Though many writers romanticize the mythology of the past, Sylvia Plath is not among them. Instead, she rebelled against the romanization of myth and highlighted its darkest aspects. In Lady Lazarus, for instance, Plath compares her narrator to a Phoenix, rising from ash. Yet, while many would suggest that this was a good thing, Plath portrays rising from the dead as torture. She calls her doctor “Herr Doctor” and compares him to a Nazi as he brings her back to life after she has tried to kill herself. Rising like a Phoenix is usually considered a mark of triumph, but Plath’s narrator – or perhaps Plath herself – sees her resurrection as tortured.
It is, she suggests, something that comes with a price. Plath’s Lady Lazarus – rather than being a story of triumph is a poem of condemnation. Plath uses it to castigate her critics and, perhaps, even her readers. Harris and Frankel observe that Plath portrays these as peanut crunching voyeurs, watching a dead woman in eager anticipation of her phoenix-like transformation. (Harris & Frankel, 2016, p. 63) She makes them feel guilty for taking pleasure in her death and the gruesome images of it that she paints. She suggests that such a view comes at a cost.
This ominous warning is far different from most portrayals of the Phoenix rising. A.E. Stallings notes that Phoenix is portrayed beautifully by E. Nesbit in her 1904 classic, The Phoenix and the Carpet, in which a bird with plumage of gold and purple hatches in a nursery, which a group of children accidentally set on fire. Other accounts of the Phoenix depict it as a bird worshiped by certain cultures, or a remarkable, one-of-a-kind bird, emerging from a nest made of spices and which dies in flame, only to be replace by another bird who rises in place of it. It has, says Stallings, been used as a metaphor for rebirth by Christians and a symbol of hope and renewal after destruction. Atlanta, he says, has made the Phoenix its symbol, because of the way it was able to resurrect itself after being burnt down during the Civil War (Stallings, 2017).
There is no such symbol of hope or rebirth in Plath’s writing. Instead, Plath’s narrator seems to long for death. She tries for it, time and time again. She resents those who keep her from it. She resents those who watch her struggle. There is no note of victory in her resurrection. Rather, she compares herself to a holocaust victim. She compares her skin to Nazi lamp shades. She speaks, not of rebuilding, but on heaping vengeance upon those who take pleasure in witnessing her suffering.
While most depictions of the phoenix portray it as beautiful, colorful and fiery, Plath’s “phoenix” is pale and evokes thoughts of the grave. Plath’s narrator speaks of having sour breath and rocking shut. She speaks of people having to pick worms off her. Her resurrection, though miraculous, is not something anyone would admire. She plans to use it, not to make a new life for herself, but to eat up others.
Plath rebels against romanticized mythology again in Medusa. It is true that in some ways, her portrayal of the woman/monster is much like that of others before her. She captures Medusa’s ugliness well, describing her as fat, red, touching and sucking. She depicts her as a monster who kicks and paralyzes lovers.
Yet, in other ways, Plath’s Medusa is very unlike the story of Medusa that others have told. Paul Alexander, in his biography of Plath, writes that Plath creates a situation in which the narrator flees from Medusa the Gorgon, unable to defend herself. All she can do is recoil. “Ironically,” says Alexander, “these actions are unlike those of the original Greek myth’s hero, a superhuman who slays medusa by hacking off her head with a sword.” For Plath, says Alexander, “such acts of valor are impossible.” (Alexander, 2009, p. 8) There are other differences as well. In Greek mythology, Medusa is a beautiful woman who serves as priestess to Minerva. After Neptune defiles her by raping her, Minerva turns her into a beast who, upon being gaze upon, turns men to stone. Julia M. Walker notes that Medusa has no say in this. It is not, she notes, Medusa’s gaze that freezes men, it is their own. She, though a monster, is a largely passive victim (Walker, 1998, p. 50). Perseus, nevertheless, is glorified for slaying her and for proving his bravery to Minerva.
Not so in Plath’s work. Medusa is no victim. She is Plath’s mother, who, without being invited, breathes and pushes her way into Plath’s life, interferes in her relationships and tries to force religion on her. Plath wants nothing to do with her. She mocks her religion and resists her advances – yet she does not offer up an aggressive fight. She is content to kill the relationship between her mother and herself. But she does not portray herself as someone who slays her mother in glory. Rather, she speaks dismally about the end of a familial relationship.
In both Medusa and Lady Lazarus, Plath strips classic myths of their glory and romance. She embraces only their tragic elements. These she applies to her own life and emotional struggles to weave new and unique stories which haunt her readers and prompt them to reconsider familiar myths.
