For My Daughter Poem Analysis Essay

The poem “Her Kind” by Anne Sexton and “For My Daughter” by Weldon Kees share similar concepts of gender inequality, but in very different ways. Sexton’s poem is written from a woman’s point of view, while Kees’s is from the male perspective. Written by the opposite gender, and only twenty years apart, both poems share the same outlook on gender inequality: women are less superior to men. Sexton uses the symbol of a witch to portray the view that women hold offensive power, and Kees’s fake daughter expresses that girls are inferior to men. In today’s world women are more equal to men and hold more opportunities, Sexton and Kees use unique diction to show how they saw women, ugly and evil. Throughout Sexton’s poem she uses words such as ashamed, misunderstood, and witch to capture the image that women held evil powers. Beginning her poem with the line “I have gone out, a possessed witch” (Sexton 513), tells her audience right away how women were viewed as evil. In her poem a woman …show more content…
He uses the same diction Sexton uses to imply his dark tone. Words such as poison, blood and cruel all have the similar connotation of being creepy. Kees also uses statements such as “The night slow poison” (Kees 506), to carry out his tone toward women, almost hateful. As we see in Sexton’s poem she lightens her tone toward the end of the poem due to her understanding she is a woman, and has to feel what all women also feel. However at the end of Kees poem he becomes almost hateful toward women. The last line of the poem is “I have no daughter. I desire none” (Kees 507). His blunt statement that he never desires a daughter opens our eyes to his true feeling of women. Sexton understands what women have to go through, but Kees doesn’t even want to try. His hateful tone in the last line tells us he doesn’t have any desire to see what women are going through, instead he just helps to put them through