Lady Lazarus

For this week’s edition of Dead Poets Society, I decided to do a bit of a 180 from Robert Frost and focus on a more depressing poet. As a warning to readers, this post will contain references to mental illness and suicide. For this post, I will be analyzing the life and works of Sylvia Plath, an author best known for her works depicting her struggle with mental illness and her eventual suicide.

An excerpt from the poem ‘Lady Lazarus’ gives us a clear image of the kind of poet Plath was:

“Out of the ash

I rise with my red hair

And I eat men like air.”

The playful rhyme scheme seen here contrasts with the harsh imagery of fire and ash that Plath uses. This is a trend seen in many of works that depicts how conflicted of a person she really was.

From a young age, Plath lived a troubled life. Her father, Otto Plath, was known for his strict and authoritarian style of parenting. He died of complications from diabetes when Plath was just eight years old. Her tumultuous relationship with her father defined many of her future relationships, a struggle seen best in her poem ‘Daddy.’

“I was ten when they buried you.

At twenty I tried to die

And get back, back, back to you.

I thought even the bones would do.”

Plath wrote throughout her early life, keeping journals and publishing poems in regional magazines and newspapers. Her first national publication came just after she graduated from high school. Beyond high school, she attended Smith College and managed to graduate with high honors, despite a deep depression and suicide attempt in 1953.

This depression of her college years was the beginning of Plath’s long struggle with mental illness. Many of Plath’s writings are autobiographical and contain intimate details of her turmoil. Although it’s not poetry, Plath’s novel The Bell Jar delves deeply into her battle and is known for its extremely honest and emotional nature. In The Bell Jar, Plath describes the conflict of a girl named Esther Greenwood—a character based on Plath—who falls into a dark depression and undergoes various treatments for her illness, including shock therapy.

After moving to England on a Fulbright Scholarship, Plath met fellow poet Ted Hughes and became romantically involved with him. In 1956, Plath married Hughes and had two children with him. He would later leave her for another woman, causing Plath to descend back into her depression. During this period, Plath wrote many of the poems that make up her collection Ariel, which is the most famous of her poetic works. As a result of this depression, Plath eventually committed suicide at the age of 30 using a gas oven.

Although her story is incredibly tragic and heartbreaking, Plath is still remembered as the incredible writer and poet she was. In 1982, she posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize, becoming the first poet to do so. Her contributions to the style of “confessional poetry” have been extremely significant, and her unique blend of harsh imagery and lighthearted alliteration and rhyme schemes has become a trademark of hers. While Plath lived a troubled life, her works speak to many people who suffer from mental illness, or even those who wish to understand what it’s like to grapple with such issues.