Sylvia Plath is an American poet whose most famous works harshly express a sense of self-destruction and alienation intertwined with her personal experiences and, particularly, with the situation surrounding the status of American women in the middle of the 20th century. She wrote “Lady Lazarus” in 1962 in a burst of energy and creativity during the months prior to her death by suicide in 1963 (Editors 4). The poem’s magnitude of metaphors and symbolism does an excellent job of reflecting the poet’s state of mind.
“Lady Lazarus” resembles the biblical story of Lazarus – the person whom Jesus famously resurrected. This poem’s female speaker dies multiple times and is not always happily resurrected. Each revival is compared to a circus performance for a cheering, “peanut-crunching crowd” that longs for a glimpse of her “scars” (Plath 26, 58). The speaker ultimately prophecizes that she will rise one day from the ashes and devour “men like air” (Plath 84). The dark poem provides a glimpse into a suicidal mind, insight into the woman’s fear of living in a patriarchal world, and a critique of the fascination with suffering prevalent in society.
I believe Plath uses extended metaphors of dying and being resurrected to express her own internal suffering. Through the poem’s speaker, she compares herself to Lazarus by telling the readers that she has already died several times. Moreover, she is, in fact, dead at the beginning of the poem. However, with the help of external forces, she is brought back to life over and over again. Lazarus’s resurrection was a joyful event, which makes one assume that all such resurrections should be considered happy. Nevertheless, the poem’s speaker subverts that expectation: she genuinely wants to die. Consequently, the efforts of people who want to save her – doctors, loved ones, or whoever else – seem to the speaker like selfish acts of control against her will.
Apart from that, “Lady Lazarus” is told from a woman’s perspective in a male-dominated society. The speaker repeatedly blames her suffering on the men supposedly oppressing her. The poem implies that it is the mentioned men who are the ones bringing the speaker back to life, which illustrates how little autonomy women can hope for in such a patriarchal world. In this context, the poem’s metaphors of death and resurrection showcase how society seeks to control women’s lives and bodies. Ironically, the only way to regain control over the speaker’s life is to end it abruptly. This implication exacerbates the speaker’s agony in light of her inability to die.
Finally, the poem is highly critical of a society that sees other people’s pain for delightful entertainment. Simultaneously, it suggests that the speaker actually participates in this suffering display. The speaker sardonically pronounces that “dying is an art, like everything else” (Plath 44). Thus, she repeatedly presents personal suffering as a performance for an audience eager to watch it. Plath’s writing has often been intensely autobiographical, which makes “Lady Lazarus” an accurate reflection of her conflicted feelings about sublimating her pain into poetry.
Overall, the poem “Lady Lazarus” is far from what one can call a simple relaxing reading. It is filled with dark, grim thoughts and feelings of a person that loathes specific societal features to the extent that she is no longer willing to be a part of it. The contrast between how negatively Plath perceives and expresses matters that are usually associated with positivity further extends the feeling of alienation and loneliness. I can only hope that in her final decision, she was finally able to find the peace she so desperately craved for.
Work Cited
Plath, Sylvia. “Lady Lazarus.” Poetry Foundation.
The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica (Editors). “Sylvia Plath.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 2022.