Sylvia Plath finished her poem, “Lady Lazarus”, only a few days before her suicide in 1963, when her clinical depression she dealt with for most of her life was unbearable. The same year she published her novel The Bel Jar, which is considered to be semi-autobiographical. This paper discusses the references Sylvia Plath makes to The Bell Jar and the parallels between “Lady Lazarus” and the protagonist of The Bell Jar Esther Greenwood. Very significant for the poem is its title “Lady Lazarus”. Lazarus of Bethany is a biblical character featured in the book of John and the Bible says: "The sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that son of God, might be glorified thereby."() “Lady Lazarus” is the speaker of the whole poem and as well as the biblical Lazarus, who died and was resurrected by Jesus, and the character of Esther, she keeps dying (or more likely trying to die) and coming back to life. Within the first three lines of the poem, Plath sends a message to the reader, foreshadowing the atmosphere. She simply proclaims that she has nearly died three times: "I have done it again. / One year in every ten / I manage it ----" (1-3). This may be a reference to the suicide attempts described in The Bell Jar. She claims that she is “only thirty” (). By this line and the first three lines she implies that she made these attempts at the age of ten, twenty, and thirty. However, in the Bell Jar, she has made only one unsuccessful attempt. There is no evidence