The Full Text of “Mrs Lazarus”
The Full Text of “Mrs Lazarus”
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“Mrs Lazarus” Introduction
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British poet Carol Ann Duffy published "Mrs. Lazarus" in The World's Wife, her 1999 collection of poems focused on the female counterparts to male figures from history and myth. This poem's speaker is the wife of Lazarus, whom Jesus famously raised from the dead in the Bible. Lazarus's resurrection is typically praised as one of Jesus's greatest miracles, but the Mrs. Lazarus of Duffy's poem has a different perspective. Having deeply mourned the loss of her husband, Mrs. Lazarus has finally begun to heal—and to allow herself a chance at new love—when Lazarus unexpectedly returns to a world where he no longer belongs. The poem explores the difficult nature of grief while questioning the concepts of faithfulness and betrayal. It also prompts readers to reconsider how traditional expectations around women's bereavement make it difficult for them to move on with their lives.
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“Mrs Lazarus” Summary
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The poem's speaker, the wife of Lazarus, tells readers that she had mourned her husband's death. She'd sobbed for 24 hours straight, in fact; she'd raged in her grief, tearing her wedding outfit from her body, screaming, crying, and scraping her fingers at Lazarus's gravestone until they started to bleed. She gagged every time she said his name, seemingly unable to stomach the fact that he was dead.
When she finally went home, she tore the place up and fell asleep on a narrow cot meant for one. That's because she was a widow now—like a glove with no hand inside it, a single thigh bone laying in the dirt, cut in two. She gathered up Lazarus's clothes and shoved them into dark bags, then stumbled around in his shoes. Then she knotted one of his ties around her naked neck like a noose.
Looking in the mirror, she watched as a haggard, emaciated nun (her reflection) touched herself. She memorized the iconography of Jesus's crucifixion and saw her own sorrow reflected in each miserable depiction of Jesus's suffering. Still, as the months wore on, Lazarus began to fade from view. His presence grew smaller until he was no larger than an instant photograph, slowly disappearing.
Eventually, hearing his name no longer immediately conjured his face into her mind. Mrs. Lazarus found one of his hairs in a book, but that was the last one. She couldn't smell him around the house anymore. His money and property were divvied up according to his will. And throughout it all, his presence was fading from her life, eventually shrinking into the empty space within the circle of Mrs. Lazarus's gold wedding band.
And just like that, he wasn't there anymore. He became nothing but a story, just words. Meanwhile, Mrs. Lazarus was walking arm-in-arm with the local schoolteacher beside the hedges, feeling surprised at the firmness of his arm under his coat sleeve. She insists that she had remained true to Lazarus as long as she needed to—that she'd waited to move on until he'd faded into nothing more than a memory.
Having done this, she could stand at dusk in the field, the delicate air wrapping itself around her shoulders like a shawl. Her pain had finally stopped, and she was thus able to appreciate the way the moon looked against the night sky and the way a rabbit ran from the bushes. It was then that she saw a group of local men sprinting towards her and yelling.
They were followed by women, children, and yapping dogs. And that was when Mrs. Lazarus realized what was happening. It was clear in the crafty way the blacksmith was looking at her and in the piercing eyes of the woman who ran the local bar. She was thrust forward into the throng of people, with its sour stench. People stepped aside to let her through.
Lazarus was alive, looking horrified. Mrs. Lazarus could hear the sound of his deranged mother singing somewhere, and she inhaled his terrible smell. Her husband was standing there in the decaying cloth he was buried in, damp and rumpled from having been chewed up by death. He rasped out his name, the name of someone whose wife has been unfaithful, of someone who has been disowned by death and yet doesn't belong with the living.
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“Mrs Lazarus” Themes
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Grief, Letting Go, and Moving On
"Mrs. Lazarus" reimagines the biblical story of Lazarus, whom Jesus famously resurrected, from his wife's point of view. In the poem, Mrs. Lazarus grieves the loss of her husband intensely. But as soon as she's finally "healed" and started to move on with her life, Lazarus is raised from the dead. Mrs. Lazarus doesn't welcome his return; on the contrary, having struggled for so long to accept his passing, she's shocked and disturbed by this sudden intrusion onto her hard-won happiness. The poem implies that letting go and moving on is an essential part of healing—and, it follows, that the past should stay in the past.
The intensity of Mrs. Lazarus's mourning reflects the depth of her grief. She says she "howled, shrieked, [and] clawed" at Lazarus's grave until her "hands bled," and that she "retched / his name over and over again." It seems the mere thought of Lazarus being dead made his wife physically ill. She also says that she tied a rope around her "bare neck" and saw a haggard, skeletal "nun" starting back at her in the mirror. This imagery conveys her devotion to her grief as something darkly holy: she serves it as a nun serves God, and this has sapped her of her energy and vitality.
But as her husband's presence eventually fades, Mrs. Lazarus is able to heal from her loss. She says there came a time when his "name was no longer a certain spell / for his face" (i.e., it didn't make his face instantly pop up in her mind). Eventually, his "scent went from the house" and he transitioned into nothing more than "legend, language." Lazarus finally becomes just a "memory," and this is what allows Mrs. Lazarus to enjoy her life again—"to watch the edge of the moon occur to the sky," feeling present in the moment and able to appreciate the beauty of the world. Moving on, the poem implies, requires acceptance and letting go.
Lazarus's resurrection thus throws a wrench in things. The dismay with which she describes the scene, noting his "stench" and his "rotting shroud," tells readers that isn't a joyous moment. On the contrary, she describes him as being "out of his time," meaning that he belongs to her past—he isn't supposed to be part of her present. She was able to heal only when her husband faded to a memory, but now he's there in the (rotting) flesh, again an unavoidable presence in her life.
Lazarus being brought to life may seem like a miracle to everyone else, but to Mrs. Lazarus (and seemingly to Lazarus himself), it has brought nothing but pain. His return has upended her life and the happiness she'd finally found. Healing, the poem suggests, is a one-way street: the only way to overcome grief is to leave the past firmly in the past.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-29
- Lines 36-40
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Patriarchy, Faithfulness, and Betrayal
On one level, "Mrs Lazarus" pushes readers to question whether it's a betrayal to find new love after losing a partner. But given that this poem appears in a collection devoted to exploring women's perspectives on famous moments from history and myth, it's also fair to interpret this question in a more explicitly feminist context. That is, the poem isn't just exploring the nature of betrayal in general, but also probing traditional expectations around women's grief, sexuality, and faithfulness.
The poem pushes readers to sympathize with its speaker, presenting her as someone who mourned her husband long enough and deserves a shot at happiness with a new man. Yet society, the poem implies, sees this as a betrayal that turns Lazarus into a "cuckold" (an outdated term for a man whose wife cheats on him). By making Lazarus's return something horrific and humiliating rather than joyful, the poem might be subtly critiquing the way stories have often celebrated grieving women for their endless devotion to their lost husbands. The idea that Mrs. Lazarus was supposed to place a dead man's needs above her own, the poem might suggest, is rooted in patriarchal ideas about feminine faithfulness and purity that deny women their full humanity.
Mrs. Lazarus's initial grief is extreme, to the point that it seems like allowing herself happiness would be insulting to her husband's memory. She says that she "wept for a night and a day" and "ripped" her wedding clothes from her "breast." Her life, for a time, revolved around Lazarus's absence. She was like a "nun," starved for touch and dedicating her body and soul to a man who was no longer there.
She remained "faithful / for as long as it took," implying that she believed it wasn't proper to seek new love until she had properly mourned Lazarus's death. Eventually, however, she did move on. This took so long that feeling "a man's strength under the sleeve of his coat" again came as a "shock"; she was chaste and true to the point that she'd forgotten what it felt like to touch a man.
Apparently, this wasn't enough. When Lazarus unexpectedly returns, Mrs. Lazarus's walking "arm on arm" with "the schoolteacher" makes her husband a "cuckold." This idea, combined with the fervor with which the crowd pushes her back to her newly-risen ex, suggests that in society's eyes she was somehow wrong to heal and is obligated to return to Lazarus—a proposition she finds, understandably, revolting.
The term "cuckold" is distinctly gendered and rests on the assumption that it's uniquely humiliating and emasculating for a man's wife to be unfaithful—to acknowledge her continued need for love and intimacy without him. The use of this term hints that the poem isn't just questioning what it means to be true to a lover, but also the ways patriarchy has circumscribed women's grief, healing, and ability to move on.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-40
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Mrs Lazarus”
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Lines 1-5
I had grieved. ...
... again, dead, dead.The poem picks up immediately after Lazarus's death, with his wife saying
I had grieved. I had wept for a night and a day
Anaphora (the repetition of "I had") starts the poem off on an insistent note, making it feel as though Mrs. Lazarus is trying to convince readers that she had indeed mourned her husband thoroughly.
Mrs. Lazarus's immense grief is the first thing the reader learns about her, and she goes on to describe it in great detail. She wept and tore at her clothing (the "cloth" she was "married in," to be precise). She "howled" and "shrieked" with anguish. She "clawed" at Lazarus's tomb until her "hands bled." She "retched" (or dry heaved) "his name," suggesting that the very thought of his death made her physically ill.
Her mourning, these violent images make clear, wasn't perfunctory; it seemed to almost consume her. Just listen to the repetition in line 5:
his name over and over again, dead, dead.
The diacope of "over" emphasizes the relentless nature of her grief, while the epizeuxis of "dead" suggests that she couldn't quite wrap her mind around what happened. She seems to have been in shock over her husband's death.
The poem is written in free verse, so there's no meter or rhyme scheme. This allows the poem to feel more intimate and direct. Meanwhile, the use of asyndeton (the lack of coordinating conjunctions between clauses) gives the stanza a hurried, frantic feel. The actions come at the reader thick and fast, as though Mrs. Lazarus has no time to catch her breath.
Alliteration also contributes to the intensity of this opening stanza. The blunt /b/ sounds in "breasts," "burial," and "bled," for example, help to convey just how battered Mrs. Lazarus has been by this loss.
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Lines 6-10
Gone home. Gutted ...
... my bare neck, -
Lines 11-15
gaunt nun in ...
... a snapshot, going, -
Lines 16-20
going. Till his ...
... of my ring. -
Lines 21-25
Then he was ...
... he was memory. -
Lines 26-30
So I could ...
... towards me, shouting, -
Lines 31-35
behind them the ...
... parting before me. -
Lines 36-39
He lived. I ...
... grave's slack chew, -
Line 40
croaking his cuckold ... of his time.
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“Mrs Lazarus” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Allusion
The poem alludes to the biblical story of Lazarus of Bethany (told in John 11:1-44), who was resurrected by Jesus after having been dead for four days. The poem's title is the most obvious reference, providing the reader a lens through which to read the rest of the poem.
"Mrs. Lazarus" didn't exist in the original story of Lazarus. By creating her, Duffy gives the reader a chance to see Lazarus's resurrection from a different perspective, one that doesn't experience Lazarus's return as miraculous.
The poem changes the timeline of Lazarus's resurrection, with the narrative spanning "months" rather than days. The event central to the original story—Lazarus's resurrection—doesn't occur until the final stanza of the poem; the poem focuses more on Mrs. Lazarus's grief and healing than it does on the "miraculous" moment that undoes all her attempts at moving on.
In the final stanza, Mrs. Lazarus describes Lazarus exiting his tomb "in his rotting shroud." This is a direct allusion to the burial clothes Lazarus is described as still wearing in the Bible.
It's worth noting that Jesus performed Lazarus's resurrection with the express purpose of convincing people of his divinity. Yet this poem doesn't mention Jesus at all—the details around Lazarus's resurrection are purposefully omitted. This allows for a less literal interpretation of the poem, with Lazarus's resurrection standing in for any number of ways in which something from the past might return, "out of [its] time."
Where allusion appears in the poem:- Lines 36-40: “He lived. I saw the horror on his face. / I heard his mother's crazy song. I breathed / his stench; my bridegroom in his rotting shroud, / moist and dishevelled from the grave's slack chew, / croaking his cuckold name, disinherited, out of his time.”
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Asyndeton
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Repetition
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Imagery
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Metaphor
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Alliteration
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"Mrs Lazarus" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Retched
- Gutted
- Femur
- Gaunt
- Stations of Bereavement
- Icon
- Dwindling
- Hedgerows
- Shawl
- Occur to
- Shrill
- Shroud
- The grave's slack chew
- Disheveled
- Cuckold
- Disinherited
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(Location in poem: Lines 4-5: “retched / his name”)
Gagged or dry-heaved.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Mrs Lazarus”
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Form
"Mrs. Lazarus" was published in The World's Wife, a collection that retells the stories of famous men from the perspective of the women who surrounded them—wives, mothers, sisters, etc. For this reason, it isn't too surprising that "Mrs. Lazarus" and many of the other poems published in The World's Wife are dramatic monologues. This form allows these women to speak for themselves and tell their own version of events.
This particular poem's 40 lines of free verse are arranged into eight quintains (five-line stanzas). The use of consistent stanzas lends the poem some structure and also suggests the chronological passage of time. For instance, the first stanza describes Mrs. Lazarus's grief immediately after her husband's death; the second stanza describes her life once she returns home; the third stanza reveals that "months" have passed since Lazarus died; and so on.
By the sixth stanza, Mrs. Lazarus is "healed" and ready to move on, but no sooner has she come to this realization than her husband comes back to life. By presenting the events in order, the poet is able to convey all the time and effort that went into Mrs. Lazarus's recovery from the grief of her loss, thereby making it all the more tragic when she's faced with a resurrected Lazarus.
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Meter
The poem is written in free verse and therefore does not use meter. The absence of meter makes the poem sound more intimate. This speaker is describing with vulnerability what it feels like to try and move on from a terrible loss, and the poem's natural rhythms create the sense that the reader is hearing something personal and real rather than something artfully constructed for an audience.
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Rhyme Scheme
As a free verse poem, "Mrs. Lazarus" doesn't follow a rhyme scheme. The lack of rhyme scheme, like the lack of meter, contributes to the poem's intimate tone. The poem doesn't necessarily feel like something that's been artfully crafted (even though it absolutely is!). The language comes across as raw, unrehearsed, and vulnerable.
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“Mrs Lazarus” Speaker
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The speaker of this poem is the wife of Lazarus of Bethany, a famous biblical figure whom Jesus resurrected. The original story of Lazarus never mentions a wife; Duffy created this character for the poem.
At the start of the poem, Mrs. Lazarus mourns her husband intensely. She says that she "wept," "ripped" her clothes, "howled," and "clawed" at her husband's gravesite until her hands were bloody. Even after returning home (perhaps after the funeral/burial), she remains inconsolable, "shuffl[ing]" around "in a dead man's shoes."
In other words, for a time Mrs. Lazarus's whole life seems to revolve around the loss of her husband. She even wraps one of his ties around her "bare neck" as though it were a noose, a frightening image that speaks to the depth of her despair.
Yet her longing and despair eventually begin to fade along with Lazarus's memory. As much as Mrs. Lazarus misses her husband, she can't stop him from "vanishing." After she feels she has properly mourned Lazarus, she begins a relationship with a local schoolteacher.
Her happiness is cut short, however, when she discovers that Lazarus has been brought back to life. The way she describes her "bridegroom in his rotting shroud" makes it clear that Mrs. Lazarus feels no joy or relief upon seeing her husband resurrected. His return tosses a wrench into her hard-won healing; to Mrs. Lazarus, Lazarus's resurrection is not a miracle but a nightmare.
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“Mrs Lazarus” Setting
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Though the biblical tale it references took place over the course of a few days 2,000 years ago, "Mrs. Lazarus" spans a period of several "months" and is set during an ambiguous era.
On the on hand, the poem contains many references that situate it in the modern world: Mrs. Lazarus describes getting rid of her husband's "dark suits" and "a tie," for example. She also describes her husband's memory as shrinking to the "size of a snapshot," and his "will [being] read."
Yet these modern references are at odds with some of the poem's other imagery. For example, Mrs. Lazarus says that she "ripped the cloth [she] was married in," the word "cloth" suggesting she was dressed in an ancient-style garment for her wedding. She mentions "the burial stones" rather than the "coffin" one would expect in a modern setting. Later in the poem, she describes "the village men," the "blacksmith," and a "barmaid," which again evoke the ancient setting of the poem's source material.
This mishmash of ancient and contemporary settings makes the poem feel both urgent and timeless.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Mrs Lazarus”
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Literary Context
"Mrs Lazarus" was published in Carol Ann Duffy's fifth poetry collection, The World's Wife (1999). In this collection, Duffy writes from the viewpoints of the wives, sisters, and female contemporaries of famous and infamous men. Some of her characters include Mrs. Aesop, Mrs. Sisyphus, Penelope, Circe, Demeter, and Mrs. Darwin. In witty, conversational language, The World's Wife subverts the traditional male perspective on these women's tales.
Duffy was deeply influenced by Sylvia Plath, whose Collected Works she received for her 25th birthday. She would go on to edit an edition of Plath's poems, and to write a piece for The Guardian about how Plath's work, with its revolutionary interest in women's internal lives, blazed a trail Duffy would follow in her own poetry.
This poem in particular, of course, also draws from the biblical story of Lazarus of Bethany. In the Bible, Jesus resurrects Lazarus four days after his death—an event that becomes known as one of Jesus's greatest miracles. Countless works of art allude to Lazarus's story, including, famously, T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and Sylvia Plath's "Lady Lazarus." There's no mention of Lazarus's wife in the Bible; Duffy imagined the character for this poem.
"Mrs Lazarus" is also a dramatic monologue, a form Duffy often uses in her poetry. Dramatic monologues are told from the perspective of someone who is clearly not the poet (in this case, Mrs. Lazarus), and they are often addressed to a specific audience. Other famous dramatic monologues include Duffy's "Circe" and "My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning.
Historical Context
Duffy was born in Scotland in 1955 and came of age during second-wave feminism. While early feminism had been focused primarily on securing women's right to vote, second-wave feminism addressed a wider range of issues including reproductive rights, domestic violence, workplace equality, and more. Second-wave feminism was responding to many of the restrictive gender norms of the mid-20th century, including the idea that women's purpose in life was to become demure mothers and wives.
By the 1990s, when this poem was written, third-wave feminists began more actively seeking to upend patriarchal norms altogether—and with them, the treatment of the straight, white, male perspective as the model for all human experience.
"Mrs Lazarus" does this by re-examining a famous religious story from a woman's point of view. While Jesus's resurrection of Lazarus may have seemed like a miracle to the awed "crowd," the poem suggests that for the people directly impacted by it (both Mrs. Lazarus and Lazarus himself), all it did was stir up a lot of unnecessary pain.
It's also worth considering the poem within the context of Duffy's own relationship with poet Adrian Henri. She and Henri began a relationship when Henri was 39 and Duffy was 16; they lived together for 10 years, with Henri being not only Dufffy's romantic partner but also her mentor. Henri was persistently unfaithful, and it is likely that this formative relationship is at the heart of some of the core themes in The World's Wife.
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More “Mrs Lazarus” Resources
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External Resources
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Duffy Discusses the Genesis of The World's Wife — An interview with Duffy for the Lincoln Review in which she talks about how she started writing poems for this collection.
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An Introduction to Lazarus of Bethany — Learn more about the story that inspired Duffy's poem.
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An Overview of the Dramatic Monologue — A video explaining the history of the dramatic monologue, a form Duffy uses in many of her poems (including this one!).
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A Review of The World's Wife — A Guardian review written of Duffy's fifth collection of poetry, in which "Mrs. Lazarus" was published, by the writer Jeaneatte Winterson.
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The Poet's Life and Work — Learn more about Duffy in this biography from the Poetry Foundation.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Carol Ann Duffy
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