Moving to the US and Teaching Career at Smith College

On June 20, 1957, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes arrived in New York aboard the Queen Elizabeth, returning to America after a year in England. It was a moment of transition—Plath was stepping into married life in her home country, balancing the expectations of being both a wife and a poet. But her return was also deeply practical. She had secured a teaching position at Smith College, her alma mater, which gave her financial stability and a sense of professional purpose. Settling in Northampton, Massachusetts, Plath approached teaching with enthusiasm at first. She took pride in her carefully crafted lectures, eager to inspire young women as her own professors had once inspired her. But reality quickly set in. The workload was overwhelming, and the endless cycle of grading and lesson planning drained her creative energy. By the end of the year, she had written little and felt trapped in a routine that left no space for poetry. Outside the classroom, she was adjusting to married life with Hughes. Their love was intense, but they were still navigating the challenges of being two fiercely ambitious poets sharing the same space. Plath longed for the creative freedom she had in Cambridge, and the isolation of Northampton, far from major literary circles, weighed on her. By the end of 1957, Plath knew she couldn’t sustain the life she had built at Smith. The pressure to be both an inspiring teacher and a serious poet was suffocating. Something had to change. As the year ended, she made the decision to leave teaching behind and commit fully to her writing. It was a leap into uncertainty, but one that would define the next stage of her journey.