Sylvia Plath was born on October 27, 1932. She was born into a world in which the man was dominant. Her father who was a scientist and beekeeper passed away when she was eight years old. She wrote her first poem at the age of ten and continued to write for many years. Her first attempt at suicide was at the age of twenty and she was hospitalized. She met and fell in love with a man by the name of Ted Hughes who was also a poet. They had two children together, but eventually separated. Ted was having an affair with a woman that Sylvia knew. Perhaps the previous death of her father, her struggle for power as a woman in her society, several publishers’ lack of interest in her early poetry, and the affair in which her husband was associated with, were all factors that led her to be depressed. She committed suicide at the age of thirty, on February 11, 1963, by means of inhaling gas fumes from her stove. Most of her works were published after her death and she won a Pulitzer prize around twenty years after she died.
Sylvia lived in a period which was a Patriarchal society. Women of her time were rarely known for many accomplishments. In her case, it was difficult for Sylvia to get her poetry published, while she was living. Many critics believe that the majority, if not all, of her poetry circulates around the idea of death and her suicide attempts. However, it is also believed that much of her writing incorporates several other themes such as her feelings toward a society that was male dominated and the strong feelings of love that she had for her family.
The title of her poem, itself, is an allusion to the bible. The biblical character, known as Lazarus, was a man whom Jesus resurrected from the dead.
Now when He had said these things, He cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come forth’…and he who had died came out bound hand and foot with grave clothes, and his face was wrapped with a cloth…” (John 11:43-11:44.)
She compares herself to Lazarus, giving the impression that her poem is about rebirth. By using the title, ‘Lady Lazarus’, she firmly suggests that her poem is from female’s perception, who faces death and rebirth. She also makes a reference to Lazarus in line 17, by mentioning a grave cave, similar to the tomb in which Lazarus was buried in and resurrected from.
Throughout the poem, Sylvia also alludes to the life of a Jew in a Nazi concentration camp. The simile and metaphor “my skin bright as a Nazi lampshade…My face a featureless, fine Jew linen” is an example of the history of Nazis creating lampshades from the skin of a Jew. (Plath lines 5-9). An extended metaphor that also gives an example of Jew reference is “A cake of soap, a wedding ring, a gold filling. (Plath lines 76-78). These are all personal items that were confiscated while the Jews were in the concentration camps. She may have viewed her life as a concentration camp while in the hospital because the doctors had control over her every move. She was also dominated throughout her life by the male population, who forced her “imprisoned” role upon her. Sylvia Plath once said that in this poem, “The speaker is a woman who has the great and terrible gift of being reborn. The only trouble is, she has to die first. She is the Phoenix, the libertarian spirit, what you will. She is also just a good, plain resourceful woman.” (Bassnett 113).
Her poem is spoken in first person, with an egotistical and bold, angry tone, to an audience, which possibly consists of the doctors who treated Sylvia while she was in the hospital. In terms of her suicidal attempts, line 22, states that this is her third attempt. She also uses imagery to describe her near death experience at the age of ten in lines 35-36 and her second attempt in which, they had to “pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.” (Plath line 42). As far as doctors are concerned, she taunts them by saying, “there is a charge for the eyeing my scars…and there is a charge, a very large charge (assonance), for a word or a touch…So, Herr Docktor, So, Herrr enemy. I am your opus, I am your valuable…” (Plath lines 58-68.) The doctors are seen as enemies as they make her feel as though she is in a freak show, and they are her audience. They bring her back to life, after each attempt “to the same place, the same face, the same brute amused shout.” (Plath 54-55). “Lady Lazarus enjoys baring her body and soul; and the audience won’t avert its gaze until the show is over and they have seen it all. The more grotesque the spectacle, the better the effect and the bigger the ‘charge’ for everyone.” (Bundtzen 31). Sylvia describes herself as a type of a saint-like person. Lines 27-30, “crowd shoves in to see/ them unwrap me hand and foot—The big strip tease.” is similar to the act of Christ being crucified. She uses apostrophe in several instances throughout the poem with words such as “my enemy” (Plath line 11), “them” (Plath line 28), “they” (Plath line 41), “Herr Doktor” and “Herr enemy” (Plath lines 65-66), “your” and “you” (Plath lines 67 & 68). The use of these words is to remind us that she is talking directly to the “Nazi Doctors”.
Plath views herself as a very powerful woman and illustrates this throughout her poem. In Voices and Visions, a special documentary on the life of Sylvia Plath, A. Alvarez states that in this particular poem, Plath was saying, “You think you got me, you haven’t got me. It was a declaration of war. She wasn’t a kind of passive victim in any conceivable way.” One reason that Sylvia believed she was powerful was the fact that she felt she had cheated death. She “toyed” with death a few times and always returned to the living. She seemed fascinated with the idea of dying, but not dying completely (attempting suicide, but surviving). It was like a rush of adrenaline for her. “Dying/ is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well.” (Plath 43-45). She laughs in the face of death, as well as in the faces of God and Lucifer by saying, “Herr God, Herr Lucifer, Beware Beware.” (Plath lines 79-81). She felt she could resurrect herself, without their assistance. She viewed herself as the Phoenix, which was a mythological bird that could resurrect itself from death, through ashes. She alludes to the Phoenix in her last stanza, “Out of the ash/ I rise with my red hair/ and I eat men like air.” (Plath lines 82-84). Her imagery of the red hair represents the red feathers of the Phoenix. Eating “men like air” is a metaphor for her one day being able to come back and over power the men in her life.
The rhythm of her poem is written in a total of twenty-eight tercets. It adds a rhythmic flow to her poem. It rhymes in various locations, but with no set pattern. Anaphora exists in lines 45-47, “I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real” and in lines 49-50, “Its easy enough to do it in a cell. Its easy enough to do it and stay put.” The repetition of the phrases “I do it” and “Its easy enough to do it” are useful in describing Sylvia’s attitude toward death. She felt although she had little control over her life, she had total control over her death.
In summation, although Plath used several references to death within her poetry, it does not mean that she wanted to be dead at that precise period in her life. She simply was inspired by everything that she experienced throughout her short life, from her father’s occupation, her father’s death, her mother, her children, and her life before and after her husband’s affair. Even though her archaic poetry was not seen as very significant during the time that she was living, today she is well known for her unique style, diction, very vivid imagery and other figurative language. She has become a sort of idol for feminists everywhere and her poetry will never be forgotten.
Works Cited
Bassinett, Susan. Sylvia Plath: An Introduction to the Poetry. 2nd ed. New York: Macmillan, 2005.
Bundtzen, Lynda K. Plath’s Incantations: Women and the Creative Process. Michigan: U of Michigan, 1988.
Voices and Visions: Sylvia Plath. Dir Lawrence Pitkethly. NY Center for Visual History Inc, 1988.
