"Lady Lazarus" as a Display of Power

>>Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath

Fair warning, I’m going to be discussing the topic of suicide pretty heavily and the darker elements that go with it. Keep that in mind while you read.

Lady Lazarus is a show of power. Not necessarily just of the feminine persuasion, but as a whole. Maybe it’s made better by the fact a woman is putting these words to paper, who’s to say. But the fact remains that Lady Lazarus is a terrifying narrative. When you focus on the idea of Plath flexing some kind of proverbial power, you don’t need to look any further than  lines 79-81.

                Herr God, Herr Lucifer

                Beware

                Beware

                                (Norton Anthology, 1420)

What could be a bigger display of power than challenging God or the Devil himself? In the poem, Plath evokes this idea of an almost otherworldly being, someone that has died three times and still comes back for more each and every time she’s resurrected. It’s put even more into perspective when you think about Plath’s first suicide attempt. Whether by choice or by complete accident, she managed to survive. She rose up from that which would have claimed her the first time. It definitely adds this sense of morose power to her writing; She may not have liked that she survived, but she did, and continued to thrive afterwards. Like she had temporarily beaten down her own demons. Granted she did ultimately take her own life, but the time in between seems like a good time for her. At least in the terms of his poem.

Or, alternately, she feels powerful in the fact that she can control her own well being and her own fate. She could choose to take her life at any time, and yet she doesn’t. She rises from the proverbial ashes every time, renewed with her decision for another few moments of respite. No one can make the decision for her, she is ultimately in control of the fact of  whether she lives or dies. That in and of itself gives her the feeling of power she lives; she can reinvent herself however she sees fit. In this case, she is both the Lady Lazarus and the “Jesus” that revives her. She is her own maker, and the one to undo herself. It brings a little extra weight to the passage I mentioned above; she fears neither God nor the Devil, because they are not the masters of her fate when she ultimately holds the killswitch in her hands.

This one was a little personal for me from my own experiences. The idea that Plath is exercising the power of her own fate drives home the reality of people who have considered something like suicide before. They hold everything in the palm of their hands, whether they choose to go through with it or not The choice will always be theirs, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them. In a way, I think this was Plath’s way to try and help herself feel better about it all. Her marriage wasn’t exactly the best, and her life hadn’t always been peaches. I think this is how she held her own power; she looked at what she could do with her own hands, reminded herself that she still held power somewhere, when everything else seemed to be outside of her control. Maybe that’s what ultimately lead her to try and succeed on her second try. It was about power and control, the two things she never had before.

Moving on, I think it’s time to go back to the original passage. Like I said before, this is Plath showing her own power where she feels none. The image of this Lady Lazarus, rising up out of one of humanity’s biggest atrocities, is practically overflowing with the idea of untamable power. The power to defy death and those around you. The biggest pat to remember, though, is that she doesn’t change. Look at lines 31-34 and you’ll see what I mean:

                These are my hands

                My knees.

                I may be skin and bone,

                Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.

                                (Norton Anthology, 1419)

Plath doesn’t come back as a different woman. She doesn’t try to change some aspect in some kind of bid to make herself survive longer this time. Maybe to fare better in the world around her. No, she stays herself. She shows the longevity she has, the unwillingness to change in the face of adversity. She still has control over everything this way, and she doesn’t even want to change herself. She views herself as just right for this powerful narrative. Lady Lazarus is exactly as she should be. More importantly, she doesn’t present herself as a man. She shows her power as a woman, unwilling to bend to what is expected of her. She projects the idea of a strong woman, something to be reckoned with, that not even a man could do better than her. She is rising from the ashes of her relatively shattered life at the hands of her cheating husband, and emerging as this new, powerful being. She is unstoppable in her own mind. He will never have the power over her life that she herself does.

Bringing it all together is the idea that, on a broad spectrum, this is Plath’s statement of her power. She is this Lazarus figure, the only thing that truly holds sway over her life. Her marriage was in shambles at the hands of her cheating husband. She had no power over what was going on around her, she couldn’t change anything that was happening. So this idea of Lady Lazarus, of this all-powerful figure that bowed to no man, to no great threat or even death itself, was like a comfort for her. She even enforced the idea that she was the master of her won fate, ultimately taking her own life in her hands.

When you read the poem with this context in mind, it brings to light a different kind of understanding It brings up feelings of unbridled power, but also something almost melancholy. It’s sad to think that she may have written this as an outlet for the one this she couldn’t deal with: her own life. She had to take solace in the fact that she could end it at any point. She clung to the idea that that was the only control she had over anything. And to think, she ultimately ended up taking her life in the end. In short, Lady Lazarus was a brief explosion of power, of good feelings, for an otherwise downward spiraling woman.

Works Cited

Plath, Sylvia. "Lady Lazarus." 1961. The Norton Anthology: American Literature. Shorter 8th Edition ed. Vol. 2. New York City: Norton, 2013. 1418-1420. Print. 1865 to the Present.

Tennessee WIlliams: A Dissection

>>Tennessee Williams

Something that absolutely delighted me was finding out Tennessee Williams was gay. In all my years reading his plays, I never really got a chance to look at him as a playwright and as a person, so it was pretty great to find this out. Being gay myself, it was nice to have that kind of connection to one of my favorite playwrights. Hearing about his tumultuous and largely unfortunate love life helped hammer home a few things I’ve noticed in his writing; the focus on this idea of disillusionment, the driving force of sex behind several characters across many of his plays, and most notably in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the struggle with homosexuality in the Deep South. I’ll get to a few of those points later, though.

It was also interesting to learn about his sister, Rose. She was schizophrenic and subjected to a lobotomy in 1941 that severely disabled her. She was the only other person besides Williams’ late-life lover Robert Carroll to get anything from his will. Once he made enough money from his work, he had her moved to a private hospice facility, where she was well taken care of. He may have had a largely dysfunctional family, but he cared for Rose very much and made sure she had all she needed. What a kind brother.

Moving on to the research and reading. One of the most interesting topics I turned up was the criticism of Williams’ constant use of sexual undertones in his plays. It was a theme I didn’t realize connected all of them until I really looked at it. In  A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche is depicted as demure yet sexually open, if for the right man. In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the fact that Maggie and Brick haven’t slept together in quite a long time is an underlying plot. You can also add in the homosexual undertones with Brick and Skipper, something that wasn’t really seen a lot at the time. It’s a little less obvious but still there in  The Glass Menagerie, manifested in the fact that Amanda keeps trying to set her daughter up with gentleman callers. It shows her innate drive to push her daughter towards marriage and eventual children, because in a way she’s trying to live vicariously through her daughter, controlling her every action as she sees fit. And what better way to show overwhelming control than over a person’s romantic and sexual lives?

Coming back to Streetcar, there’s a very strong case to be made for this subject between Blanche and Mitch. “Mitch’s ‘love’ for Blanche is subverted through her attempts to fornicate her.” (Panda, 2). Blanche is used to it from her experiences with the soldiers in the army camp, but as soon as Mitch rolls around, it seems more fitting for her to withhold herself to a certain degree. This fits more into the demure display we would expect, and what’s become typical of Tennessee. Many attribute his closeness with his mother to this writing dichotomy that seems to be present in every one of his works. It’s especially true here. He tries to strike that perfect balance between innocence and sexuality with Blanche, something ideal. Which leans me to my second point on this subject; He always seems to be chasing this ideal, this perfect vision of just about everything he can get his hands on. When you look at where Blanche and Stella came from, Belle Reve, its’ especially true. Belle Reve is portrayed as this wonderful place, where they had the perfect upbringing, as opposed to New Orleans, which only proves to turn Blanche away Her ideals are very much in line with Williams’, and it almost feels like sometimes he’s trying to project that want for perfection through her.

“I thought you would never come back to this horrible place! … I meant to be nice about it and say- Oh, what a convenient location and such- Ha-a-ha!” (Norton Anthology, 1119)

She’s clearly displeased with the entire thing. It’s nothing compared to Belle Reve. But Stella thinks it’s perfect. This is the second side of the Williams coin; as much as he strives for that perfect ideal, he also loathes the places he came from. He found solace in New Orleans, in the way it stood out so differently from everything he had grown up with Stella and Blanche are two sides of Williams that he tries to keep in harmony through the play. It’s a kind of self-expression, veiled cleverly into a play we can all relate to in some ways. We all want the perfect place to lay our heads without sacrificing everything we love and hold dear to us. Blanche and Stella are the epitome of that idea.

Moving on, we have one of my personal favorite passages and one of my personal favorite theories- That Blanche was based off of Williams’ beloved sister, Rose. If you recall, I mentioned in the very beginning that Rose was schizophrenic, and had several disturbing episodes before her lobotomy. Schizophrenia commonly involves auditory hallucinations, something we see quite a bit with Blanche. Her ears are always ringing with the sounds of the gunshot that killed her beloved poet. She hears inhuman voices calling out and taunting her whenever her emotions crash in one way or another. Towards the very end when the doctor and the Matron come to get her, the exchange goes as follows

                MATRON: Now, Blanche!

                ECHOES [rising and falling]: Now, Blanche- Now, Blanche- Now, Blanche!

                                (Norton Anthology, 1175)

This sounds a lot like a schizophrenic episode, doesn’t it? And this isn’t the first time we’ve heard the echoes, They also appear in Scene Ten; “The night is filled with inhuman voices like cries of the jungle, The shadows and lurid reflections move sinuously s flames along the wall spaces.” (Norton Anthology, 1170). This is also hallmark of a schizophrenic episode. Blanche becomes panicked and frantic, wanting to get away from Stanley any way she can. She even breaks a bottle to try and fend him off.

When you add in the ending, it all makes more sense. Blanche is suddenly very calm with the idea of leaving with the doctor and the matron. Where she was once combative and frightened, she now has a sudden sense of peace. As she leaves with serenity, Stella is left broken in her wake. This seems to me like a strong metaphor for Rose’s lobotomy. When it happened, her schizophrenia was tempered, her personality calmed at the expense of her mind. When Stella mourns, so does Williams. He mourns for her and what should have been a better life for her. There was nothing that could be done, but that doesn’t make the fact any easier to swallow. Stanley is unsupportive in the worst kind of way, almost patronizing as he tries to calm Stella. Williams’ family didn’t care much for Rose after she was hospitalized, and it seemed like Tennessee was the only one that remembered her, as shown by the way he took care of her through the rest of his life, even as she outlived him. And so with that, I can say, with confidence, that Blanche is at least partially based on Rose as well as Williams himself, and the ending of Streetcar was Williams’ way of coping with the lobotomy and subsequent “loss” of his sister Rose. Just as Stella lose Blanche in the end. 

Works Cited

Holder, Rebecca. "Making the Lie True: Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Truth as a Performance." Southern Quarterly, 1 Jan. 2016. Web. 21 Mar. 2017.

Holder, Rebecca. "Making the Lie True: Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Truth as a Performance." Southern Quarterly, 1 Jan. 2016. Web. 21 Mar. 2017.

"Tennessee Williams." Poetry Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Mar. 2017

Wiliams, Tennessee. "A Streetcar Named Desire." 1947. The Norton Anthology: American Literature. Shorter 8th Edition ed. Vol. 2. New York City: Norton, 2013. 1116-177. Print. 1865 to the Present.

Stowe's Dodgy and Damaging Narrative

>>My Theme: Sexual Slavery 




It’s been wild gathering all of the best sources for this topic. I’ll admit I chose a hard one to research, but one I’m ultimately satisfied with. The topic of sexual slavery isn’t really discussed in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, not nearly as much as things like Christianity. In fact, I think Christianity is the most overt point of the story, with every other point taking some kind of back seat to the ride. But that’s not my discussion. 

Like many other topics, sexual slavery is largely skipped over in the story. Cassy and Emmaline are the closest we get to some kind of exposure to it, and even that doesn’t become the focal point. When you think about how important that is, given Eliza’s heritage, it seems almost odd that she would leave something like that out. So the claim I’m making today is this: Uncle Tom’s Cabin, as a narrative on the slave trade, is nowhere near what it could and should be. And the lack of discussion of certain topics, especially the aspect of sexual slavery is to blame.


There’s no denying that Stowe did her best with what she had. She was a white woman that had no real experience in what she was writing about. Her intention were all the best, and at the time, that worked for her. Like I’ve said in my previous posts, something must have worked for this book to hang on for the 150+ years it’s been around. But it doesn’t hold up to the test of time. Now that America has moved on from that time in history and we can really look back at it all through a proper lens, we can see everything that she was missing. It was a good springboard to get things moving in the right direction, but that’s about all it’s been good for since. A majority of Stowe’s characters fall into specific archetypes based first off of their color, and then off of where they fit into the narrative. That’s one of the first problems. The second is that concept of “white benevolence’ I mentioned before. What I mean by that is that none of this in the story would have been possible without the ultimate good deeds of goodhearted slave-owners or other well-to-do white characters. 

Look at Senator Bird when he’s first introduced. On page 71 the first look we get at him is the fact that he’s agreeing with the aiding and abetting laws. “There has been a law passed forbidding people to help off the slaves coming over from Kentucky , my dear; so much of that thing has been done by these reckless abolitionists, that our brethren in Kentucky are very strongly excited, and it seems necessary ,and no more than Christian and kind, that something should be done by our state to quiet the excitement.” [pg.71] And yet the second he meets Eliza and hears of her story, he is immediately receptive to her plight. Its helped by the fact that they too lost a child, but it seems all to convenient. For a man to switch so easily, having just talked about how dangerous the aiding and abetting punishments can be, to being sympathetic to a slave’s story seems just too perfect. It’s an instance or convenient writing that becomes a problem later on, but also the first noticeable instance of the “White Savior”. The problem doesn’t lie in the fact that he’s the one helping Eliza, it’s the fact that he was turned over to her side so easily. “It’s confounded, awkward, ugly business It’s important to note, however, that the Quakers don’t necessarily fall under that category as well. They were already sympathetic to the abolitionist cause, so they didn’t need to go through a rapid change of heart in the narrative. 

This is how it ties back to the argument: By giving the characters such an easy way out of things personality wise and not having them go through any kind of internal conflict beyond a little bit of frustration at the situation, it’s ultimately undermining the fact that slave escape was so difficult. When you step back to look at it, there’s really no one that any of them run into that isn’t ultimately sympathetic to their cause. Mrs. St. Claire maybe, but she isn’t the primary owner for Tom, Mr. St. Claire is. Everyone that Eliza and George, and even Tom, run into that holds any kind of power over them before Simon Legree, is generally good to them and their means to escape, or in Tom’s case, are just good to him in general. When you look at their journeys separately, there isn’t much that happens to either party to really screw them up or set them back, nothing that they don’t ultimately overcome. This is the problem with the White Savior. It isn’t an accurate depiction, and it ultimately damaged the narrative because of it. 


When you dive in even further, you see the lack of mention of the sexual aspect of the slave trade, beyond a few passing mentions. A vast majority of female slaves were used in this manner; their bodies were nothing more than units to produce more children for sale or eventual slavery. Many were taken from their mothers at an early age and then had their own children taken away as soon as they had them. Or even worse, they would be subject to the sexual violence of their masters for nothing more than their master’s amusement. Stowe basically glosses over this fact, and when she does use it, it’s only to further the narrative. In fact, beyond Eliza, the only time we ever hear about anything that happened to slaves and their children is pretty much just for the shock value. We hear about Prue’s story on pages 198 and 199, and that’s all we get for it. While not necessarily sexual slavery, it ties in with slaves and their children. Stowe likes to pick and choose when she uses certain aspects in her story to effect the characters, but we don’t see much consequence beyond that. Even little Eva doesn’t react much to the story of Prue’s struggles. “She did not exclaim, or wonder, or weep, as other children do. Her cheeks grew pale, and a deep, earnest shadow passed over her eyes. She laid both hands on her boso, and sighed heavily.” [pg. 199]  

When you look at the actual bits of sexual slavery, IE Cassy and Emmaline, it’s pretty much just for the movement of the story and the eventual exposition of Eliza’s heritage. You’d think something like this would be a lot more important in the narrative, especially when it applies to one of your main cast. The story suffers so much for this, because it just feels so hollow. There’s a lot of Christianity and spiritual references in the story, they practically come out every time Tom opens his mouth. It’s also one of the most common threads I saw in all of the reviews; users were saying how the story was such a testament to the power of God and that it helped return them to faith, or even strengthen it. But anything beyond that, into the actual nitty gritty details of slavery, falls by the wayside. Stowe likes to pick and choose what she uses in her story, and it’s usually only for the shock value or to further the story itself. She doesn’t really delve into anything, which is strange considering it would have been more impactful to show slavery in it’s full brunt and then start turning it around. By dismantling an entire piece in full view, rather than just showing the little bits being deconstructed, it might have held up much better than it does today. 


The idea of slavery in these contexts wasn’t even something that we really touched on in discussions. In the fishbowl, we talked a lot about the Christ imagery that was evoked though Tom and Eva especially. Chris brought ump a good point when I talked about the dehumanization of slaves, particularly in when we were discussing the fact that Prue called her baby “it” rather than by any pronouns. While this is accurate, it seems so skewed that Stowe would include something like that, something that would speak more to the slave-owners the narrative was trying to sway, and yet purposefully avoid any other radical depictions of slavery. It doesn’t feel to me that Stowe really studied the slave trade and the ones that she was writing about. It seems more like she wrote what she thought would be an effective slave narrative. At the time, it did work… with white people. I suppose maybe that was the point, but at the same time, it ended up alienating some of the slaves it was written for and about in the first place. Ultimately, Stowe cherry picked what she used in her story, and not always to great success. Especially not nowadays. The force of the story is something I always repeat myself on, because as much as I’m criticizing it, it was incredibly important at the time it was published. But that doesn’t exclude it from being problematic by the same token. It has not held up to the tet of time as well as I’m sure Stowe would have liked. 


The bottom line is pretty simple. Stowe did her best, but what she ended up with was a short term success, and a long term problem. The way she glosses over the biggest aspects of slavery, especially the ones that would have been the most prominent at the time beyond the immediate consequences like lashings or slave auctions, really shows the fact that she was a white woman writing about an experience she hadn’t been close enough to. What she tried to do was great. She did succeed, in the most essential way. This novel kicked off the Civil War, and helped further the abolitionist cause. But it’s deficiencies are painfully obvious now that we see it from a historical standpoint it doesn’t hold up to what we know about slavery; instead, it presents us with this watered down idea of what it was like. It passes over so many important topics that aren’t any harder to approach. American history itself likes to do that as well when it comes to the history of slavery that we have. There’s a trend of glossing in history, and Stowe isn’t exempt from it. Because of this, the narrative is ultimately damaged, and doesn’t hold up as well in the modern day as it should. She did her best, but it didn’t succeed on all levels.