Speaker's Phoenix Transformation in Lady Lazarus

The Female Phoenix

During her last days, Sylvia Plath wrote in a non-stop frenzy. Her late poems often dealt with her personal issues concerning the men in her life. According to Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar in No Man’s Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century, “[Plath] fantasizes vengeful victories won by female speakers who openly act themselves.” In the poem “Lady Lazarus,” the speaker begins as a limited human but then sheds her form by committing suicide.

The speaker’s pent-up anger as a human stays with her through her transformation into a phoenix. In her liberated form, the speaker utilizes her newfound freedom in order to exact her vengeance upon the men of the world.

The speaker undergoes a transformation over the course of the poem. In the opening stanzas, she compares her body to horrific Holocaust imagery in order to show her helplessness, a comparison in which emphasizes the speaker as a victim herself.

She describes her face as, “a featureless, fine / Jew linen” (1. 8-9) and her skin as, “bright as a Nazi lampshade” (1. 5). The speaker addresses her enemy and asks, “Do I terrify?_” (1. 12). Her tone is both sarcastic and rhetorical because the speaker knows she is not a threat in such a weak state. She then goes on to say, “The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth? / The sour breath / Will vanish in a day” (1. 13 15). This stanza foreshadows her suicide – the suicide that empowers her as she transforms from victim to hunter.

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Before the speaker can rid herself of her earthly form, she speaks to her audience who regards her as nothing more than entertainment – and so she treats her suicide as such. The speaker’s suicide becomes the last show she gives to her audience whom she describes as, “the peanut-crunching crowd” (1. 26). Although the crowd gathers around the speaker to watch, their support is shallow and superficial. Their voyeuristic attitude contributes to the speaker’s anger and resentment. She addresses them as gentleman and ladies in order to mock them. To the speaker, the audience represents nothing more than an impassive society that could have helped prevent her suicide but did nothing more than stand by and watch.

The audience ultimately contributes to the speaker killing herself. Her anger causes her to reveal that, “for the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge / For the hearing of my heart— / It really goes” (1. 58-60). The speaker repeats that a grand performance such as her final suicide warrants a large charge – the audience can no longer exploit her. In fact, the audience even includes the actual reader of the poem, who becomes a spectator him or herself due to the fact that they can do nothing more than stand by and watch, just as the audience does. By including the reader as a part of the audience, the speaker’s anger becomes even more evident; her anger knows no bounds.

Although the audience contributes partly to the speaker’s suicide, the speaker also does it for herself. The speakers believes that, “dying / is an art, like everything else. / I do it exceptionally well” (1. 43-45). The speaker tried to kill herself twice beforehand. Each time she tries to commit suicide, she comes closer to the perfection she seeks in this particular form of art. The speaker continues on to say that, “I do it so it feels like hell. / I do it so it feels real” (1. 46 47). The speaker wants her suicide to hurt because she believes that the pain is what makes the suicide beautiful. The betrayal she feels from the audience helps contribute to the pain she experiences while she dies. Because the speaker has garnered such a large audience for her last suicide, the pain multiplies and she is finally able to reach the perfection she sought previously In her death, the speaker brings her pain and suffering with her. Beforehand, she described herself in terms of simple aspects of her body but now she considers herself to be, “pure gold baby” (1. 69). As the speaker dies, she begins her transformation and states, “ash, ash -/ You poke and stir. / Flesh, bone, there is nothing there—”(1. 73-75). She has already shed herself of her earthly form in order to become something greater. The speaker’s anger carries on with her, even past death.

In the speaker’s new form, she obtains the freedom she did not have as a human. Now that the weight of the audience’s gaze is gone, the speaker no longer has to hold herself back. She says, “Herr God, Herr Lucifer / Beware / Beware” (1. 79-81). By using German titles, the speaker compares both religious figures to Nazis, whereas she believes that she is similar to a Holocaust victim. God and Lucifer can also be seen as patriarchal figures. They are both considered male authorities of the highest power. In the last stanza she states, “Out of the ash / I rise with my red hair / And I eat men like air” (1. 82-84). The speaker targets her anger specifically towards men and by proclaiming that both and God and Lucifer should beware of her, she is stating that no man has power over her anymore, be he human or deity. The imagery specifying the speaker’s red hair hints at her new form as phoenix-like as she burns and rises up from her own ashes The title of the poem alludes to the biblical figure Lazarus, the man whom Jesus resurrected. The speaker considers her suicide to be, “a miracle!” (1. 55). Her miracle is not that she was revived from the dead – her miracle is that unlike Lazarus, she does not depend on love or a savior for her resurrection. Instead, the speaker’s anger alone was enough to transform her into a merciless, phoenix-like creature.