Book Review: "Three Martini Afternoons at the Ritz" by Gail Crowther

Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton are two female poets who practically changed the face of 20th century poetry. Many, many things have been written about the two poets throughout the years that range from their broken marriages to their fights with depression, their years of higher education and all the way down to their methods of ending their own lives. It is clear that we can draw parallels between the two writers and we can also see stark differences in their lives - such as Sylvia Plath moving to England whereas, Anne Sexton remained in America. But the one thing that I think I learned most about the two women was how their lives were marred by other people. I related to that and I think that this book really showed me that I am not alone when it comes to struggling with my own close relations. It is something that these two women not only struggled with, but in the end, it may have actually had a hand in both of their deaths. A brilliant book on two amazing women of literature, “Three Martini Afternoons at the Ritz” is a biography that you will not want to miss this year.

Starting with an introduction that explains the author’s own fascination with these women, this book seeks not just to tell us their stories from start to finish, but categorise them by their similarities and explore in detail, their writings in accordance with that. There was a time when Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath were in the same seminar class on writing and this book definitely explains the friendship and rivalry between them. The way in which they were close and yet, even though they were similar they were so different in their identities. Whilst Sylvia Plath’s mother was an overbearing and harsh character, Anne Sexton’s father seemed to not even acknowledge her existence. Where Sylvia Plath was hooked on pills to help her sleep, Anne Sexton was an alcohol who burst into fits of rage. Where Sylvia Plath’s marriage was broken by an abusive and cheating husband, Anne Sexton’s marriage was marred by faults on both sides. Be that as it may, the author explains that both of them eloped with their lovers, both of them came from households which were especially difficult even for the standard of the 1940s and the 1950s and both of them were well-educated in writing to some degree. Splitting the book into chapters entitled “marriage”, “mental illness” and eventually “suicide” definitely helped when drawing the lines of similarities and differences not only in their lives but also in their writings.

The book is written beautifully and holds as an elegy to these two women who, though writers in their own right, had been subjected to incredibly sexist standards even after they had died. The author explains that even in today’s world, mental health writing by females is not taken as seriously as that done by males. The author gives the example of Susanna Kaysen and David Foster Wallace. Where Kaysen’s book is known as a novel about ‘female hysteria’, David Foster Wallace’s novels are known as ‘intellectual novels about mental health’. The sexist double standard also shows that novels by females are rarely touched as often as novels by males and this is something that both Plath and Sexton were pushing against at a time where Sylvia Plath was known as ‘Ted Hughes’s wife’ (whereas, I would argue that today she is in fact, more famous than he is).

To conclude, comparing Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton’s time and writings to our own time has definitely made us realise that though in progress of justice we may have come far, we have not come far in our ideals when it comes to female writing. Still seen as shocking today, “The Bell Jar” and “Mercies” are pinnacles of female literature.