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Joel Ramirez

Michele Tubbs

ENGL-1302-129

07 March 2020

Daddy and Lady Lazareth True Meaning

The poem Daddy and Lady Lazareth by Sylvia Plath has dramatic imagery of madness

that some may find unsettling. Some claim them to be classified as confessional poetry, meaning

the author writes about their personal life experiences. The tone of both poems give you an

instant feeling of being overpowered and the desire to be free from control. I feel Daddy and

Lady Larareth was a reflection of things that were going on in her life such as, her failed

marriage, constant struggle with facing a form of abandonment, and dealing with mental issues.

I find Plath used her poetry as a sort of therapy, to channel the internal battles and demons that

plagued her. Her use of strong, suggestive, and taboo issues were used to paint a vivid picture.

Plath’s work has been described by fellow poet Robert Lowell as being written, “In a perverse

way to act out the program of the poet whose informed and intelligent mind must manipulate its

terrifying experiences” (Uroff 106). Both poems are undoubtedly the true feelings of Sylvia

Plath.The fusion between Plath and the characters in her writings is evenly balanced and allows

the flow of the imagery of the poems to never be disrupted. Therefore, created a mark towards

the style of confessional poetry. It’s pretty obvious that the two poems Daddy and Lady Lazareth

fall into the category of confessional poetry, but what makes them considered confessional

poetry? This essay will explore the key elements of Confessionalism.

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In order to understand the work of Sylvia Plath, it would be the pain she experience

throughout her life. Plath felt a sense of abandonment from both her mother and father at a very

young age. Living in what seemed as a normal household was actually the brainchild for most of

her work. Plath’s relationship with her parents essentially fueled much of her poetry. As a

professional who studies behavior of a troubled mind once stated, “Sylvia Plath’s rage at her

abandoning husband and at her late beloved father was partly a displacement of anger toward her

loving but smothering mother”(Feirstein 1). Plath felt a sense of abandonment and being

unwanted from a very young age. Her relationship with her father Otto, affected Plath the most

and is present in much of her work. Along with her issues regarding her father, Plath seemed to

have a very manic relationship with her mother as well. It has been mentioned multiple times

when dissecting Plath’s work that, although she felt love from her mother at times, she also felt

an extreme sense of disconnect. Plath dealt with mental health issues, as well as what we now

know as “bi polar.” Plath did have a sibling named Warren who was born with health issues.

Therefore, leaving it to require most of her mother's attention. Plath’s mother Aurelia, eventually

sent Plath to live with her grandparents. As for her father, he neglected his case of diabetes and

later eventually ended up passing away when Plath was right. Leaving only Plath in pursuit of

approval and normality on her own . Plath ended up finding this with fellow poet Ted Huges who

she eventually married. While married, Plath and Hughes moved to England where they had their

first child together, Freida. During their marriage Plath miscarried one of their children, and

eventually had a son named Nicholas. This seemed to be a turning point in Plath’s life as she and

Hughes eventually divorced due to Hughes infidelity. Soon after, she was found dead from

carbon monoxide poisoning by sticking her head in the oven, with the gas turned on.
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Sylvia Plath had a troubled life, and fell into a darker spiral of writing. This became

illusive in two of her most discussed poems. Plath introduced her readers to what was intended to

be a therapeutic style of writing, and took us into the psyche of an emotionally damaged and

manic person. Plath’s poem “Daddy” embodies Plath’s feeling towards her father and her intense

feeling of abandonment when Plath writes, “Daddy, I have had to kill you. / You died before I

had time”(line 6-7). This can be interpreted in many ways, as it is evident that the charter within

the poem is facing an internal battle of having to dissolve an imagery of her father. This

traumatized imagery justifies how Plath felt of her father's death, leaving her in anger and to

fight the obsession of his absence that comes before her. Also , Plath doesn't always describe her

father in a negative light. As she wrote, ​“I used to pray to recover you. / Ach, du”(line 14)​. She

was hoping that she could save him from some form of ill, it is apparent she cared and loved

him. However, he died when Plath was at a young age and never fully got to know the man he

was, only to leave her to endure pain from his absence. Plath carried a lot within herself, she

points out that the speaker in the poem wishes there were things that she could have said, but

never had the chance when she wrote:

The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.

Ich, ich, ich, ich,

I could hardly speak. (line 25-28)

This is clearly unbearably​ harsh​ imagery, as you can tell. The daughter wants to be with her

father, but something constraning her from doing so. she tries to break free from the

reconstruction of being forced into silence. This allows me to believe that Plath longs to be with
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the man, who she called her father. Plath also shows her attempt at taking control of her life and

freeing herself from the demons she carries within her. In Daddy Plath states:

The vampire who said he was you,

And drank my blood for a year,

Seven years, if you want to know.

Daddy you can lie back now. (line 72-75)

It is evident that Plath references her father as a demon that lives off the life of others. Although

her father is dead, she mentions her ex husband has taken her father's place. They both left her

with a form of being suppressed by their absence. ​Plath has mentioned multiple times in her

work the suppression of being a woman and the perspectives in which she saw herself. A popular

and highly referenced poem Lady Lazarus focuses on the affliction of being a woman that is

discarded and objectified. Plath eloquently demonstrated this in Lady Lazarus when she writes:

A paperweight,

My face a featureless, fine

Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin, o my enemy.

Do I terrify you?-

The nose, the eye pits , the full set of teeth? (line 9-15)

Her belief that she is valuable only as an object, beautiful, but hard and lifeless. She does not

deny that she is valuable to some people, but only as a cold, hard object of beauty, not as a

human being​. Plath presents us with vivid imagery ​Or rather how she feels nothing when she

writes:
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The sour breath

will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh

the grave cave ate will be

at home on me

And I a smiling woman.

I am only thirty.

And like the cat I have nine times to die. (line 14-21)

Just as the dead feel nothing, leaving her to suffer.Plath continues to use imagery of death to

reveal her deepest feelings. Plath is disappointed with living, as ​she has compared herself to an

animal that nine lives to live inorder to die. This is her confirming her history with sucide, and

how she has survived every time​. Plath manipulates dramatically in order to reveal their

limitations. The information that Plath reveals about them is necessarily prejudicial and has

consequently misled some readers who react with hostility to what she has to reveal (​Uroff 105 ​).

Many comments and opinions have been made in regards to Plath and her form of writing.

Nonetheless, ​Sylvia Plath herself has said:

I think my poems immediately come out of the sensuous and emotional experiences I

have, but I must say I cannot sympathize with these cries from the heart that are informed

by nothing except a needle or a knife, or whatever it is. I believe that one should be

able to control and manipulate experiences, even the most terrifying, like

madness, being tortured, this sort of experience, and one should be able to manipulate

these experiences with an informed and intelligent mind. (Uroff 105)

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Plath is presented as angelic, as we continue to try to understand the light of the speaker who

intertwin with the darkness of confinement.

Confessional poets like Sylvia Plath were imperative in building the style of writing we

now refer to as confessional literature. Writers who provoke raw emotion from their reader’s

create work that transcends time. As in life everything isn’t always sunshine and rainbows. A lot

of artists draw their inspiration from life experiences. No matter what the content, Plath found a

way to take residence in those who read her literature. This is all true but, would not mean a

thing or even be possible if it were not for Plath leaving a blueprint for future confessional poets.

Plath was a gifted poet yes, but how do you make your words mean something? How do you

affect someone so deeply? Plath’s style incorporated a multitude of literary elements all while

giving birth to an innovative style of writing. Plath’s process is no process, It’s been said by

fellow poet​ ​Marjorie Perloff, “With Plath it is otherwise. The person in her poem calls certain

people father or mother but her characters lack particularity.”(Uroff 103) De​veloping characters

was only a fragment of Plath’s talent. She also created literary fusion capable of telling her

stories in a manner that resonates with her readers. Plath’s fluidity of her poetry mixed with the

dramatized version of the narrative enhances the reader's experience​. To illustrate, in “Daddy”

Plath writes:

Bit my pretty red heart in two.

I was when they buried you.

At twenty I tried to die

And get back, back, back to you. (line 56-59 )

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Plath lays out before us seems like a simple, regretful child with unfinished business. Looking

back on the poem in its entirety darker elements begin to surface making you re evaluate what

you just read. You begin to question how you really feel. And why did it change after I read it

again? Plath was a master of taking her readers on a literary expedition.​ Although, as she

continued to write however, she began to let the characters speak for themselves in caricature,

parody, and hyperbole which they use not as vehicles of judgment but as inevitable methods of

their performances. When the mind that must deal with terror stiffens and rigidities, parody will

become its natural means of expression. (Uroff 107)

To sum up​ Confessionalism, it helps us identify and confront personal and globalsources

of human suffering and creates a literary community where the marginalized may anonymously

find a sense of belonging (​Schetrumpf ​4).​It makes you wonder if Sylvia Plath would have been

able to convey her message? She contributed so much of herself, if she were not fighting her

own personal demons with mental illness, there would not be the true meaning of confessional

poetry.
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Works Cited

Uroff, M. D. “Sylvia Plath and Confessional Poetry: A Reconsideration.” ​The Iowa Review​, vol.s

8, no. 1, 1977, pp. 104–115.

Feirstein F. “A Psychoanalytic Study of Sylvia Plath.” Psychoanalytic Review,

vol.103, no. 1, 2016, pp. 103–26., doi:10.1521/prev.2016.103.1.103.

Schetrumpf, Tegan Jane. "Diminished but Never Dismissed: The Confessional Poetry of Sylvia

Plath and Bruce Beaver." Antipodes, vol. 29, no. 1, 2015, p. 117+.