In Search of the Symbolic Truth about Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath in Kate Moses’s Wintering and Susan Schaeffer’s Poison

Attaining the status of a recognized genre of fiction via postmodernism with its immanent polyphony and deconstructivist possibilities, biofiction in the last two decades of the 20th century eventually became a neat blend of biographical fact and literary fiction with a hybrid aesthetic which opened new perspectives for both enquiries into and interpretations of this kind of fiction in the 21st century. While biographies are still studied and used as references to historical figures, recent criticism has also considered some of the biographical novels as relevant sources about their fascinating lives. With the unwaning interest in the “star-crossed” lives of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath and the enormous amount of critical material about them in the form of numerous biographies, monographs, articles, and films, at least five well-known novels have tried to shed light on their tumultuous relationship and marriage culminating with the intention to start divorce proceedings and Plath’s suicide. This paper will explore empathy, endurance, authenticity and readability in two of them – Kate Moses’s Wintering (2003) and Susan Schaeffer’s Poison (2006) while making a commentary on the ever-elusive symbolic truth about the two poets that both novels attempt to illuminate.