Lady Lazarus is an autobiography written by Sylvia Plath. She uses clever words to reveal her innermost feelings and how she views her life.
Broe says in Protean Poetic: “Plath said that her later poems were spoken to herself. I don’t know where the lucidity came from. But I am sure that whatever clarity they had, it was because I spoke them out loud.” Her attempts at suicide and her writings to herself were all forms of therapy. Sylvia Plath believed that men were at the root all evil. Her writings and life reflect this.
Sylvia Plath’s parents, Otto Plath und Aurelia Schuber, were born in Boston on 1932. Her parents, who were both German-born and Boston University teachers, raised her in Boston. Linda Wagner Martin says that in Literary Lives Sylvia Plath she was angry about the male gender as early as toddler age, because her father preferred Warren to her. She was unable to love the other sex from a young age. She was raised by a mother who was very disciplined and whose father was her focus. Plath could have become envious over the power men held over women. This taunted Plath throughout her entire life.
Plath suffered from clinical depression since a very young age. She struggled to survive each year, until she finally committed suicide. Plath’s Lady Lazarus depicts the life she lived and her suicidal obsessive thoughts. In Daddy Plath describes her anger towards men as a result of her father leaving her after he died. Plath is convinced that her father’s death stopped him from loving her, and so she wrote in Daddy Daddy./You died too soon. She became what and who she is because of her father (2.6-7). Plath blames the father of her male chauvinism and refusal to accept the world as it is.
Lady Lazarus reflects Plath’s attempts at suicide. Lazarus, a biblical allusion that was raised from the dead, is a poem by Plath. Plath was convinced that she had been reborn by death. Broe claims that Plath uses a bizarre mixture of contradictory material: the Lazarus narrative from the Bible combined with the Nazis’ extermination. Plath combines her religious side with her obsession and knowledge of the Holocaust. Her German father had encouraged her to become familiar with the Nazi camps. Plath’s poem explains that in the New Testament and the Lazarus story, Jesus asked him to come out from the grave or tomb cave(6.18). Lazarus was raised from the dead by an amazing miracle. (John 11:38). Plath refers to this resurrection throughout the poem, including The Peanut-Crunching Crowd/Shoves Into See. The poem includes lines such as Amused shout:/A miracle! The miracle witnessed by everyone is mentioned in 18:54-55.
The poet makes suggestions in each stanza, such as the title Lazarus being a male, which leads us to believe that the author is a feminist. Broe tells Plath that dying is the most defeating ritual of femininity(176). She wants men to understand how she can’t be destroyed. She wants males to understand that although they can bring Plath close to dying, she will rise again. Plath reveals the horrors of Nazis’ (men) treatment in Bright As a Nazi Lampshade(2.5). She refers herself as a valuable opus. When she writes, Do not underestimate my great concern. (24.72), she is torturing the doctors in their arms. She thinks that doctors do not care about her well-being, and are simply showing their power by reviving her.
In her final stanza she warns God and Lucifer that her presence is dangerous and she has a message, perhaps not right now, or at this time, when she’s making her third suicide attempt, but at another time. Plath enjoys taunting men in her poetry, for whatever reason. The warning of Lady Lazarus relates to Plaths reputation after her death. She says that she wants to live an exciting life and does not want it to feel ordinary. Plath is unable to cope with her routine, which contributes to her depression.
Sylvia Plath has a prisoner in her, and to express that she uses images from Nazi concentration camps. She also uses the suffering of Jews. In her later poetry, Plath expressed her depression and found it therapeutic. Plath had a daily struggle to just do what people did naturally. She was accused of being weak by the other sex. Ironically, she also committed suicide because she felt this way.
Author
