Anne Sexton Her Kind Analysis

The poem “Her Kind,” written by Anne Sexton, is like a walk down the speaker’s memory lane; a dark and twisted memory lane. Anne Sexton, an American poet, was born in Newton, Massachusetts in 1938 and at a point in her life she suffered from a mental breakdown; and eventually committed suicide (815). Sexton’s poem is written about the speaker’s past self and experiences; we could assume that the speaker of the poem is actually her. The speaker is reminiscing on many of the things that she has been in the past, for example, a witch and a caretaker. The poem seems to highlight the speaker’s personal experiences and attitudes, which gives the poem a significant and friendly tone. The readers do not know much about the speaker except that she is …show more content…
The word “I” attaches the readers to the speaker of the poem. The speaker immediately starts talking about and emphasizes on being a witch: a “possessed”, “lonely”, and “twelve-fingered” witch. With the word “possessed,” Sexton is proposing that at times a woman can be infatuated; meaning that from time to time, a woman can be in a state where she has no control over her actions or doings. A woman like this is described by Sexton as “haunting the black air” and “dreaming evil”; by using the connotations “haunting”, “black” and “evil” the author is placing a sinister like image into the readers minds (815). A witch could be an example of an unnatural woman who might not fit in with the society’s expectations or standards of what a woman should be like. To sum it up, a witch is portrayed as an outcast of society. A witch can also be portrayed as some sort of a powerful woman who rebels against and rejects the beliefs that society requires everyone to believe. The author is possibly exemplifying the ways a mad woman expresses or deals with her emotions and problems; by “haunting the black air” and “dreaming evil.” In the next line, the speaker describes her flight over the “plain houses” as her hitch. The speaker immediately adds how the twelve fingered and lonely witch is out of her mind; and that a woman like her is rather not really …show more content…
A classical type of a woman who takes care of her family and keeps up to date with the housekeeping. The woman in this stanza is filling up the “warm caves” with a lot of different things, such as, “skillets, carvings, shelves, closets, silks” and these things are described as “innumerable goods” (816). In this stanza, the speaker switches the tone from the haunting descriptions of the first stanza to a sort of chaotic but friendly images of the second stanza. The tone is chaotic in the second stanza because the “worms” and “elves” are complaining and reordering everything that has been set up. As the speaker prepares dinner or food for these ground and mythical creatures, the author illustrates the duty of a caring mother feeding her children who are being portrayed as worms and elves. The speaker than talks about how these typical nurturing mothers are misunderstood for many reasons, for example, the loss of individuality. During the period of time which this poem was written, the speaker demonstrates how the women were not treated as individuals and were seen to have no other purpose in life other than being a wife and a mother. As a woman in her society, she should be only worried about taking care of and loving her family; and she should sacrifice herself and her desires. Stating the fact that not all women agreed to live in this type of system that the society