Who killed Sylvia Plath?

I am re-reading Birthday Letters, Ted Hughes' gripping, emotional, grief-ridden poems to his dead wife, Sylvia Plath.

I am a big fan of both Hughes and Plath, but I think Ted Hughes has often been unfairly and unyieldingly denounced by fans of Sylvia Plath for being (at the very least, as they see it) emotionally abusive towards Plath and perhaps physically abusive also.

The case against Ted Hughes as a tyrant & a monster is based on Plath's own writing, including her journals; the suicide of Hughes' subsequent lover, Assia Weevil, who killed herself and her daughter seven years after Plath's suicide, and finally on Ted Hughes' behaviour at the time of Plath's suicide.
He left Plath alone after discovering her plan to kill herself, and she went ahead with that awful plan. Two days after her death, Hughes had installed Assia Weevil in Sylvia Plath's apartment, sleeping in her bed.
Hughes was also, apparently, very demanding, and sexually violent. ("You know, in bed, he smells like a butcher.")

However, there are two sides to every story. In Birthday Letters, Sylvia Plath comes across as, at best, a very sick person. At worst, malicious and obtuse. I've read her journals, and I can't say I'd fancy spending too long in her presence. Assia Weevil was also a very demanding person, and both women's suicides can only be explained by their mental illness.

What do you guys think? Has Ted Hughes been unfairly vilified?

Harry Angstrom

Hughes was a bit of a shit. Plath was too solipsistic for her own good. Neither of them were particularly pleasant people but that doesn't necessarily negate the quality of their art.
I mean, Philip Larkin wasn't a very pleasant character either but I'd still want to go for a pint with him. Sylvia can come too, but Hughes can feck off.

I don't know about that. Seamus Heaney, the gentlest gentleman in Irish history, and about whom nobody seems to have a bad word, was a great friend and collaborator of Hughes.

Crow can't have been all that sinister if he was best mates with the bullfrog.