Lady Lazarus

For my blog post about confessional poetry, I lightly talked about the theme of control by men and overcoming that dominance in Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus”. I wanted to explore this poem a little more, especially the parts which show control and the character’s prevail over control, than I got to in that post. If you haven’t read my post about confessional poetry, the most important things to know about Plath is that she was depressed, her father was a strict, authoritative parent, and her husband left her for another woman. 

“Lady Lazarus” is the title of the poem, and the footnote in our Anthology book tells us that Lazarus, a biblical figure, was raised from the dead by Jesus; this will come into play at the end of the poem. Right off the bat the poem begins with “I have done it again” (Plath 1). To me, this sound like a phrase victims say. I watch a lot of Law and Order: SVU and the victims on the show are constantly saying, “it was my fault”, which is rather similar to Plath’s opening line. She continues on later in the poem by describing her helplessness as, “A paperweight,/My face a featureless, fine/Jew linen” (7-9).

She uses several allusions to Jews, Nazis, and the Holocaust throughout this poem. She talks about being “bright as a Nazi lampshade” (4) and “A cake of soap,” (76); our Anthology gives us a footnote about the lampshade and soap--Nazi’s would sometimes use the victims’ skins to make lampshades and the ashes from the remained charred victims to make soap. Plath also uses such words as annihilate, grave, vanish, and dying which emit a feeling of helplessness and despair much like the Jews (and herself) felt at the time. She also expresses her hatred toward men with these lines: “So, so, Herr Doktor./So, Herr Enemy” (65-66), Herr God, Herr Lucifer” (79). The footnote says “Herr” means “Mr.” in German, so we get an understanding that she feels doctors (who were primarily men in those times) were controlling her (perhaps with her suicidal issues) and how they may think they have a god complex but she sees who they really are--Lucifer. However, there is a shift in the attitude of this poem.

Plath references Lazarus in the title of the poem, and here is where it comes to play. In lines 46-47, she tells us why she attempts suicide; “I do it so it feels like hell./I do it so it feels real”. Her actual, physical life is the one thing she has total control of. No one can prevent her from ending her life, which is why she feels it “Is an art, like everything else./I do it exceptionally well” (44-45). At the end, we get the symbol of a phoenix, which is a mythical bird which is incinerated and reborn from its own ashes; “Out of the ash/I rise with my red hair/And I eat men like air” (82-84). Unlike Lazarus, she states that she will rise on her own and without the help of anyone or any man. I read “eat men” like “fare men” in the way where she just copes with men like she does air; it’s difficult to be alive with depression as well as deal with men, but she gets by. I feel that for a Plath poem, this one is more hopeful than most turn out to be.