In a 1974 New York Times Book Review article, Rosalyn Drexler describes Sylvia Plath’s poetry as “incisive, bright, intelligent.” I question that judgment. Through analyzing Plath’s 1962 poem “Lady Lazarus,” I ask if her poetry is as intelligent and analytical as Drexler—and conventional wisdom generally—believes. To initiate this debate, I put forth my chief criticism of Plath’s “Lady Lazarus”: incoherence and inconsistency. I argue that “Lady Lazarus” is internally inconsistent for two independent reasons—first because the character of Lady Lazarus assumes severely incompatible forms, and second because Lady Lazarus’ main argument (that she can elude death) is, as her own narration shows, untrue—and in so arguing, I attempt to show that the poem is also incoherent. …show more content…
While the poem’s formal elements are admittedly uniform, the poem’s dissimilar comparisons make its subject erratic at best and ambiguously amorphous at worst. I will argue that Lady Lazarus is the latter. Lady Lazarus undertakes several avatars throughout the poem, but these expressions ultimately interfere with one another and thereby create confusion. Specifically, Lady Lazarus is described as a “walking miracle,” a “Jew,” a “cat,” “trash,” a performer/artist, a “woman,” and a phoenix. Lady Lazarus herself is a religious allusion to Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead. These comparisons are categorically contradictory. For one, Lady Lazarus’ comparison to a Jewish person experiencing the Holocaust is troubling. From describing herself as “turn[ing] and burn[ing],” “A cake of soap,/A wedding ring,/A gold filling,” and her skin as a “Nazi lampshade” to her assigning her enemies—and even Lucifer—the German masculine salutation “Herr,” Lady Lazarus indisputably likens herself to a Jew under Nazism. However, this erroneous classification belies many of Lady Lazarus’ other