The speaker of “Lady Lazarus” is a thirty-year-old woman who has attempted suicide on three occasions, the third attempt having just taken place. Because these attempts have all failed and she has always “returned from the dead,” so to speak, the speaker is a female version of Lazarus, who was famously resurrected by Christ. The speaker never clarifies what it is that drives her to suicide, though the apparent anguish she experiences simply from being alive strongly suggests that she suffers from a mental illness. That said, the speaker’s experience of mental illness takes a backseat in this poem, which focuses instead on the men who deny her agency and obstruct her wishes. The main figure who stands in her way is the doctor who has most recently saved her life and forced her to remain in the world. She describes him as a Nazi both to assert the magnitude of his cruelty and to imply the greatness of her suffering. The doctor is part of a larger patriarchal system that restricts her freedom. Indeed, he’s part of the speaker’s Unholy Trinity, which consists of “Herr Doktor” (line 65), “Herr God” (line 79), and “Herr Lucifer” (line 79).

The patriarchal society to which the speaker belongs drives her not to suicide but to rage. This rage emerges most obviously in the speaker’s bitterly ironic tone, which rings out clearly in the opening lines (lines 1–3):

     I have done it again.
     One year in every ten
     I manage it—— 

These lines have a certain dark humor, as the speaker makes a grim joke about the regularity of her suicide attempts. The irony comes in the double meaning of the lines, “One year in every ten / I manage it.” Since these are the first lines in the poem, the reader doesn’t know yet what the speaker is referring to. But as soon as we learn that she’s speaking about suicide, the joke becomes clear. That is, she jokes that while she’s been successful in making attempts on her own life once every decade, the attempts themselves have not been successful. Although the origin of her irony isn’t clear in the opening lines, it gradually becomes clear that the bitterness of her irony derives from the men who have stripped her of her agency. Eventually, the speaker drops the irony and lays bare her righteous rage: “Out of the ash, / I rise with my red hair / And I eat men like air” (lines 82–84).