"Sylvia Plath is an interesting poetess whose tragic suicide was misinterpreted as romantic, by the college girl mentality" - Woody Allen in "Annie Hall"
Perhaps these same starry-eyed English majors have mistaken depression for something intense and sweet and feeling and Byronic--and not as something violent and obnoxious and bitchy and trying and exasperating.
Perhaps it is this and many other reasons that people don't realize that Sylvia Plath was a manic and depression is simply not a pretty thing.