, when she most habitually noted her cycles. Judging from the pattern of Plath's depression and health in late 1952 and in 1953 until her Aug. 24 suicide attempt, Thompson posited that "it seems reasonable to conclude that this suicide attempt was directly precipitated by hormonal disruption during the late luteal phase of her menstrual cycle and secondarily by her loss of self-esteem at being unable to control her depression."

Thompson showed that a well-known journal entry from Feb. 20, 1956, is clearly traceable to Plath's menses, to which she refers directly a few days later. The journal fragment takes on new meaning in light of having been written during the physically and emotionally debilitating luteal phase of Plath's cycle: "Dear Doctor: I am feeling very sick. I have a heart in my stomach which throbs and mocks. Suddenly the simple rituals of the day balk like a stubborn horse. It gets impossible to look people in the eye: corruption may break out again? Who knows. Small talk becomes desperate. Hostility grows, too. That dangerous, deadly venom which comes from a sick heart. Sick mind, too." On Feb. 24, the same day she notes in her journal that she has a sinus cold and "atop of this, through the hellish sleepless night of feverish sniffling and tossing, the macabre cramps of my period (curse, yes) and the wet, messy spurt of blood," Plath wrote a letter to her mother blaming her dark mood on her physical health: "I am so sick of having a cold every month; like this time, it generally combines with my period."

By the fall of 1962, the poems (which Plath carefully dated as they were completed) seem to follow a pattern of metaphorical renewals and optimistic transformations for roughly two to three weeks of artistic production, then jagged, seething accusations and aggression for a couple of weeks.

Thompson's PMS theory has been largely ignored by Plath scholars. But it immediately gained two important supporters: Anne Stevenson, Plath's controversial biographer, and Olwyn Hughes, Plath's former sister-in-law, whose letters were published in a subsequent issue of Triquarterly. Though oddly defensive in tone, Stevenson's letter does commend Thompson for her "invaluable contribution to Plath scholarship ... Certainly no future study of Plath will be able to ignore the probable effects of premenstrual syndrome on her imagination and behavior." And it states that she wishes she had been able to utilize Thompson's insights in the writing of her own work on Plath.

A letter from Olwyn Hughes also congratulates Thompson for her scholarship, but unlike Stevenson, Hughes practically stumbles over herself in amazement at the PMS theory. Hughes, who was quoted in Janet Malcolm's book "The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes" as characterizing her long-dead sister-in-law as "pretty straight poison," wrote to Thompson: "It is quite a shock to digest all this -- after thinking for so long that Sylvia's subconscious mind was her prison, and to suddenly realise it may well have been in part, or wholly, her body. But it certainly tallies with Ted's mentions -- he has always felt some chemical imbalance was involved."

Hughes further points out that Ted Hughes had spoken of Plath's ravenous appetite just prior to her periods and asks, "I wonder if that is a known characteristic of PMS?" (According to the PMS literature, it is.) But most tellingly, Olwyn Hughes explains that "one of the reasons I was so bowled over by your piece is that Sylvia's daughter, very like her physically, suffers quite badly from PMS but is, in these enlightened times, aware of it and treats it."

Dr. Glenn Bair, one of the leading experts on PMS treatment and research in the United States, confirmed to Salon that PMS is typically passed from mother to daughter. In a rare interview about her parents, Frieda Hughes told the Manchester Guardian in 1997 that after the "collapse of her health," including extreme fatigue and gynecological problems, she underwent a hysterectomy in her 30s.

After a careful review of Thompson's article, of a seven-page monthly breakdown of Plath's symptoms for 1958 through 1959 and of the documented evidence of Plath's pregnancies and postpartum symptoms of 1959 through 1962, Bair said, "If you hack through the PMDD criteria, I think that you'll find that she fits the PMDD profile."

#sylvia plath #pmdd #this almost made me cry #SHE UNDERSTOOD

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achraf1149 · 4 years

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Best Books 2019: The Best of the Year

With the end of the year upon us, it’s time to talk about the best books of 2019.

Last year when I wrote my best books of 2018 post, I had only been a book blogger for a few months. Consequently, I had to rely heavily on reviews and bestseller lists to decide the best books of the year.

Let’s just say, I was determined not to do that again.

This year, I went all out in my drive to read every 2019 release I could get my hands on. I emailed publishers for Advance Review Copies, I joined NetGalley to get more Advance Review Copies and put library holds on every 2019 new release I could. In all, I read 74 different new releases!

Thus, I can definitively say that these are the best books of 2019.

While I still relied on reviews and bestseller lists for the books on my list, I feel much more confident in my selections.

Without further ado, here are my picks for the best books of 2019.

book cover Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane

Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane Just listen to this premise: NYPD cops Francis and Brian happen to move next door to each other in the suburbs. Though their children Kate and Peter become the best of friends, Francis and his wife have learned to keep their distance from Brian’s wife due to her precarious mental health. When tragedy strikes between the two families, Brian’s family moves away in shame. But when Kate and Peter fall in love, the two families must learn to confront the tragedy that ties them together. A story of love and forgiveness, Ask Again, Yes serves up the perfect blend of family drama and character study to win it all the stars and a place at the head of the best books of 2019.

A Woman is No Man by Etaf Rum Following three generations of Palestinian women, Rum’s powerful story highlights the dangers of beliefs that view women as inferior. The tale begins with the arranged marriage of Isra, forced to move to America where she knows no one. Years later, Isra’s daughter Deya herself faces an arranged marriage in Brooklyn. This raw account of the oppression of women in an extremely strict family is depressing and at the same time beautifully written. Certainly worth a read, and easily one of the best debut novels of the year.

The Girls at 17 Swann Street by Yara Zgheib Yara Zgheib hits the emotions hard in her debut novel. Professional dancer Anna Roux is plagued with uncertainties. In an attempt to take control, she starts controlling her eating and eventually weighs only 88 pounds. Admitted to a treatment facility for her anorexia, Anna meets other brave women fighting their own battles with eating disorders. Once you get past the formatting (short disjointed paragraphs and heavy use of italics indicating thoughts and dialogue), the raw emotion of the story draws you in as you see into Anna’s thoughts throughout her struggle with her disease. A great reminder of the power of mental illness and the awful toll anorexia takes on the body.

The Last Romantics by Tara Conklin When asked what inspired her famous work, The Love Poem, renowned poet Fiona Skinner tells the story of her family. After her father’s sudden death, Fiona’s mother goes into a deep depression for three years, basically leaving the young children to fend for themselves. The four Skinner siblings’ lives forever changed during this period which they refer to as “The Pause.” They emerge closer than ever, but that time changes each one of them, with consequences following them throughout the rest of their lives. A solid piece of literary fiction, I felt just missed the mark of being great, though The New York Times bestseller list seems to disagree.

The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren In this hit romantic comedy, the ever unlucky Olive seems to have finally stumbled into some good luck. At her twin sister’s wedding, all the guests end up with severe food poisoning, that is except for Olive and the best man Ethan. Since there’s an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii just waiting to be used, Olive decided to swallow her extreme dislike for Ethan and go with him. When they run into Olive’s future boss, Olive’s plan to avoid Ethan runs amok as she is forced to pretend they are newlyweds. An enemies-turned-lovers romance that Amazon, as well as much of the book world, has declared one of the best books of 2019.

book cover Normal People by Sally Rooney

Normal People by Sally Rooney Irish millennial Sally Rooney is back with certainly one of the most anticipated 2019 books among critics with her second novel in the new adult genre. Exploring the relationship between two people – Marianne, whose family has taught her she doesn’t deserve love, and Connell, who is too concerned with what other people think – Rooney gives an insightful look at the connection between two people, sometimes positive and sometimes negative. A solid entry into the new adult genre, it delivers plenty of food for thought. Be warned, the romance gets a tad graphic. Also, I spent a chunk of the book wanting to smack the characters in the back of the head for the choices they continued to make.

Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid Already snapped up by Reese Witherspoon’s company to become an Amazon miniseries, Daisy Jones and the Six is making waves this year. After her highly successful novel The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Taylor Jenkins Reid is back with an addictingly fun read about the rise and fall of a fictional 70s band. With sex, drugs, and plenty of drama, you’ll feel like you are watching a biopic on VH1 – but an extremely well-written one. Daisy Jones and the Six is my pick for the best book of the entire year.

The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo Eleven-year-old Ren is given one final task when his master dies: to find his master’s severed finger and return it, in the next 49 days, or his master’s soul will be doomed to wander the earth. From there, his story will mingle with that of dance hall girl Ji Lin who has found the finger, all while a tiger stalks the town. Mixing Chinese folklore and superstition with historical fiction, Choo brings the time to live in this beautifully written and imaginative story. You’ll feel completely swept away into the slight mysticism of the story, and I agree with Amazon that this is one of the best books of 2019.

The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes From the author of Me Before You, one of my top sob-worthy books, comes a new novel that will charm you. Set during the Great Depression, Englishwoman Alice Wright marries a handsome American and finds herself transplanted to rural Kentucky. To escape her unhappy home life with her withdrawn husband and overbearing father-in-law, Alice agrees to become a traveling librarian, riding around the countryside bringing books to residents. In her new job, she meets other fierce women and gains lasting friendships. Add in plenty of drama, love stories, corrupt businessmen, and even murder, and you have the perfect light historical fiction for anyone who wants a Hallmark Channel style novel to read.

Cilka’s Journey by Heather Morris In the sequel to her highly successful novel The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Heather Morris takes on another remarkable true story. After surviving Auschwitz, sixteen-year-old Cilka finds herself convicted for collaborating with the enemy. Consequently, she is sentenced to a Siberian gulag where the horrors start all over again. Yet, there she meets a doctor who helps her find a purpose in her suffering by caring for the injured of the camp. A tale of love and hope even in the most desperate circumstances, Cilka’s Journey is an inspiring fictional work based on a true story.

The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See On the island of Jeju just off the Korean peninsula lives a society where women are the breadwinners – sea divers risking untold hazards to provide for their families from the ocean. Among them are best friends Mi-Ja and Young-sook, two girls just entering their village’s diving collective. Telling the account of their lives from the Japanese occupation in the 1930s, through World War II and the tumultuous aftermath up to the present, Lisa See’s latest historical fiction novel is a beautifully written account. If you love reading historical fiction about different cultures, this is one of the best books of 2019 that you don’t want to miss.

The Gown by Jennifer Robson Jennifer Robson’s latest book release got rave reviews from almost all my blogger friends. In The Gown, Robson takes a peek behind the scenes at the women involved in making Queen Elizabeth’s famous wedding dress. I love historical fiction novels because I always have so much fun researching facts from fiction. If you are a fan of royal weddings, be sure to try out this one.

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topworldhistory · 5 years

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The Exorcist, The Conjuring and other horror classics were inspired by actual (although not always factual) stories.

How do you make a horror tale scarier? Just say it’s “based on a true story.” That’s a technique book publishers and movie producers have been using for decades, whether or not the supposedly “true story” adds up.

Some movies are inspired by what might be called “real hoaxes”—made-up stories that people have believed. Others draw inspiration from unexplained behavior or folklore. Read about how the story of a troubled teen inspired a movie about demon possession, how a series of hoaxes launched a major movie franchise and how centuries-old folklore about disease gave way to a classic Hollywood villain.

Nosferatu (1922)

Actor Max Schreck in the 1922 film Nosferatu.

The 1922 German film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror is basically an unauthorized knock-off of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula. The filmmakers couldn’t get permission from the late Stoker’s estate to adapt the book, so they made certain changes. Instead of Count Dracula, the main villain is Count Orlok.

Copyright drama aside, stories of undead beings feeding off the living have been around a lot longer than Stoker’s novel. The modern idea of vampires likely evolved from old European folk beliefs. Before people understood how diseases spread, vampirism may have been a way to explain deaths from the plague, tuberculosis and other unseen maladies that ravaged communities. Different regions had different ways of stopping vampires. In Romania, one remedy was to cut out the heart of a suspected vampire (i.e., a cadaver) and burn it to ashes.

Some have speculated Stoker’s Dracula was based on Vlad the Impaler, aka Vlad III Dracula, a 15th-century ruler of Wallachia in Romania. In Stoker’s research notes for Dracula, he recorded that “dracula” means “devil” in the Wallachian language. However, scholars suspect he appropriated the name without knowing very much about Vlad. In any case, there was already a lot of vampire fiction by then: Lord Byron’s epic poem The Giaour (1813), the penny dreadful Varney the Vampire (1847) and the lesbian vampire novel Carmilla (1872), to name a few.

The Exorcist (1973)

Linda Blair as Regan MacNeil in the 1973 film The Exorcist.

In August 1949, The Washington Post ran at least two stories about a 14-year-old boy’s exorcism in Maryland. In one, the newspaper reported, “the boy broke into a violent tantrum of screaming, cursing and voicing of Latin phrases—a language he had never studied.” The story inspired author William Peter Blatty’s 1971 novel The Exorcist, the basis for the 1973 film in which a young Linda Blair projectile-vomits pea soup.

In reality, the boy who inspired Blair’s character was probably troubled, not possessed. A Marylander named Mark Opsasnick who didn’t buy the story investigated it and published his findings in Strange Magazine in 1999. Opsasnick identified the boy in the story and interviewed people who’d known him (though he did not release the boy’s name), and concluded the boy likely had psychological problems and was mimicking the priest’s Latin.

In an interview with The Washington Post in 1999, Opsasnick acknowledged that although he was fascinated by his discovery, few other people would probably care. And indeed, when the Post reached out to a man who lived next door to the house where the exorcism had supposedly taken place, he replied, “I don't really care about that.”

The Amityville Horror (1979)

View of the home of Ronald DeFeo Jr where he shot and killed his parents, two sisters and two brothers on November 14, 1974.

On November 13, 1974, 23-year-old Ronald “Butch” DeFeo Jr. murdered his entire family in their sleep. One year later, the Lutz family purchased the house in Amityville, New York where the horror took place.

Parents George and Kathy Lutz then claimed they experienced shocking paranormal phenomena in the house: green slime oozing from the walls, a creature with red eyes and multiple family members levitating in their beds. The claims appeared in Jay Anson’s 1977 book The Amityville Horror, which inspired the 1979 movie of the same title, which inspired many more movies.

Butch DeFeo’s lawyer later admitted that he, George and Kathy had “created this horror story over many bottles of wine.” Even so, the tale raised the profile of Ed and Lorriane Warren, a couple who got involved with the Amityville story and helped promote it.

“They set themselves up as psychics and clairvoyants who investigate ghosts and hauntings,” says Benjamin Radford, deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine. “They would hear about stories either in the news or just sort of through the grapevine, and they would sort of introduce themselves into the story.” But more on them later.

The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988)

Bill Pullman in the 1988 film The Serpent and the Rainbow.

In 1985, a white American graduate student named Wade Davis published a book with an extremely long title: The Serpent and the Rainbow: A Harvard Scientist's Astonishing Journey into the Secret Societies of Haitian Voodoo, Zombies, and Magic.

In it, Davis claimed he’d discovered that secret Haitian societies used tetrodotoxin, a toxin found in puffer fish, to trick people into thinking they’d died and come back to life as zombies from Haitian folklore. Many other scientists denounced Davis’ claim as bunk, including tetrodotoxin expert C.Y. Kao, who called it “a carefully planned, premeditated case of scientific fraud.”

The story grabbed the attention of horror filmmaker Wes Craven, who adapted the book into the 1988 film The Serpent and the Rainbow starring Bill Pullman as a Harvard researcher based on Davis. Writing in a 1989 issue of Latin American Anthropology Review, anthropologist Robert Lawless seemed to consider this fitting, since the book already read “like the first draft for a Hollywood movie with Davis himself as an Indiana-Jones-type hero.”

The Haunting in Connecticut (2009)

American ghost hunters Lorraine and Ed Warren, 1980.

Remember Ed and Lorraine Warren, the ghost hunters from Amityville? A decade after Amityville, they became involved with the Snedeker family. Parents Allen and Carmen Snedeker claimed they’d experienced paranormal phenomena at the Connecticut house they rented in 1986. Most shockingly, both parents claimed demons had raped them.

“Part of the modus operandi of the Warrens was to solicit help in publicizing these stories,” Radford explains. The Warrens hired a horror novelist named Ray Garton to write a book about the Snedekers’ haunting, but Garton soon “realized that a lot of the information wasn’t making sense," Radford says.

Garton objected to his publisher’s decision to sell the 1992 book In a Dark Place: The Story of a True Haunting as non-fiction, and admitted the story wasn’t true. In 2009, a movie inspired by the Snedeker case called The Haunting in Connecticut came out. “I suspect the movie will begin with the words: ‘Based on a true story,’” Garton told Horror Bound magazine at the time. “Be warned: Just about anything that begins with any variation of this phrase is trying a little too hard to convince you of something that probably isn't true.”

The Conjuring (2013), et al.

Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson as Lorraine and Ed Warren in The Conjuring.

Ed and Lorriane Warren promoted so many hauntings during their decades-long careers that they became horror movie characters themselves. Actors Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga have portrayed the couple in The Conjuring (2013), The Conjuring 2 (2016), The Nun (2018) and Annabelle Comes Home (2019), and will appear again in The Conjuring 3 (2020).

The first Conjuring movie is about the Perron family, who claimed in the early 1970s that spirits were haunting their Rhode Island house. The film also references a previous Warren case about a supposedly haunted doll, which inspired the spin-off movies Annabelle (2014), Annabelle: Creation (2017) and Annabelle Comes Home. The second Conjuring opens with the Amityville haunting, then moves on to the Warrens’ involvement with the Enfield poltergeist outside London in the late ‘70s. This sequel also features a demon nun inspired by a spirit Lorraine claimed had haunted her home (this led to the spin-off The Nun).

“It’s not a bunch of fairy tales,” Ed Warren told Connecticut Magazine in the early 1970s. “Everyone has experienced one form of supernatural activity or another.”

The Conjuring 3 will likely focus on a 1981 manslaughter trial in which the defendant Arne Cheyenne Johnson claimed he was innocent because he was possessed by the devil at the time of the crime. The Warrens testified in Johnson’s defense, but the jury didn’t buy it, and returned a guilty verdict.

from Stories - HISTORY https://ift.tt/30HxpTD October 04, 2019 at 08:02PM

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