Abstract:

The chief wrongdoing of patriarchal societies throughout history and into the present day are their labelling of women as the second sex akin to Simon de Beauvoir’s magnum opus of the same name. Women have consistently struggled in order to put across the existence of their own gender, as well as to make themselves present within the strata of social life. They have given voice to this struggle through politics, art, and a great many other means ever since Mary Wollstonecraft’s penning of A Vindication of the Rights of Women. In this paper, the existence of woman in the poem Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath who is accepted to be one of the strongest writers of the 20th century Western Literature will be examined under the lens of French Feminism. In this poem, Plath attempts to dispose men by correlating them with a female Lazarus symbol, as taken from the resurrection story of Lazarus in the Bible. She hence aims to bring the concept of the woman to a new level in place of the pre-existing patriarchally oppressed female figure by challenging male dominance and by establishing the re-birth of as well as identity of women in society. Plath moreover conveys in her poem the emotions of a woman who selects suicide as a means of freedom and lives under pressure. Lady Lazarus in this context, in its voicing the challenges Plath faced within patriarchal society and her revolt against it, is an important piece that contributes to the struggle for gender equality.

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