Fairy tales surround children. They are taught from a very young age to believe in a happily ever after and women constantly needing a man to come save the day. They have repeating patterns like a damsel in distress a prince charming and an evil figure. Wherein Anne Sextons “Snow White” all those lessons of happily ever after are torn down, while adding to the same repeating theme only with a twist. Looking at Sextons “Snow White”, we can look at it with two different lenses, the archetypal lens, or the feminist lens. Through traditional fairy tales Snow White is the fairest of them all, she was the epitome of purity, innocence, and perfection. Through the reading of Snow White by Anne Sexton, we see that these archetypal patterns are just
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The number Seven is a lucky number and brings good omens. Although numbers give us details with deeper meaning, it is not the only archetype we see in “Snow White”. Another archetype that we see throughout Snow White is the distinct colors such as, “Snow White”, where white is a symbol of purity and timelessness, or the color green “he stayed so long his hair turned green”, where green is a color symbolizing hope. The color red symbolizes blood and sacrifice and black symbolizes chaos and death: “And thus Snow White became the prince’s bride. The wicked queen was invited to the wedding feast and when she arrived, there were red-hot iron shoes, in the manner of red-hot roller skates, clamped upon her feet. First, your toes will smoke and then your heels with turn black and you will fry upward like a frog, she was told and so she danced until she was dead” (Sexton).
Both numbers and colors are significant archetypes because they can make you feel a certain emotion just by hearing them in a work of literature. They can provide details to the story that are not just on the surface but much …show more content…
Sexton wrote it with a focus on the feminist theory or a focus on women as objects and as being unintellectual. Sexton wanted to deter us from the light that women are not capable of doing things for ourselves. In the first stanza of this poem, she states many things that can be taken in a demeaning way. “Cheeks as fragile as cigarette paper”, meaning her cheeks could be wrinkled, broken, or burned. “Arms and legs made of Limoges”, a type of porcelain, which implies women are just dolls that are toyed with and that women are inferior to men. “Lips like Vin Du Rhone”, implying women’s dark shade of red lips are intoxicating such as the Vin Du Rhone wine. “Rolling her china-blue doll eyes open and shut”, as in women do what they are told to do and that women are lifeless. “Open to say good day mama, and shut for the thrust of the unicorn. She is unsoiled”, meaning that just because her eyes shut so she cannot say she never saw it happen. Society has the same outlook, if we did not see it happen then how do we actually know if it happened or not. “She is white like a bonefish”, could imply that she is unpleasantly pale and ugly. Sexton uses an abundance of words that point out some of the negative ways women are viewed in
The number Seven is a lucky number and brings good omens. Although numbers give us details with deeper meaning, it is not the only archetype we see in “Snow White”. Another archetype that we see throughout Snow White is the distinct colors such as, “Snow White”, where white is a symbol of purity and timelessness, or the color green “he stayed so long his hair turned green”, where green is a color symbolizing hope. The color red symbolizes blood and sacrifice and black symbolizes chaos and death: “And thus Snow White became the prince’s bride. The wicked queen was invited to the wedding feast and when she arrived, there were red-hot iron shoes, in the manner of red-hot roller skates, clamped upon her feet. First, your toes will smoke and then your heels with turn black and you will fry upward like a frog, she was told and so she danced until she was dead” (Sexton).
Both numbers and colors are significant archetypes because they can make you feel a certain emotion just by hearing them in a work of literature. They can provide details to the story that are not just on the surface but much …show more content…
Sexton wrote it with a focus on the feminist theory or a focus on women as objects and as being unintellectual. Sexton wanted to deter us from the light that women are not capable of doing things for ourselves. In the first stanza of this poem, she states many things that can be taken in a demeaning way. “Cheeks as fragile as cigarette paper”, meaning her cheeks could be wrinkled, broken, or burned. “Arms and legs made of Limoges”, a type of porcelain, which implies women are just dolls that are toyed with and that women are inferior to men. “Lips like Vin Du Rhone”, implying women’s dark shade of red lips are intoxicating such as the Vin Du Rhone wine. “Rolling her china-blue doll eyes open and shut”, as in women do what they are told to do and that women are lifeless. “Open to say good day mama, and shut for the thrust of the unicorn. She is unsoiled”, meaning that just because her eyes shut so she cannot say she never saw it happen. Society has the same outlook, if we did not see it happen then how do we actually know if it happened or not. “She is white like a bonefish”, could imply that she is unpleasantly pale and ugly. Sexton uses an abundance of words that point out some of the negative ways women are viewed in