Nicholas Hughes, Son of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, Commits Suicide

Frieda Hughes, the daughter of famous poet Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, stunned millions when she announced Sunday that her younger brother, Nicholas Hughes, had committed suicide on March 16. The tragic announcement comes 46 years after Sylvia Plath's own suicide.

Hughes, 47, had been a marine biologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, but had recently left his job to set up a pottery studio at his home. He was unmarried and had no children. Frieda Hughes told The Times newspaper that Nicholas had hung himself at his home in Alaska and that he had been battling depression for a long time.

The event is sadly yet another tragic chapter in the lives of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes' children. Nicholas Hughes had been barely than a year old when his mother committed suicide in 1963. Literary critics have always pointed out with what care Plath took to save her children before she gassed herself. Before turning on the oven gas, Plath took especial pains to seal the rooms between herself and her children with wet towels and cloths and set out food for them.

Only six years later, Hughes' lover Assia Wevill killed herself and their four-year-old daughter Shura in almost the same way as Plath had. Suspecting Hughes of infidelity (she herself had been Hughes' lover during his marriage to Plath), Wevill gassed herself and her daughter at the age of 42.

Nicholas Hughes' battle with depression is unsurprising, given the history of his famous mother. Plath's life was riddled with depression and an unsuccessful suicide attempt. Her only novel, The Bell Jar, is somewhat autobiographical and details the mental breakdown of young Esther Greenwood while interning for a fashion magazine in New York.

Plath was also awarded a position as guest editor at Mademoiselle magazine in New York City. The job wasn't anything what Plath hoped it would be and like Esther, the experience sent her into a downward spiral. The Bell Jar was finally published in 1963. Sadly, she committed suicide only a month afterward.

It would be easy to say that Nicholas' suicide fit some sort of family trend or curse. But again, that would be too easy. Nicholas Hughes was a man in his mid-forties with his own life and his own work. He, like his mother, happened to suffer from depression, but that doesn't mean that he was doomed to eventually commit suicide because of it. The very thought is insulting to the millions of people who battle depression.

A family friend of the Hughes family said it best in an interview with CNN, "Nick wasn't just the baby son of Plath and Hughes and it would be wrong to think of him as some kind of inevitably tragic figure. He was. . .an adventurous marine biologist with a distinguished academic career behind him and a host of friends and achievements in his own right. That is the man who is mourned by those who knew him."

Carolyn Kellogg, Sylvia Plath's Son Nicholas Hughes Commits Suicide, Los Angeles Times

Peter Wilkinson, Tragic Poet Sylvia Plath's Son Kills Himself, CNN.com

Sylvia Plath, Poets.org

Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev, Written Out of History, The Guardian