Behind the books - Writers.

[oureternity]

My childhood is semi-saved, I guess ...

[Carma]

well, thats semi-good news!

so, back to writers..
any other juicy stories?

[Isa]

What about Ted Hughes? His first wife Sylvia Plath and his lover Assia Wevill both committed suicide the same way. Wevill also killed her and Hughes's daughter. You would think that would be something horrible to live with and that he might mend his ways and yet he continued cheating on his second wife basically until the day he died...

[oureternity]

His second wife, Carol Orchard was either a moron, or has intended to stay with him out of personal interests. Or maybe it was just convenient for her? I always wondered about her specifically..

[Carma]

maybe his second wife didn't wanna know about him cheating..?
How could you kill yourself and your own kid!? you'd have to be very depressed... I think..

[oureternity]

Yeah that's kinda creepy, why would she kill the poor kid?

She did know about his cheating (as far as I remember) I doubt she loved him.. I'm in no position to judge eitherway..

[sagedautumn]

i wonder why charges were never pressed. I know that in her diaries Hughes burned a diary that documented the days leading up to her death. Also some things were blacked out by Hughes which made him even more suspicious

[oureternity]

It is weird, but I guess they couldn't know, and he wasn't involved with their actual death.. so I'm not sure it was illegal, it was her decision to commit a suicide.

[Carma]

so that leads us to that very interesting question I had last year.. could you consider suicide as murder, or any of those other legal terms..

is it certain that he wasn't involved with their deaths..?

[oureternity]

Not at all, actually the akward thing is that BOTH women killed themselves the same way, which leads to your question. And suicide isn't really a murder.. unless you don't consider the person who commits the suicide a murderer of himself, but in that case I think that if someone led to a suicide of a certain person he is in a way responsible, but not a murderer, I guess.

[Michelle]

If you define murder as the intentional taking of someone's life, then you could say that someone who kills herself is guilty of murder. At common law in the US (and England), I think that suicide was a crime and some states here still have it as a crime in the books. But for obvious reasons, charges aren't pressed. And for an unsuccessful suicide, I think we are more worried about getting psychiatric help than pressing charges. Making it a crime isn't really a good deterrent since you expect to be dead anyway. I don't think you would be able to convict someone else (like the husband) because he drove her to suicide. That's my semi-knowledgeable answer.

[Isa]

I don't think he could be held responsible - after all, a lot of husbands cheat (unfortunately) and not all wives end up committing suicide. But I think he should still have been held accountable in the eyes of society, and yet he was made poet laureate in 1984, after the two suicides had occurred...