16 pages • 32 minutes read
Lady Lazarus
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Themes
Death & Resurrection
The speaker establishes the themes of death and resurrection in the title of the poem, referencing the biblical story of Lazarus. The speaker’s experiences with death throughout “Lady Lazarus” are not terrifying and unwanted; instead, resurrection is the most uncomfortable experience for the speaker. This reversal of expectations suggests a cynical attitude towards life when it is full of suffering and rage. The poem grapples with the psychological implications of resigning oneself to death, attempting to cause one own’s death and then surviving death and finding oneself living again. The speaker of the poem endures a psychic death, or a death of the spirit, repeatedly, and all of these deaths allude to the multiple suicide attempts of the poet.
The speaker never explicitly claims that she has attempted suicide, describing death instead as an art: “Dying / Is an art, like everything else. / I do it exceptionally well” (Lines 43-45). The speaker of the poem is the artist, and dying is her performance piece. The distance the speaker places between herself and the reality of her situation creates an uneasy tone as the reader must the speaker’s mindset to understand the poem. The speaker appears to knows that her mindset is terrifying, emphasizing at the end of the poem that Lady Lazarus is a fearsome creature who can kill and cannibalize men as easily as breathing: “And I eat men like air” (Line 87).
Ironically, the speaker’s proximity to death gives her power and agency that she is unable to experience elsewhere in her life. This power, that comes through death, allows her to enact revenge on men who have treated her poorly. Though the speaker of the poem, Lady Lazarus, plays a confident game with death, the poet’s tragic fate emphasizes the reality of the stakes at hand.
Gender
Gender and sexuality play a large role in the poem due the speaker’s unresolved trauma from her past relationships with men. Men watch the speaker’s death performance over and over, and she describes them as “[t]he peanut-crunching crowd” (Line 26). She mentions men who come too close to her, stripping away her clothes, her blood, and her sense of self. The speaker seeks revenge on the men she views as her oppressors, and the poem suggests that those men are the ones who are continuously bringing her back to life: “The second time I meant / To last it out and not come back at all. [...] / They had to call and call” (Lines 37-41). Their role in her death underpins the notion of death as performance, one that men force her to endure for their own personal pleasure.
As these men keep bringing her back to life, the speaker feels she has little agency over her own actions, so dying feels like the only opportunity she has to feel she can exercise any control over her life. She decides to die again just to spite the men: “I turn and burn. / Do not think I underestimate your great concern” (Lines 71-72). The speaker often demonstrates her sense of objectification and unfair treatment at the hands of a patriarchal society by breaking herself down into pieces. Whether that is body parts, domestic items in the home, or artifacts of Jewish genocide, the speaker demonstrates that within a patriarchal society, she can never be a whole person who can exercise control over her own life and body.
Suffering as a Performance
The speaker compares her resurrection to a performance, feeling as though the men are spectators to her suffering as if she is an exhibit, or, as she later states, a piece of art. The speaker feels she is artwork, calling herself an “opus” (Line 67); this identification with an object reveals her sense that she is not fully human in the eyes of the men who watch her die and come back to life. Because the men watch the speaker and strip away her humanity, her suffering becomes a performance against her will which exemplifies her lack of agency in her own life.
Despite this lack of agency, the speaker embraces death as a kind of performance art: “Dying / Is an art, like everything else” (Lines 43-44). In doing so, she reclaims some of the control that male-dominated society has denied her. Additionally, she attempts to take back control by charging fees for access to her pain, but the commodification of her suffering enhances the sense of objectification. The speaker must eradicate herself in order to experience a sense of herself, and while the speaker can hold on to her dignity by embracing the aspect of performance, she has little opportunity for true happiness and freedom. The only revenge she can have on the men that hurt her can only be achieved through her own suffering and death.
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