Plath Profiles

Plath Profiles Essays Plath Profiles vol. 11 4 “I Never Will Need Shorthand” Sylvia Plath and Speedwriting by Catherine Rankovic In an aerogramme from London “Shorthand,” also called dated September 23, 1960, 27-year- “stenography,” denotes a written old poet and short-story writer Sylvia language—using symbols, which Plath asked her mother, Mrs. Aurelia was developed for professional Plath, to find among Plath’s note-taking for business purposes. In possessions back in Wellesley, the U.S., and in the writings of Sylvia Massachusetts, her yellow Plath, “shorthand” refers almost paperback speedwriting book, and always to Gregg shorthand—the mail it.1 An American living in most efficient of several competing London with her husband and infant, 20th-century shorthand systems. A Plath was competing for informal stenographer typically met with her temporary clerical jobs and finding boss and, using shorthand, captured them closed to applicants without his dictated words, verbatim, and in shorthand or another kind of rapid- handwriting, ideally kept pace with writing skill. In Britain, the most basic the normal speaking speed of about clerical title was not, as in the United 120 words per minute. Mastering States, “typist” or “secretary,” but Gregg shorthand requires six “shorthand typist,”2 spelling out the months to two years of study and skills required. practice, and this is as true now as it was a century ago when Gregg was new.3 1 The Letters of Sylvia Plath, vol. 2, p. 513. 3 “The Four Shorthand Pitfalls,” Shorthand and Typewriter News, vol. 2, 2 Cryer, P. (n.d.) Shorthand-Typing: A no. 2, February 1914, p. 30: “Make up Common Employment for Women in your mind that you cannot expect to 1950s Britain [Web log post]. Retrieved become much of a shorthand writer in September 9, 2016 from less than a year of hard work; the www.1900s.org.uk.; and Plath, S., letter chances are that it will be nearer to Aurelia Plath, January 27, 1961; eighteen months before you are ‘worth Letters, vol. 2, p. 571. your salt’.” Plath Profiles vol. 11 5 Over the 2000 years stenography has been known to exist, it had most Soon after the first mass entry of of the time been used by males; women into the U.S. business mainly for courtroom reporting or its workforce, most office jobs for equivalent. As such, it was females were clerical and most considered an accomplishment and clericals female, and that was the a manly art. Samuel Pepys and case in Plath’s time and now.6 In the Charles Dickens, for their own mid-20th century, even the most reasons, wrote in shorthand. highly educated women expected to President Abraham Lincoln’s two start their careers as clericals. Plath male secretaries took his dictation in wrote in her journal of June-July shorthand. Female stenographer- 1953, “When I apply for jobs after typists entered the full-time U.S. college, or after graduate school, I workforce in significant numbers will want to know typing and between 1870 and 1880. By 1890, shorthand. my bargaining power the business-office hierarchy was will be much better” (The Journals of stratified by gender into those who Sylvia Plath, 543; ellipsis in original). dictated and those who took dictation and typed it up; already Sylvia Plath resisted learning the percentage of stenographer- shorthand and in fact never learned typists who were female was 64 it. In The Bell Jar, Plath’s percent and typewriting and autobiographical novel set in the shorthand skills were devalued year 1953, Plath’s protagonist Esther proportionately.4 Stenography Greenwood, a college English major became aspirational not for males, like Plath, is repelled by her glimpse but for females. In a popular youth of Gregg shorthand symbols in one novel published in 1904, eight-year- of her mother’s teaching textbooks old Nan Bobbsey, a businessman’s daughter, declares she is going to 6 England, Kim and K. Boyer, “Women’s become a stenographer when she Work: The Feminization and Shifting grows up. Nan’s father has a female Meaning of Clerical Work.” Journal of 5 stenographer. Social History, Vol. 43, No. 2, pp. 307- 340; and Kurtz, Annalyn, “Why 4https://www.officemuseum.com/office_ Secretary Is Still the Top Job for gender.htm, table “US Stenographers Females.” CNN Business, January 31, and Typists, 1870-1930.” Retrieved 19 2013. November 2017. https://money.cnn.com/2013/01/31/ne ws/economy/secretary-women- 5 The Bobbsey Twins: Merry Days jobs/index.html?iid=HP_LN, retrieved Indoors and Out, p. 8. June 18, 2019. Web. Plath Profiles vol. 11 6 (The Bell Jar, 61). They remind her of Yet the job market finally forced the “hideous, cramped, scorpion- Sylvia Plath to acquire skill in lettered formulas” and something resembling shorthand: abbreviations, such as those in the speedwriting. periodic table, taught in her college physics and chemistry courses. Speedwriting is a form of rapid Esther explains, “What I couldn’t writing using the cursive Roman stand was this shrinking everything alphabet. Technically, then, it is into letters and numbers” (29). longhand rather than shorthand. But Gregg’s silent language of speedwriting could be learned in “scribbled little curlicues” was a weeks rather than months or years, ticket for ambitious young women and in a pinch could pass as into clerical jobs better paid than “shorthand” on the job. Learning those without it, or jobs more speedwriting wedged open one of compatible with their interests. the few doors that Plath found Esther cannot imagine herself in any closed to her. job using shorthand (100). Fig. 1. Speedwriting, in black; the identical words in Gregg shorthand in red. Plath Profiles vol. 11 7 While living with her husband Ted adult psychiatry.8 The job would Hughes in Boston in 1958—both of prove pivotal to her creative work. them beginning to try to write full- time—Plath for the first time wanted Why Plath Hated Shorthand a clerical job to “give [her] life a kind of external solidity and balance” it In The Bell Jar Plath, through her apparently did not have on its own protagonist, details her reasons for (Complete Letters, vol. 2, 266). resisting from all quarters pressure Unused to an unprecedented to learn shorthand. For aspiring amount of unstructured time, she writers Sylvia Plath and Esther agonized in her journal about feeling Greenwood, who narrates The Bell unable to write fiction. In her journal Jar, “shorthand” carried baggage on Sunday, September 14, Plath beyond being gendered, servile, resolved to follow a strict writing utterly foreign-looking and schedule starting the next day. It commended by their mothers—the dissolved in panic and creative real and the fictional—who both paralysis. She wrote that she had not taught shorthand professionally at a lived enough to have something to business college. Esther says her write about. “I don’t want a job until mother told her that “Nobody I am happy with writing—yet feel wanted a plain English major” unless desperate to get a job—to fill myself she knew shorthand (Bell Jar, 61). up with some external reality” (Journals, 420, 422). She wrote to Esther internalizes this pressure. By the Smith College vocational office comparison with business-college in September 1958, asking for help students who have learned and giving references, but received shorthand, Esther, a student at an no answer until she wrote again in elite women’s college and a April 1959.7 prizewinning writer with professional editorial experience, judges herself In the meantime, Plath went to an as unskilled and unprepared for the employment agency that, in job market she must face after October 1958, placed her in a graduation, in which bosses, almost temporary job in Massachusetts always male, literally dictate to General Hospital’s department of female clericals (Bell Jar, 62). 7 Sylvia Plath to Alice Norma Davis, letters of September 24, 1958 (Complete Letters vol. 2, 277) and April 28, 1959 (Complete Letters vol. 2, 315). 8 Journals, October 14, 1958, 424. Plath Profiles vol. 11 8 A taker of shorthand must also mentioned planned summer transcribe the boss’s dictation and shorthand lessons in a letter to her polish it using exacting language mother dated April 24, 1953 (Letters protocols and editorial skills, then vol. 1, 596); her tone is light. Plath format and type the document to spends June in New York City perfection. Only perfection would working in her dream job, returning do. Mid-century employers seeking home disillusioned and depressed. clericals, in want-ad columns labeled That and a disappointment related “Women,” asked for quantifiable to her writing has her imagining a skills such as typewriting and future so diminished that learning shorthand, but tended to gloss shorthand that summer is a must, skilled language labor as “attention something to cling to (Journals, to detail,” and allied with other “soft Appendix 5, pp. 543-546). skills” such as congeniality or According to Mrs. Plath, Sylvia after neatness: traits desirable in a clerical four lessons showed no aptitude for worker yet not worth recognizing or shorthand and was only more deeply compensating. When the boss depressed when they agreed to give accepted and signed the finished up (Letters Home, 124). Mrs. document, he was claiming his Greenwood talks her depressed clerical’s language skills as his own. daughter into learning shorthand starting that same evening, the same The prospect of learning shorthand day Esther tried and failed to start threatens Esther more than most writing a novel (The Bell Jar, 99). because pressure to accept female- gendered para-literary jobs feels to Esther Greenwood cuts short her her like pressure to surrender one and only shorthand lesson, whatever authorial agency she has pleading a headache, and goes to and prepare for an amanuensis role.

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