Ultimately, Lady Lazarus uses her status as a failed suicide as a source of power, not disempowerment. The haunting words of the end of the tale that she is a woman who eats men like air are meant to underline the fact that despite the fact that the doctors feel that they are the source of her coming to life again and again, there is a strength of spirit within her, a kind of devouring frenzy that is frightening and cannot be contained. "Herr God, Herr Lucifer" are all one to Lady Lazarus and her repeated call of "Beware, Beware: echoes Coleridge's poem "Kubla Khan" (79-81). Lady Lazarus is not a poet herself, but a performer, and through the use of such analogies and sharp shifts in language throughout poem Plath makes it clear that Lady Lazarus is a poetic creation. Lady Lazarus speaks like a barker, like a religious woman, like a doctor, like a 19th century poet. By stressing the ironic, 'put-on' aspect of this poetic creation, Plath distances herself from Lady Lazarus. Plath stresses the 'crafted' quality of the poem to indicate that she is more than a suicide, despite the depression...
Her art is not dying alone -- she creates
women like Lady Lazarus and destroys men with mocking prose like the doctors.
Works Cited
Aird, Eileen M. Sylvia Plath: Her Life and Work. Copyright 1973. Excerpted at http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/plath/lazarus.htm
Beam, Alex. "The
death, and rebirth, of Sylvia Plath." Boston Globe. September 4, 2003.
[July 6, 2011]
http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2003/09/04/the_death_and_rebirth_of_sylvia_plath/
"Sylvia Plath." The Academy of American Poets. [July 6, 2011].
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/11
Dickie, Margaret. Sylvia Plath and
Ted Hughes. 1979. Excerpted at http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/plath/lazarus.htm
Plath, Sylvia. "Lady Lazarus." American
Poems. [July 6, 2011]
http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/sylviaplath/1404
Rosenblatt, Sylvia Plath: The Poetry of Initiation. 1979 Excerpted at http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/plath/lazarus.htm
