Olive Higgins Prouty

Olive Higgins Prouty (10 January 1882 – 24 March 1974) was an American novelist and poet, best known for her 1922 novel Stella Dallas and her pioneering consideration of psychotherapy in her 1941 novel Now, Voyager.

Olive Higgins, who was born and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts, was a 1904 graduate of Smith College and married Louis Prouty in 1907, at which time the couple moved to Brookline, Massachusetts in 1908.

In 1894 Prouty was reported to have suffered from a nervous breakdown that lasted nearly two years according to the Clark University Archives and Special Collections. After the death of her daughter Olivia in 1923 Prouty suffered from another nervous breakdown in 1925.

Her poetry collection was published posthumously by Friends of the Goddard Library, Clark University, Worcester, MA as Between the Barnacles and Bayberries: and Other Poems in 1997 after it was released for publication by her children Richard and Jane. In 1961, Prouty wrote her memoirs but, as her public profile had diminished, could not find a publisher; she had them printed at her own expense.

Prouty is also known for her philanthropic works, and for her resulting association with the writer Sylvia Plath, whom she encountered as a result of endowing a Smith College scholarship for "promising young writers". She supported Plath financially in the wake of Plath's unsuccessful 1953 suicide attempt: Plath's husband, Ted Hughes, would later refer in Birthday Letters to how “Prouty was there, tender and buoyant moon”. Many, including Plath's mother Aurelia, have held the view that Plath employed her memories of Prouty as the basis of the character of "Philomena Guinea" in her 1963 novel, The Bell Jar, a figure who is described as supporting the protagonist because "at the peak of her career, she had been in an asylum as well", and who arguably represents a role model to be ultimately rejected by the protagonist.

...
Wikipedia