Symbolism in Sylvia Plath's Poem "Lady Lazarus"

In brief, we can imagine Plath expresses her aggressive language and ironic tone in 'Daddy'. Plath shows her extreme rage through inequality, and male dominance. Many audiences praise for her honesty when she dares to show her anger toward men in the Victorian Age. “Daddy” should be praised as one of the best feminist works of the time. At the beginning of the poem, she wants to kill her “Daddy”, and at the end, she says her father is a “bastard”; apparently, he makes her soul die.

Appearing in the collection of poems “Ariel”, and being published in 1965, two years after Plath commits suicide, the “Lady Lazarus” is a poem explicitly talking about the suicide of a woman, who has to fight against her mental instability to find a reason not to die, and instead of being reborn stronger like a phoenix; she finally chooses the death. I think Plath seems to consider herself as a narrator of this story, since the details of Lady Lazarus’ life are likely related to Plath herself.

In the first line of the poem, the narrator mention 'it', it can be anything, it is a mysterious object; but I think the narrator straightly means “it” as the death. The narrator, Lady Lazarus confesses that she will try to kill her herself every ten years. “I have done it again./ One year in every ten/ I manage it—” ( Plath 1-3). However, I believe she still manages the death, she still could recover her mind after attempting to take her life. The thing is in the control.

In this poem, Plath used the image of creatures to symbolize the Lady's life. For instance, “I am only thirty./ And like the cat I have nine times to die.” (Plath 20-21); in myths, some old stories feature the cats have nine lives, and the speaker uses the image of a cat to compare her life. Since the cat is a metaphor for the long-lasting life, or the number of lives that people always want to have; but in this case, the speaker uses cat to count the number of times she can die. I still wonder about the fact of a cat; besides the spiritual element, if we analyze this on science facts, so what is the result?

According to an online article called “The complicated truth about a cat’s purr” from BBC, the research shows that 'One hypothesis is that the purr is a powerful healing action.' and 'It's thought that the vibrations from the activity are physically rejuvenating- a way for the cat to ‘heal' itself after stress' (Dowling), the cat can heal its bone and muscles too.

I do not know whether Plath knows that cat has self-healing ability, but she just uses the image of a cat by chance to present the rebirth and reformation. And this fact completely appropriate poem’s rhythm. So, the speaker says that she might have nine times to die, then she states, “This is Number Three.” (Plath 22); and now when she is thirty years old, which means she has already attempted to kill herself three times. This is just my own perspective, the speaker wants to die many times, but then after each attempt, she heals and reforms herself in a better way, she dies to live better.