In Adrienne Su’s “Female Infanticide: a Guide for Mothers” and Anne Sexton’s “Her Kind”, the two poems present a feminist theme to the reader; the works both show that women should be celebrated instead of condemned. One tactic that Sexton and Su commonly utilise in their works is the use of sound in order to emphasize the themes of their respective works, however they each do so in distinctive manners. Su and Sexton utilise different approaches to sound; Su focuses on the natural music of the piece and the use of half rhymes whereas Sexton focuses on the twisting of traditional metres and rhyme schemes. An additional distinction is while the two authors were writing during the Modernist period of literature, only one of them used free verse.
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Adrienne Su uses satire and dark humour in order to show the faults in the practice of killing and disowning daughters that happens in certain parts of the world. Su also portrays a extraordinarily bleak topic in the style of a self-help column in order to draw attention to the ludicrousness of supressing an entire gender. Anne Sexton portrays her feminist message in a more direct manner. Sexton shows the similarities between the persecution of witches and the way women are put down. Throughout the poem, Sexton reclaims power for women by giving the witch more power in each stanza. In the first stanza, the woman is not particularly defined and is therefore not exceptionally tough, “A woman like that is not a woman, quite,” (Sexton 6). In the second stanza the woman is a more defined character, but is, “misunderstood,” (Sexton 13). In the final stanza, the woman becomes, “not ashamed to die,”(Sexton 20) and thus has become strong enough to have power over death. Another way that Sexton reclaims a woman’s power is by turning the term “witch” from a negative term to a term of empowerment. She does this through reclamation by calling the poem “Her Kind” and by ending each stanza with, “I have been her kind,” (Sexton …show more content…
Almost all of the lines in the poem follow a common rhyme scheme: the end lines rhyme in an alternating AB pattern. The lines end solely at the end of each line and not in the middle of the lines. As well, each of the rhymes are full rhymes as opposed to half rhymes. During the modernist period, the use of natural, everyday speech was encouraged and poems often did not rhyme. However, “Her Kind”, utilizes a strict rhyme scheme. This use of a strict rhyme scheme thus echoes the past and old standards. The use of a traditional rhyme scheme mirrors the traditional views of both witches and women that are seen throughout the poem. The only time that the rhyme scheme is broken is with line 13, “A woman like that is misunderstood,” (Sexton 13). Line 13 rhymes with the line three lines above, line 10, as opposed to the line two lines above it. In a way this line is, “misunderstood,” (Sexton 13) like the woman in the poem. This use of a broken rhyme scheme that confuses the flow of the poem mirrors how women can be
Adrienne Su uses satire and dark humour in order to show the faults in the practice of killing and disowning daughters that happens in certain parts of the world. Su also portrays a extraordinarily bleak topic in the style of a self-help column in order to draw attention to the ludicrousness of supressing an entire gender. Anne Sexton portrays her feminist message in a more direct manner. Sexton shows the similarities between the persecution of witches and the way women are put down. Throughout the poem, Sexton reclaims power for women by giving the witch more power in each stanza. In the first stanza, the woman is not particularly defined and is therefore not exceptionally tough, “A woman like that is not a woman, quite,” (Sexton 6). In the second stanza the woman is a more defined character, but is, “misunderstood,” (Sexton 13). In the final stanza, the woman becomes, “not ashamed to die,”(Sexton 20) and thus has become strong enough to have power over death. Another way that Sexton reclaims a woman’s power is by turning the term “witch” from a negative term to a term of empowerment. She does this through reclamation by calling the poem “Her Kind” and by ending each stanza with, “I have been her kind,” (Sexton …show more content…
Almost all of the lines in the poem follow a common rhyme scheme: the end lines rhyme in an alternating AB pattern. The lines end solely at the end of each line and not in the middle of the lines. As well, each of the rhymes are full rhymes as opposed to half rhymes. During the modernist period, the use of natural, everyday speech was encouraged and poems often did not rhyme. However, “Her Kind”, utilizes a strict rhyme scheme. This use of a strict rhyme scheme thus echoes the past and old standards. The use of a traditional rhyme scheme mirrors the traditional views of both witches and women that are seen throughout the poem. The only time that the rhyme scheme is broken is with line 13, “A woman like that is misunderstood,” (Sexton 13). Line 13 rhymes with the line three lines above, line 10, as opposed to the line two lines above it. In a way this line is, “misunderstood,” (Sexton 13) like the woman in the poem. This use of a broken rhyme scheme that confuses the flow of the poem mirrors how women can be