Why I hate Sylvia Plath: A look at Lady Lazarus.

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I have to give some foreground before i can really get into my point as to why i hate Sylvia Plath despite my feelings of respect towards her.

I run a grieving site for the families of Homicide Victims. Typically the people who look at my site are women, between the ages of 18 and 50, and are in a state of very (and i cannot over emphasize that word) heavy grief. While i appreciate the things that Sylvia Plath enabled them to figure out (and I will expand on this in a moment), there is something very harmful in her writing to the human.

For the purposes of this assignment, let’s look at a footnote in our textbook that has Plath commenting on the piece:

(Picture to be updated later)

Look at the part where Plath comments on the work. She writes:

“The speaker is a woman who has the great and terrible gift of being reborn. The only trouble is, she has to die first. She is the phoenix, the libertarian spirit, what you will. She is also just a good, plain, very resourceful woman.” – Plath on the speaker

The good thing to take from Sylvia Plath, as it pertains to the grieving, is the ability to write about what you are experiencing as a way of coping with whatever is going on with you. The bad thing, the thing that i find to be absolutely self-destructive and defeatist, is how she romanticizes death. Think about this: Your loved one just died, you are in a state of utter disrepair; if you read something about having the potential to relieve the amazing qualities of your life with them just by killing yourself – aren’t you more prone to off yourself? Going back to her words, and using them as they pertain to this situation, she is not going to be the phoenix. Her spirit may subside in someone else but her body, the fleshly remains that melded with her spirit, have no shot of being the right way. The logic. In this instance is false.

Sylvia, Sylvia, you bitch. I’m Done.

sylvia-plath-photograph

(More bitching about this later) this is more than enough for now.

Posted in Photography, Poetry, Some thoughts

3 Comment on “Why I hate Sylvia Plath: A look at Lady Lazarus.”

  1. Wuji April 20, 2013 at 2:30 am

    I so agree with your conclusions, she has done more harm to the young souls of impressionable young writers, than good.

    Reply
  2. Willow M November 9, 2022 at 5:01 am

    I know this was a long time ago, and I hope as a person you have grown through such gross simplifications of complex works, but I’d still like to dissect this ‘argument’ for the hope that any impressionable people who come across this- frankly amateurish- interpretation of Plath’s works, may reconsider adopting the same viewpoints. To begin, I, too, agree with your statement that Plath powerfully represents “the ability to write about what you are experiencing as a way of coping with whatever is going on with you”- in her case ‘whatever is going on with you’ being a complicated and layered struggle with the balance of wishing to live while craving death, the battle between contradicting expectations for women in the 1950’s and ’60s, and many other dichotomies within her daily life. However, this is where our agreeance diverges. Plath’s romanticisation of death is not a ploy to convince others towards her own path- of which I don’t believe you claim her to do- but rather this personal expression of her subjective experiences. To read Plath’s poetry in a difficult mental place could absolutely negatively impact a reader- but this attribute should not be enough to rapidly and unfairly dismiss her entire body of works; in fact, doing so demonstrates an inability to closely read works for any other meaning apart from the surface level interpretations. In one of your other blog posts on this page, “How to get the guy/girl at the start of the semester”, you suggest to “Get her a signed copy of the Sylvia Plath book of poems because it like totally changed her life.”- allow me to now closely analyse this sentence, possibly to demonstrate to you exactly how to do that, given you seem unable to when reading Plath. The most important lexical choices in this sentence are “like” and “totally”, of which here are utilised to imitate and mock a traditional stereotype of ‘Girl speak’. This mocking indicates disapproval of the expressed opinion, infantilising and attempting to discredit ‘her’ genuine appreciation of a literary piece. This also exemplifies a wonderful example of subtle misogyny; something you seem well versed in, given the other assertions in this article.
    Lady Lazurus is a discussion of life and rebirth, an inversion of the biblical tale of a holy man being saved by the religious, a denial of the patriarchal systems that keep women trapped; as commodities, as objects, and as undervalued and dismissed persons of genuine thought and intellect. You suggest that it is about wanting to die. The logic, in your case, is misinformed and embarrassingly simple. This is furthered by your horrifically misunderstood rewrite of the final line of Plath’s “Daddy”, in which you take her words that symbolise breaking free from patriarchal and oppressive systems that have kept her rooted in self-loathing and cyclical repetitions of abuse, and twist them into a chance to call a woman a bitch.
    I don’t write this comment assuming some significant change will happen, or as a blind follower of Plath. She has had her problematic impacts: her poetry is often, in ways, anti-Semitic and racist, utilising slurs and allegories that she, as a non-Jewish white woman has no right in comparing herself to. However your above take is rooted in stubborn, misogynistic ideas that harmfully attempt to silence a woman’s voice. I hope, in the many years it has been since you’ve posted this, you have reconsidered Plath’s works. I hope you have had the chance to reflect and change from the sexist viewpoints you seem to hold. And I hope, that even one person who may stuble across this article might read this and reconsider. I really don’t mean to be self-righteous here, I just think this is a good chance to explain a different viewpoint from a female lens. I hope, if anyone ever reads this, you’re having a wonderful day. Thank you for reading!

    Reply
    1. nickchristian86 January 19, 2023 at 9:01 am

      Hey Willow!

      I 1000% agree with every point you made in this.

      This wasn’t about disregarding Plath, I think I went through a period when I saw way too many people misinterpreting Plath because of a project I was working on – neither of which I said really well at the start of this post. The mocking misread I gave was intended to reflect (mock) what I saw/heard from various people at that time.

      Feminist Crit was one of my favorite literary lenses by the end of my grad program and, in my opinion, some of my best papers. Check out my reading of Hamlet or The Handmaid’s Tale (of which I’ll post below) to get a better sense of where I’m coming from in that lens (and, just, ethically – lol).

      Also, thanks for the comment. I haven’t spent a lot of time on this over the past couple of years since I’ve gone into teaching/coaching (aside from the failed urge to get on here every NaPoWriMo). Something struck me today to come on and I was actually really pleased to get your comment. A couple of years back, one of my classes read Belzhar and so many of the things you pointed out about Plath we discussed in regards to the context of that Novel. Plus, I just enjoy the fact you took the time to call out what you read – even if I’m relatively sure I meant this as satire.

      Here are those links: https://thebohemianrockstarpresents.wordpress.com/2015/06/17/the-unwilling-martyr-i-dont-want-to-be-telling-this-story/

      The Tragedy of Ophelia: Uncovering Hamlet’s Heroine

      Reply

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