Category: Lady Lazarus

Fever 103° is a poem first published in 1965 as a component of Sylvia Plath’s anthology entitled Ariel. This poem was written in the autumn of 1962, when Plath was struck by the flu and left alone to care for her young children. “Fever 103°” describes a speaker caught in the hallucinogenic state of a high fever, all the while she transcends into her purest form.

One of the predominant themes within this poem is religion. Plath often shares religious ideologies and analyses them through various metaphors and comparisons within her work. Fever 103 describes Plath’s physical purification to detox herself from “sin” which is an immoral act considered to be a transgression against divine law. This heavily depends on Religious beliefs and she further explores this figurative journey with imagery such as “Three days. Three nights.” or a comparison “as the world hurts God”. However, the speaker’s purification does not resemble typical religious rituals, which take place as part of a community, but is instead an individual struggle, out of which she emerges as exceptional. This is a theory shared in another one of Plath’s poetry, Lady Lazarus. Within Lady Lazarus, the poet is emerging from death like a beautiful theatrical, biblical figure deemed “the pure gold baby”. The idea of decomposition and rebirth are shared between both poems. While Sylvia both explores the concept that, to reach purity and exude full potential, she must “burn” or “peel”. In Fever 103, she testifies that the heat emitted by her flu symptoms are those of a “hellish fire”, meant to detach herself from her impurities. Lady Lazarus is a theoretical comparison in which, likewise, the poet endures “dying” as a transitional phase into her spiritual cleanse.

Furthermore, Fever 103 explores the topic of glorification and sexual desire. Sylvia Plath often uses promiscuous imagery to illustrate an idea about female sexualisation. In specific, Fever 103 connects to share and female desire. The poet deepens her analogies with the mention of desperation in the repetition “Love, love” where she seemingly pleads for help from a male lover to rescue her from her “fright”. This attitude later transitions with her experience of transcendence when she later grows independent and elaborates on her newly founded self-confidence in sexual exploration. On the Road by Jack Kerouac is a novel shared within our Synoptic Topic. The story has a common subject matter with Marylou. Within the chaos of Dean and Marylou’s relationship, this female character is painted as a slave to her lover. She is held within the confinements of society’s understanding that women of their time were merely useful in the kitchen or to please male sexual fantasies. Marylou is qualified as “a golden beauty” in page 153, or a “whore” noted on page 163. This crude portrayal of females in Kerouac’s novel crosses the same objectification seen in Fever 103. Sylvia, however, separates herself from this gender prejudice in the line “Not you, nor him” and even “(my sleeves dissolving, old whore petticoats)”. Unlike Marylou who is damned to remain a figure of sexual attractiveness, the poet will reject this provocative identity and reach her pure potential.

Subsequently, On the Road explores another theme held within our poem. The post war period is affected by a loss of identity and constant longing for a purpose in a chaotic environment. Fever 103 describes the poet caught in a hallucinogenic state of a high fever that pulls her into an epiphany that she will cleanse herself from her past sin. On The Road shares the same understanding that, if the protagonists search and “keep rolling”, they might find a purpose and form a new identity. The poet in Fever 103 outlines the importance of “glowing and coming and going” in order to reach purity which is her god given purpose.

In conclusion, Fever 103 explores a vision of shedding her past sins to reach Heaven and complete clarity. Her transcendent experience shares the thought of self assurance, division of sinful behaviour and redefinition equally featured in her other poem, Lady Lazarus as well as On The Road by Jack Kerouac.

Textual conversations between conflicting texts highlight both the parallels between the composer’s ideologies as well as their conflicting attitudes, underscoring the contrasting outlooks from both parties. Resonating and reaffirming this idea is the contradictory interplay between Sylvia Plath’s poetry collection of ‘Ariel’, authored during an era of gender digression, where women were stereotypically branded as housewives,; and Ted Hughes’ attempts to reconcile and expiate guilt as he confronts the public about his relationship with Sylvia Plath, in his poetry collection of ‘Birthday Letters’. Through the analysis of both collections with consideration to each other, in particular of their intense emotion and intertwined personal history, it becomes clear that a single story is never the only one. The twofold complementary study of both collections of poetry from Plath and Hughes, hence, edifies that single stories aren’t only told in one light.

Reflecting conflicting perspectives ensuing that a single story won’t ever be told as one is Plath’s A Birthday Present, illustrating her gradual descent into a suicidal nature, influenced by both her confinement by social restraints exemplified through “adhering to rules, to rules, to rules” and the Hughes’ unfaithfulness and betrayal of their once “perfect” relationship, together constructing Plath’s existential perspective of the world. The utilization of the motif of the veil creates a sense of Plath’s unyielding yearning of moving to the next world “going aside quietly.” The embodiment of death epitomised through the symbolic representation of the “birthday present” through “if it were death”, further alludes to Plath’s dejected and suicidal personality, and a recurrent relationship between life and death is enforced. Her longing for both Hughes and society to gift her “nobility” of being born again is made evident by the rhetorically asked question “can you not give it to me?”, subsequently creating a horrifyingly casual tone of her poetry to create a frightening existential vision perspective of “despair and disillusionment” (Rosenberg) she battled after Hughes’ department. The disparagement of Hughes by Plath evident in this poem was “possessed and reshaped” (Hughes, F) by society, wholly arraigning the death of Plath to Hughes, who exhibits his collision of perspective, which dissonances from Plath’s through his writing of Fulbright. Hence, through Plath’s descent into a despondent psyche, the idea that a single story will never be the only one told is set on display through her existential perspective of the world

Thus in response, Hughes’ Fulbright Scholars, is a personal letter to Plath, where Hughes nostalgically reminiscences about their first meeting, where his adversarial perspective of a pleasant Plath differs from Plath’s pessimistic depiction of herself manifested through “A Birthday Present”, constructing conflicting perspectives between recollection and the frailty of truth… The poem opens with the rhetorical question “Where was it, in the strand?” addressing the fault in his memories. The imagery of “black eye-pits” and “scars” pronounced in Birthday Present is replaced with “blond” and “Veronica Lake bangs”, juxtaposing Plath’s truth against Hughes’. The publics accusation of Hughes’, accounting him responsible for the silencing of Plath after her death arbitrates the reliability of Hughes as Plath struggled for a “stable and meaningful life” (Rosenberg) after Hughes’ desertion. However, Hughes’ accumulation of rhetorical questions, through “were you among them?” presents the poets subjectivity thus conceding to his own imperfections in memory and opening up the story in a way through his candour. Thus, alongside the nostalgia, Hughes is also able to broach Plath’s “exaggerated grin” suggesting that she had an extrinsic facade to hide her deepest insecurities from “the cameras, the judges and the frighteners” and alluding to the enigmatic darkness he was ignorant to at the time, stressing Hughes’ compensation for his guilt and his besought innocence. The subjective frame of mind Hughes has created to explain the incomprehensible nature of Plath’s personality expresses his truth on the matter, though it contrasts with Plath’s own truth, hence revealing the complexity of the story, with the truth being conjectured.

Complementary to Lady Lazarus, is “Red” By Hughes, which recalls the final months of their relationship before Plath committed suicide, substantiating Hughes’ alternative perspective of Plath being more important in this world, rather than her rising “out of ash” declared in “Lady Lazarus, reiterating the conflicting perspectives between texts. The poem acts as a form of catharsis, as his final farewell, and his ultimate sense of loss where Plath’s application of colours to symbolise emotions in her poems, is co-opted by Hughes in order to express his perspective of her. The contrasting connotations of colours are echoed in this poetic call and response and where Plath’s red signifies life force, vitality and empowerment, such as the red phoenix in ‘Lady Lazarus’, Hughes’ red signifies blood and macabre, alluding to the conflicting ideologies and perceptions which ultimately label the truth as ambient. His assertion that “Blue was better for you” is supplemented with the poem’s melancholic tone, and articulates Hughes’ regret at Plath’s loss of the “best part of herself”, the part that was loving and nurtured her children, contrasted strongly with the blame that Hughes substantiated in The Minotaur, rendering a conflicting perspective to her initial suicidal portrayal. However, ending the poem with “in the pit of red, you hit from the bone clinic whiteness”, with the whiteness emblematic of peace, tranquillity and purity presents Plath’s instability, and her eventual demise into her own cynical desires. Imbedded within this statement is the crux of contention regarding Hughes and Plath’s collaboration; tensions between the enduring poetic voice and the ephemeral body from which is emanates and through this, conflicting perspectives are displayed, therefore constructing the perception that a single story is never written on its own.

Poetry serves as a dialogue between the living and the dead; nowhere is this more evident than in the poetic collaboration between Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. Representations of truth change considerably with the slightest interpretation differences. Hence, the idea that a single story will never again be told as though it’s the only one is made evident through the collision of perspectives, as well as the resonances and dissonances between Plath’s poetry.

For years, the collection of poems Ariel By Sylvia Plath has been used for educational purposes and a symbol of American literary. Known for its dark humor and terrorizing experience growing up and in her adulthood, Ariel has taken the world’s literature by surprise, winning at least 3 notable awards worldwide. If you are a sucker for good poems, Ariel might just be the perfect read for you – here are 5 reasons why Ariel is the book for you!

Understanding the crisis of adulthood

Have you ever wonder what it would be like to live your long longed adulthood? The choices that would impact your path as an adult, questions that would make you think “What if…” and think to yourself at night the path of uncertainty that awaits you

Well, in Sylvia Plath’s novel The Bell Jar Plath echoes the concept of adulthood strangely and in an eerily manner:

There will come a time when I must face myself at last. Even now I dread the big choices which loom up in my life — what college? What career? I am afraid. I feel uncertain. What is best for me? What do I want? I do not know.

As a confessional poet, we notice how Plath expresses her overwhelming upbringing and first experience stepping into adulthood. Being very transparent to her audience, she visualizes the reality of adulthood and showing the notion of being in control without knowing how to handle anything, which often relates to most of us.

The exploitation of your own creativity

Universally, poems are known for their creativity and meanings behind the poems made by the poet themselves. A unique poet like Plath uses symbolism like “fat god watch” to call a newborn infant and “cow-heavy and floral” to refer her own mother. Through these special features of poems, it teaches readers to think beyond the words said and rather know the context and reason behind the poem itself.

For Plath, everyday objects became an inspiration in certain ways. Like “A new statue in a drafty museum”, “A shadow in a mirror”, “A slab of soap”, or many more of our everyday objects became somewhat important and takes part in her poems. The poem itself teaches you to go beyond the ‘universal truth’ and find deeper meanings somewhere there isn’t one.

An in-depth exploration of emotions

With that being said, Plath depends greatly on her unique perspectives on emotions through her use of words. A few months before Plath committed suicide at the age of 30, she has been writing a collection of poems which was published 2 years after her unfortunate death. Going through such a complicated and a roller-coaster ride of feelings, Ariel (her last collection of poems) embodies the honesty and imagination Plath experienced during those dark times.

In one of her most powerful poems, Lady Lazarus, she took the audience in the roller coaster ride of emotions with her as they read the poem. Lazy Lazarus itself talks about the time where Plath tried to take her own life through the symbolism of the biblical character, Lazarus.

I rise with my red hair

And I eat men like air.

Being a testament poem that she intended it to be, this poem has become a significant milestone for countless readers who are trying to fight against issues of frustration, trauma, and sexuality thanks to Plath’s transparency and bravery to tell her side of the story especially post- WW2.

Her importance in American Literature History

As she is a popular poem worldwide she has made a significant impact on American society. Plath’s significance to American history comes from the excellence of her writing and the troublesome experience of a mid-twentieth-century woman.

Though her poems are full of hatred and trauma, Plath sees her readers as her witnesses to the mistreatment of Plath by her father, Husband, and life itself. Not only does she tells her life using a poem, but shes also uses her poems as a tool to express her emotions and past events in her life that some would say inexpressible.

Her poems mirror the haunting past of America…

Not only does Plath’s work mirrors her life but Plath also highlights the inequality of sex-based roles and psychiatric treatment make her important to American history. Though Plath is famous for her poems like The Colossus and Ariel, she uses her only novel, The Bell Jar, and journals and letters, to describe the social and cultural history of America through her personal experience and using techniques such as metaphors, similes, and symbolism to represent American History.

Being so popular in the UK, after the publication of her poems like “Daddy” and “Lady Lazarus”, the US was questioned with the treatment of women and the impact of World War 1 in relation to the victims (Jewish). Plath proves to be fearless from facing suicide, abuse, and mass murder she rather breaks the silence by using her creativity.

The inconsistent points of view presented that form Hughes’ roles as both a composer and persona in Birthday Letters, are revealed in the interaction with memory and hindsight. In “Fulbright Scholars” this interaction is displayed in the tension that is produced in the opening of the poem from the repetition of the juxtaposition of rhetorical questions which he writes answers to. In particular, when he asks; “Were you among them? I studied it…”, the inquisitive yet unfounded tone in the composer’s voice creates an impression that Hughe’s point of view is genuine, despite the fact that his recollection of the past is impacted by his own understanding of the future. Hughes’ perspective of Plath can be regarded as anti-feminist which is support by his characterisation of her being shallow and melodramatic, emphasised by the simile; “Your lingo, Always like an emergency burn-off”. His frequent use of the “you” creates an accusatory tone directed at Plath, which enables him to sustain the use of high modality language throughout the poem in order to highlight the problems created by her in their relationship. In this body of work, Hughes positions himself as a victim to her volatility but endorsing a fatalist interpretation of her suicide of which he recalls as being his own perspective, despite conflicting the picture Plath paints of him in her poetry.

Strong emotions and individual viewpoints in a relationship can create tension, as demonstrated in Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” and “Lady Lazarus”. In these poems, she expresses her hatred towards Otto and Hughes as she sees them as the same person as a result of her ‘daddy issues’ as someone who suffers form the electra-complex. Lady Lazarus uses biblical allusions and mythological references used to symbolically compare her strained relationship to a phoenix rising out of the ashes taking revenge against the male ego.

The aggravated tone in Plath’s poem “Daddy” create a figurative image of Otto, her father, using different metaphors to describe her bitter relationship with him. In multiple times throughout the poem, Plath draws on parallels to distinguish the similarities she sees with Otto and Hughes. Her accusatory tone created by the vowel sound of ‘you’, paints Hughes as a perpetrator of her suffering and herself as a victim, which she often dramatically compares her anguish to the cross-cultural reference of the Jews who endured the genocide during the Holocaust.

Additionally she emphasises her suffering of domestic subjugation in ‘Lady Lazarus’, glorifying her ability to endure her own despair and isolation; “And I am a smiling woman.” The extended motif of the reference to the biblical character, Lazarus, where he is raised from death in his grave represents Plath being saved from suicide and further warrants empathy from readers with her feminist braggadocio. The use of colloquial language at the start; “I have done it again. One year in every ten I manage it-” is used to downplay her own suffering and suicide and reveals her need to be heard as she positions herself as a victim.

Our ability to recall the past can be from enlightenment and from the value created by hindsight, which Ted Hughes reflects on in “The Shot”, describing how; “Vague as mist, I did not even know / I had been hit”. The composer’s choice of using past tense highlights the underlying reasons for his written response to her, of attempting to acknowledge Sylvia despite her death while at the same time diverting from the disapproval of feminists. He also discerns how Sylvia’s behaviours such as “sob-sodden Kleenex / And your Saturday night panics” were indicators that she was suffering from a mental illness which he was unable to recognise until further on. Furthermore, the symbolic imagery creation from the “gold-jacketed, solid silver / Nickel-tipped” bullet functioning as a metaphor for the cataclysmic traits of Plath references the biblical allusion to “the first fresh peach I had ever tasted peach”. Hence, throughout Hughes’ collection of poetry, his first opinions of Plath do not recognise that Plath’s traits are part of her character which he later comes to discover in hindsight through rationalisation.

Hughes’ ‘Fever’ responds to Plath’s ‘Fever 103°’, regretfully pitying how her mental illness took a toll on her by comparing her mental instability to a physical sickness such as a fever. The fragmented, non-linear structure of ‘Fever 103°’ is reflective of the disorientating experience of a fever, with Plath expressing her urge to rid herself of the metaphorical fever of bother her relationship and her bipolar mental illness which is demonstrated through the repeated biblical imagery of hell and heaven representing impurity and purity; “The tongues of hell / Are dull, dull as the triple”. She expresses her own vulnerability through drawing parallels from cultural allusions, accusing the oppression of patriarchal forces imposed on the vulnerable people from the war, “choking the aged and the meek, /The weak”.

In response to this poem in particular, Hughes’ excuses Plath’s mental illness as an ailment for their strained relationship sustained in the fever motif; “You had a fever… You had eaten a baddie.” He pardons his own reaction to Plath’s mental episodes, through the intertextuality from Aesop’s fable: “Stop crying wolf”, rather than fuelling her mental downfall by not taking her seriously enough. Hughes’ remorseful response to her death further distances himself from being a perpetrator to her suicide, rather as feeling guilty for not assisting her.

Conflicting perspectives emerge as a result of personal human experiences, which can create individual interpretations of circumstances and personalities. In Hughes’ ‘Birthday Letters’, he writes in textual response to reflect on his relationship with Plath’s oeuvre of poetry, ‘Ariel’, in which she expresses her own perspectives in an accusatory tone from feminist’s point of view which contradict his personal opinions. Throughout his poems, Hughes presents his opinions elegiacally in free verse while Plath expresses herself in stanzaic however both draw on similar themes in a confessional style of expression and language features while having disparate discourses due to significantly different personal and cultural upbringings.

The use of brutal and venomous tones us in the poem as would praise of its unadulterated rage towards male dominance, to wariness at its usage of holocaust imagery. These tones are present in the entire poem “Daddy”.

In the poem “Daddy” Plath sees that she explains how her life is as she lives with her decease father and how it is for her. Plath starts with “does not do anymore,” and that she feels like she has been a “foot living in a black shoe for thirty years”, too timid to either breath or sneeze. Plath insists that she needed to kill him referring to her “Daddy”, but he died before she had time. Plath describes him as heavy, like a “bag full of God,” resembling a statue with one big gray toe and its head submerged in the Atlantic Ocean. Plath remembers how she at on time prayed for his return from death and gives a German utterance of grief which translates literally to “oh, you”.

Plath knows he comes from a Polish town that was overrun by “wars, wars, wars,” but one of her Polack friends has told her that there are several towns of that names. Therefore, she cannot uncover his hometown, where he put his “foot” and “root.” Plath also discusses how she could never find a way to talk to him. Even before she could speak, she thought every German was him, and found the German language ‘obscene.’ In fact, she felt so distinct from him that she believed herself a Jew being removed to a concentration camp.

She started to talk like a Jew and to feel like a Jew in several different ways. She wonders in fact, whether she might be a Jew, because of her similarity to a gypsy. To further emphasize her fear and distance, she describes him as the Luftwaffe, with a neat mustache and a bright blue Aryan eye. She calls him a ‘Panzer-man,’ and says he is less like God then like the black swastika through which nothing can pass. In her mind, ‘Every woman adores a Fascist,’ and the ‘boot in the face’ that comes with such a man.

When she remembers Daddy, she thinks of him standing at the blackboard, with a cleft chin instead of a cleft foot. However, this transposition does not make him a devil. Instead, he is like the black man who ‘Bit pretty red heart in two'(Schultz). He died when she was ten, and she tried to join him in death when she was twenty.

When that attempt failed, she was glued back together. At this point, she realized her course – she made a model of Daddy and gave him both a ‘Minicamp look’ and ‘a love of the rack and the screw’ (Schultz). She promises him that she is ‘finally through;’ the telephone has been taken off the hook, and the voices can no longer get through to her.

She considers that if she has killed one man, then she has in fact killed two. Comparing him to a vampire, she remembers how he drank her blood for a year, but then realizes the duration was closer to seven years. She tells him he can lie back now. There is a stake in his heart, and the villagers who despised him now celebrate his death by dancing on his corpse. She concludes by announcing, ‘Daddy, Daddy, you bastard, I’m through’ (Schultz).

‘Lady Lazarus’ is a poem written by Sylvia Plath, originally included in Ariel, which was published in 1965, two years after her death by suicide. This poem is commonly used as an example of her writing style. Poems like “Lady Lazarus” is one of her most known and is known for the faithful representation of her characters and the tone of the book. “Lady Lazarus’ is a poem commonly understood to be about suicide. She believes that ‘Dying Is an art, like everything else,’ and that she does it very well (Bawer).

The speaker of ‘Lady Lazarus,’ indeed, “brags darkly about her prowess at such attempts ‘I do it so it feels real’, marvels at her survival of her attempt” at age twenty and of a near-fatal ‘accident’ a decade earlier (Bawer). Plath uses “internal rhyme from poems such as ‘Lady Lazarus,’ where we find combinations like ‘grave cave’ and ‘large charge.”” (Schultz). “Lady Lazarus”, one of those poems that has been criticized for being self-congratulatory, self-centered and petulant.

She writes her stories over a couple of days ““Lady Lazarus”, is written across a period of several days, starting with 17 October and finishing on Plath’s birthday, 27 October” (Peel). Plath writes about her life and how she is “like a cat” when she says she has nine lives. For some readers “Lady Lazarus” is a poem celebrating female survival and resurrection” (Peel).

Work Cited

1. Bawer, Bruce. ‘Sylvia Plath and the Poetry of Confession.’ Poetry Criticism, edited by Elisabeth Gellert, vol. 37, Gale, 2002. Literature Resource Center, http://link.gale.com/apps/doc/H1420039643/GLS?u=j101912034&sid=GLS&xid=315b730e. Accessed 5 Nov. 2019. Originally published in The New Criterion, vol. 9, no. 6, Feb. 1991, pp. 18-27.
2. Schultz, Jerrianne. ‘Perfection and Reproduction: Mutually Exclusive Expectations for Women in Sylvia Plath’s ‘Edge.’.’ Poetry Criticism, edited by Elisabeth Gellert, vol. 37, Gale, 2002. Literature Resource Center, http://link.gale.com/apps/doc/H1420039651/GLS?u=j101912034&sid=GLS&xid=95c88f47. Accessed 5 Nov. 2019. Originally published in English Language Notes, vol. 37, no. 2, Dec. 1999, pp. 68-75.
3. “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath-poems | Academy of American Poets https://poets.org/poem/daddy
4. “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath – https://www.poetryfoundation.org