Lady Lazarus
By
Sylvia Plath
Childhood
Sylvia Plath was born in Boston in 1932, daughter of a German immigrant biology professor, and his Austrian-American wife.
At 8, Sylvia suffered her first great loss: her father died suddenly after surgery for complications of undiagnosed diabetes. The death of her father left her feel guilty, depressed and confused. It also left her family with financial problem. She did her first attempt to suicide at the age of ten by drowning, which she admitted later it wasn’t serious.
She grew up in Wellesley, in an extremely close relationship with her widowed mother Aurelia. She sent out many poems and stories which were rejected before she began to see them published in national periodicals in 1950.
Education
Plath was a star student. She received much praise for her works, but knowing that she was exceptional caused her to feel different from her peers at school. Her social life died as she secluded herself.
She attended Smith College on scholarship and won a guest editorship at Mademoiselle in New York City in the summer of 1953.
Later that summer, having learned that she had not been admitted to the Harvard summer writing program for which she’d applied, Sylvia attempted suicide and was treated for depression at McLean Hospital.
She returned to Smith the next spring, and graduated in 1955, with a Fulbright scholarship to study at Newnham College, Cambridge.
Marriage
She met Ted Hughes at a party given in Cambridge. They Married secretly on 1956 in June.
During the honeymoon, There was one alleged episode, Sylvia told a friend that one afternoon as they sat on a hill Ted was overcome by such rage that he started CHOKING her, and she resigned herself to die. Which led to increase her depression.
There is some mystery over her in September 1956 One likely story claims that having become pregnant, yet still believing she needed to keep the marriage secret, she had travelled to the States to have an abortion.
The couple lived briefly in the US after graduating from Cambridge, and Plath taught at Smith College. In 1959, the couple returned to England, where their first child, a daughter, was born. and also published her poetry collection, The Colossus. With the new responsibilities of caring for a new baby, she found little time for writing. With Ted spending most of his time at a nearby flat that he kept for seclusion as he wrote, she was pretty much left alone to carry the burden on her own. With her health being poor and the woes of depression, she miscarries their second child in 1961. It was in 1962 that their son Nicholas Farr was born. Her dreams of balancing family and her love for words fell apart when she found out her husband's affair. She filed for divorce. Feeling isolated, and struggling with the difficulties of trying to write and raise two small children.
Her Unstable personality
TWO features stand out in everything written by or about Sylvia that throws light on her personality.
FIRST, there was the emotional instability or her mood swings. Academic or professional success stimulated her to spiraling activity; even small failures plunged her into dejection. The same mercurial quality affected all her personal relationships.
Second, though as a rule over controlled and unspontaneous, at times she would impulsively expose herself to physical harm, gashing her legs ‘to see if I had the guts’, skiing recklessly and breaking a leg, driving her car off the road—actions unexplained by a hypo manic state or by use of alcohol or drugs.
Her Poetry
Plath's work is valuable for its stylistic accomplishments, its melding of comic and serious elements, its ribald fashioning of near and slant rhymes in a free-form structure, its terse voicing of themes that have too often been treated only with piety. It is also valuable for its ability to reach today's reader, because of its concern with the real problems of American culture. In this age of gender conflicts, broken families, and economic inequities, Plath's forthright language speaks loudly about the anger of being both betrayed and powerless .
Themes in Plath’s Poetry
Relationships: father, children, husband
Dreams
Confessions and Performance
Female Role in Society: the struggle to manage
womanhood, motherhood, marriage, and writing.
Loss and betrayal, dealing with depression.
Her style
The Form of her poetry is “autobiographic” Because she talks about her deepest feeling and she expresses herself without hiding behind a persona.
Her words are sharp, apt tools which brand her message on the brains and hearts of her readers. With each reading, she initiates them forever into the shrouded clan of her own mind.
Her Language is a mixture of slang and colloquial language, so it is easily understood.
Her tones are depressive, angry, and dark.• She uses shocking imagery to reflect her own suffering. She had ability to arrange reaction and manipulate images to create a deep experience within the reading of her work.
She is remarkable in using horrific events as metaphors for personal anguish.
AS Confessional poet :
She is considered a CONFESSIONAL poet, because of the intimate nature of her poetry and because of her relationships with confessional poets Anne SEXTON and Robert LOWELL.
Like them, Plath rejects the MODERNISM of Ezra POUND, T. S. ELIOT, and William Carlos WILLIAMS, which emphasizes the abstract and the universal. Instead Plath embraces the deeply personal. But she is not purely autobiographical either. In a 1960 BBC
interview she said: “
I think my poems immediately come out of the sensuous and emotional experiences I have, but . . . I believe that one should be able to control and manipulate experiences, even the most terrifying”.
Plath’s poetry transcends the term confessional through her attention to the craft of poetry and by her filtering of experience through the lens of her own stylized mythology.
The “I” in her poems is a persona, or fictional mask, rather than the true voice of the poet. It is a shell to protect an intense, highly sensitive individual who needed to be heard, but not seen too deeply.
Sylvia as a Feminist Writer
Women at that time started the Feminist Movement because they were very oppressed by men, they were treated as if they had no mind, object. The prevailing domestic ideology of the 1950s told women that their place was in the home caring for the family, and that they should find complete fulfillment in that role. So, women were only for taking care of their children and for being good wives, but they wanted to be more important in society. They wanted to be self- sufficient and to have their own life. During all of history we can see very good women writers, but never recognized their talent. The Feminist movement was a good thing to demonstrate the possibilities of women, that they can be as good as men. And to change the society’s perceptions of women.
Poets such as Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton satirized the constrictive roles forced upon women, thereby laying the groundwork for later feminist work.
Sylvia Plath became a good example of feminism because she wrote about her life, her experiences and of her husband. Through her poetry we can see that she was against the acts of her husband, and that she suffered because of his betrayal. When she died her husband published her poems, and everybody could know all about Sylvia’s concerns. Some women started to criticize Ted Hughes, thus we can talk about a feminist movement started Sylvia Plath’s poems. Plath is a literary symbol of the women’s right movement.
Sylvia Plath said: “ Being born a woman is my awful tragedy ”
Such a feeling of Plath is certainly an outcome of her frustration and suffering in a hostile world that belongs to men. In a male dominated society, woman is treated as an object.
She talks in her poems about the physical exploitation of women in the world. Plath finds women reduced to the status of a body in a world ruled by men.
Other important issues to Sylvia and other feminists include equality, ending discrimination, and bringing to light the frequency of domestic violence against women.
Some of Her Works
I. Journals:
Plath began keeping a diary at age 11, and kept journals until her suicide:
In 1980, The Journals of Sylvia Plath was published.
In 2000, was the publication of The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, after her death.
II. Poems:
The Colossus
It was her first book
Ariel
The impact of Ariel was dramatic, with its potentially autobiographical descriptions of mental illness in poems such as “Tulips", “Daddy" and “Lady Lazarus".
. III. Novels:
The Bell Jar
A semi-autobiographical novel. Details of her attempts at suicide are chronicled in this book.
IV. Children's books
The Bed Book (1976)
The It-Doesn't-Matter-Suit (1996)
Collected Children's Stories (2001)
Mrs. Cherry's Kitchen (2001)
Prizes
Glascock Prize, in 1955, with "Two Lovers And A Beachcomber by The Real Sea".
Pulitzer Prize, in 1982, for The Collected poems.
Sylvia Plath Among the Other Poets
Anne sexton:
Both writers were friends. The first meeting which established their friendship took place in Robert Lowell’s poetry class at Boston University. The brief but intense friendship, influenced the work of both poets.
Robert Lowell:
She attended an evening poetry class, which was given by Robert Lowell, whose confessional style influenced Sylvia’s poetry.
From Robert Lowell and Anne Sexton, Plath adopted the License of “private and taboo subjects”, such as their experiences of breakdowns and mental hospitals.
Lady Lazarus
I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it----
A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot
A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.
Peel off the napkin
0 my enemy.
Do I terrify?----
The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.
Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me
And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.
This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.
What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see
Them unwrap me hand and foot
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies
These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,
Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.
The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut
As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.
Dying
Is an art, like everything else,
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.
It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical
Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:
'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge
For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart----
It really goes.
And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood
Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.
I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby
That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.
Ash, ash ---
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there----
A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.
Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.
Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.
•
The poem in relation to Plath
"Lady Lazarus" conveys a message about her own life, obsessions, weaknesses, and feelings. In recording her previous suicide attempts, she makes comparisons that are not always obvious to decipher or to understand without the right background information. The poem serves as a metaphor that retains a morbid sensation through its description of the author’s psychological journey.
Title
The title “Lady Lazarus” has a Biblical illusion to the story of Lazarus. who was brought back to life by Jesus' miracle. In this poem,sylvia feminizes Lazarus, that it is shown as a lady, and this lady is an identification with the poet herself who felt "saved" too because all of her attempts to suicide failed. She is the main character of this poem, so in this story Lazarus is a lady, Lazarus is Sylvia Plath.
1
Sylvia starts saying that she has done it again, this means that she has attempted to suicide before, and this could be probably the second time . the poet here admits and confesses her personal experience of committing suicide by using the pronoun "I". Now she is 30, but she had an attempt each decade, the first time, at the age of ten, and the second one at her early twenties. " I manage it-----" in this line there is a sudden pause which indicates the poet is tentative. By using The word " manage", claims that she has a kind of power over her own fate, and that she is capable of controlling the whole situation.
2 - 3
She compares herself to a miracle that is walking because she wonders that she still alive although she was close to death many times. She identifies herself with Lazarus again. Then she set herself as a victim, comparing herself to the oppressed and imprisoned Jews by the Nazis, however her oppressors weren’t the Nazis, but the doctor who tried to save her and the people who were always taking care of her. She compares her skin to Nazi lampshade which is made by Jews' skin that Nazi burned Jews and used their skin to make things like lampshade.Then, she compares her burning foot to a paperweight to help the reader to imagine her heavy burning leg which makes walking difficult for her. After that, she describes her face as "featureless" and a piece of textile or cloth because it is burned and you can no longer recognize her.
4
She felt her life as the Holocaust, she was a victim of this torture of being saved again and again. She compared herself with a Jew oppressed and imprisoned by the Nazis, however her oppressors weren’t the Nazis, but the doctor "enemy" who tried to save her each time. Thus, she compares the doctors who are trying to save her life in hospital to the Nazi who tormented Jews in Holocaust. She asks her enemies (Nazis) to remove the cover that they used to put on those victims. " Do I terrify?-------", through the rhetorical question, she ironically wonders if she terrifies them because of her "featureless" face and burning body.
5
Sylvia suffers greatly, nearly as much as the Jews did in Holocaust. This is expressed through various representations of Nazis’ torment techniques and devices. One of which is starvation is causing the eye pits to show. In these lines, she describes some of the only recognizable features of one who has had their face badly burned. She said that all these features and even the foul breath " Will vanish in a day" to show us how easy it is for her to kill herself.
6
In this stanza Sylvia imagines herself dead, her flesh has been eaten by warms in her grave. Then she says " At home on me " that she will be back to life again, like what happened to Lazarus.
7
She says even after being back from death, she will come back to live and smile as she was before." I am only thirty." She is declaring he real age, which is an example of the confessional poem. She is mocking herself by saying that I am only thirty years old and I committed all these numbers of suicide. Then, she compares herself to a cat has nine times to die. Here is another shock-effect in the poem. People usually say that a cat has nine lives, nobody would say that a cat has " nine times to die". By insisting on death rather than on life, Sylvia further reinforces its thematic of death in the poem.
8
Sylvia is boasting about the fact that this is the 3rd time for her to attempt suicide.“Three” is capitalized because she has not done it yet. She wants to arouse people interest and wants them to enjoy the perfection of her third time. She thinks she is in a trash and doctors are her enemies. “To annihilate each decade”, it is suggested here that the act of committing suicide may now be no more than a ritual or game, periodically played, to tear oneself only to be reassembled, mended, and recalled to life once again by doctors, her enemies.
9
The suicide attempts of the speaker are followed by returns, through medical technology. That reestablishes contact with life as if a very fine, thin thread-like “filaments”, were trying her once again to life. That which ties the speaker, in a million ways, with the world." Filaments" is a Latin word used suddenly with the simple language. There is a circus imagery throughout the rest of the poem. The audience are spectators and shoves, they are interested in her story.
10
The circus imagery here continues. People crowded around her and want to know the cause of her death. They are interested in her naked psych rather than her naked body. “Gentleman , ladies”, is a phrase that used at circus, as if she going to present a magic show. She is using sarcasm and almost showing off as if she is going to present a magic show. She uses the “Gentleman” first to convey the supremacy of male over female and to show that men are the main cause of her suffering.
11 - 12
Plath acts as a guide at this particular point as she demonstrates her features: "These are my hands / My knees." She emphasizes the fact that she has been reduced to "skin and bone[s]," yet she reassures us that she is "the same, identical woman" in spite of her altered physical appearance; she has not changed. Then, as any good guide would do, she supplies a historical record of past events. She mentions the swimming incident that nearly cost her life when she was ten. This was the first time she skimmed death. It was purely accidental.
13 - 14
Then she moves to her second suicide attempt at twenty, which was intentional, when she tried to kill herself with sleeping pills. She had "rock shut // As a seashell" in the basement of her house. She was terribly well hidden. Her mother and brother found her only three days later, practically dead, with earthworms crawling over her.
In these two stanzas, Plath used vivid and graphic imagery.
First , she compares herself to a seashell that is hard on the outside and soft on the inside, and like a shell she is hard to open and to revive.
Then, she compares the worms that are struck on her body, to a pearl struck inside a sea shell.
15
This stanza is one of the famous lines of Sylvia's poetry, in which she gives general comment on the art of dying. The first line consists of one word "Dying" to place much emphasis on it.
Throughout these lines, Plath develops her "madwoman" persona. Extremely successful throughout her life, Sylvia believes that she can also die exceptionally well. She does not mean that she has literally died, but rather that she has already killed herself in a figurative sense. She considers death like an exploit of sorts, and she has sarcastic attitude toward it.
16
I do it so it feels like hell
Plath repeats the phrase "I do it" to convince the reader of the truthfulness of her experience. She clarifies that death is as painful as "hell“.
I do it so it feels real.
She wants to feel alive, "real" by killing herself, which is ironic since she sees her life only in her death.
I guess you could say I've a call.
Here, she identifies herself with Lazarus who has been called to life by Jesus. This allusion gives the poem since of holiness and universality.
17
In these following stanzas, Plath provides an insight on how easy she finds it is to commit suicide: "It’s easy enough to do it in a cell". In her case, you could nearly say it accomplishes itself on its own as Plath summons death upon herself so fervently. "cell" has a religious connotation because it is the place where priests imprison themselves to purify their souls. So death might be a way for Plath to purify her soul.
She imagined herself on a stage performing the act of dying in front of people.
18 - 19
Next, she describes the disappointment she feels when she realizes she is Like Lazarus comes back to life in a very strange broad day, To the same place. instead of welcoming her they were shocked, Shouting "miracle".
The crowd is in awe and entertained but completely indifferent to the fact that she is alive still. They're watching a magic trick being performed: 'A miracle!' They are amused by the fact that death nearly took her from them.
20
-She is mocking people who are happy and excited as if they are fool, even when they see her scars and realize what she has done.
-There is, also, a reference to the Nazi's violence mentioned before.
21
-People have to pay a lot of money to hear her "word", or "touch" her body, or even to see a drop of blood.
-There is, also, a reference to the Nazi's violence mentioned before.
22
-She addresses to the Doctor in German instead of in English, so it is clear the relation she does between Nazis and him.
-The Doctor has the same behaviour the Nazis had, he is a he is her enemy: he brought her back to life inorder to use her.
-Her use of Mr.(Herr) implicates the superiority of men, they are controlling women, just as what the Nazis treatment of the Jews is.
23
-The use of “I am” is more effective on the reader.
-She explains the reason of considering the doctors as enemies.
-She says" I am your gold baby", a metaphor to show how valuable she is to them, like gold.
-She wants to prove that she is treated as an object by men, as Jews are objects to the Nazis too.
24
-The piece of gold is melt to make use of it.
-An Allusion to the Holocaust where Jews are put in ovens and burned.
-This might be a hint for the way Sylvia chose to
commit suicide.
-Irony(the last line), there "concern" just for their own benefit.
25 -
She is warning those enemies by saying even if you burn me
you just find ash, you won't find any piece of me.
26
She compares these doctors to Nazi doctor who made" cake of soap" from the dead Jewish bodies. They also took their wedding rings and fillings after they burned them.
27
-She reminds us of the doctors who are acting as if they were gods, who resurrected Lady Lazarus, and also like the devil Lucifer, for committing an evil act.
-She does not want to be controlled by anyone whether it is man, god, or even Lucifer.
-She is against the supremacy of men in her society, therefore, she wants to take revenge on them, "beware"!.
28-She is insisting on taking revenge on men even after her death.
-During her life, she is unable to do anything concerning her wish because she is controlled by them.
-Thus, she wants to commit suicide and burn herself, from the remaining ashes of her body, a ghost will rise and carry out her wish.
-She alludes to an ancient myth by comparing herself to a Phoenix (a mythical bird that is a fire spirit with a colorful plumage and a tail of gold and scarlet ).
Language
First, the poem derives its dominant effects from the colloquial language and, the conversational opening ("I have done it again") to the clipped warnings of the ending ("Beware / Beware"), "Lady Lazarus" appears as the monologue of a woman speaking spontaneously out of her pain and psychic disintegration.
The Latinate terms ("annihilate," "filaments," "opus," "valuable") are introduced as sudden contrasts to the essentially simple language of the speaker.
The obsessive repetition of key words and phrases gives enormous power to the plain style used throughout.
Form
The poem's sentences are organized in a rigid structure that mimics the inflexible gender roles of her day. Just as a woman had to be passive and mindless to be a part of the social hierarchy, the poem's lines have to wrap around and twist themselves in order to fit the poem's structure. They are forced to conform with the three line per stanza form, to the point of being broken off mid-statement. These abrupt transitions give the poem a tense feel, as if the writer is stressed to the point of acquiring strict self-control, strict to the point of being self-destructive.
Pauses used-enjambment (‘soon the flesh/the grave cave at…’)
caesural pauses (‘Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman’)
end-stopped lines (‘And like the cat I have nine times to die.)
Images:
The biblical figure Lazarus
The Holocaust
Phoenix
Themes:
1Death and suicide
Depression.
women’s oppression.
Tone
The speaker’s tone is revealed through many different poetic aspects:
First, diction or word choice used throughout this poem depicts apart the meaning and stresses the tone.
Next, the images used to describe the speaker’s experiences with death shows the emotions and thoughts that go through the speaker’s mind concerning death. These events the speaker experiences give a vivid description, which reveal her attitude.
Lastly, the repetition and sounds throughout the poem encourage the importance of the poem.
Through diction, images, repetition and sounds depicts apart the poem in showing the true meaning and most essentially, the part of this poem that reveals her attitude towards death
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