In conclusion, we must go forward. There is no going back — to "Daddy" or to childish ways. Maybe not even back to Hamlet-like equivocation or the American Dream — intellectual indulgences that we cannot afford in the modern atomic world. In this forward movement to positive personal and social goals, women must play a key role. But it remains to be seen whether the creative works of women will be more nurturing and life-oriented as befits their biological role, and whether Plath will be remembered as a woman who was torn by pessimistic, Nietzschean male philosophy, as a woman whose full female identity was never developed. In the long tradition from Sappho to Simone de Beauvoir and current liberated women artists, was the non-motivated destructiveness of Plath, turned by illness on herself, an aberration?
Finally, on the ethics of suicide, it must be noted that suicide is an act, a definite act with very final consequences. Therefore, this act must be looked at differently from some other issues of modern freedoms, or even ideas surrounding the right to die with dignity. Proper, timely death can be an affirmation of the life process. These are the distinctions that the nurturers, and all human beings, must make. If life cannot be easily right or wrong, black or white, it can be a process of thoughtful choices that emphasize the compassionate dignity which humans are capable of. Hopefully, then, the reader will have learned from Plath's art and her life, and thus, her tragedy can be other people's salvation.
