The Legend of the Lady Lazarus
By Manasvi K,
SY BSc. Economics (2023-27)
Estimated Reading Time ~ 2 mins
Sylvia Plath didn’t just write poetry; she bled onto the pages. She looked at the world with a lens of ingenuity and artfulness. Born on October 27, 1932, she had a gift to transfigure everyday phrases and objects into the subjects of her poetry. She writes, “I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked.” Plath imbues metaphors into everyday objects, turning them from colorless articles to vivid ones, breaking down complex human emotions in the form of the simplest aspects of daily life.
Plath’s first poem was published in The Boston Traveler, simply titled ‘Poem’, where she penned her thoughts on hot summer nights. Plath mentions that since then she has been ‘a bit of a professional’. Sylvia Plath is lauded as a feminist icon, conveying womanly experiences in a deeply patriarchal age. Her poetry paved the way for women to write about their own meaningful experiences as a reflection of her writing, resonating with many. However, Plath’s posthumous fame juxtaposed her tragic life, filled with isolation. She was diagnosed with clinical depression at the age of 20. Troubled relations with her mother, infidelity by her husband, and her father’s premature death became an avalanche of tribulations for the young Sylvia, who explored the latter experience (with her father) in the poem ‘Daddy’. She writes, “I have always been scared of you, with your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.” and “Daddy, I have had to kill you./ You died before I had time.”. She speaks of her difficult relationship with her German father, comparing him to a Nazi and herself as a Jew. She speaks of her stifling experience as a young girl in her house. Undoubtedly, Plath’s most notable and widely-known poem is ‘Lady Lazarus’, published in her posthumous collection of poems called ‘Ariel’. She speaks of death and her feelings about being brought back from her failed suicide attempt, with lines like, “The second time I meant/To last it out and not come back at all.” and “And I a smiling woman./I am only thirty/And like the cat I have nine times to die.” Plath illustrates feminine rage in the most raw and shrewd form, with lines like, “Out of the ash/I rise with my red hair/And I eat men like air.”
Plath often uses code mixing in her poetry, dropping in words of German—a by-product of her German lineage.
Plath’s only written novel is ‘The Bell Jar’, published on 14th January 1963, following the narrator-protagonist Esther Greenwood and her experiences as a guest editor after being awarded an internship at the fictional Ladies’ Day magazine, paralleling Plath’s own experience as an intern at the Mademoiselle Magazine. She explores Esther’s emotions, where excitement and zeal are replaced with anxiety and perplexity. Esther battles with depression after being rejected from a course she wanted to attend. Esther believes her identity is purely made up of being a scholar and struggles to find meaning in her life. The Bell Jar explores themes of suicide, depression, and the ambition of women in an otherwise male-dominated society. It is famously known for criticizing 1950s social politics. The Bell Jar depicts Esther’s suffocation with her limited roles as a woman and her fears about her future.
Sylvia Plath died by suicide, aged 30. She passed a month after the publication of ‘The Bell Jar.’ One is reminded of her words from ‘Lady Lazarus’: “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.”