Anne Sexton

The Starry night by Anne Sexton is a lot deeper than you might think when you first read it. To really understand the way Sexton writes you must first know more about her back story. It explains in the beginning that she was a troubled housewife that later committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. IN which, If you know anything about Van Gogh (The artist of the painting Sexton writes about) her death is similar to how he also committed suicide. This poem is both simple and complex due to…

the easiest poems in this collection to find the feminist message in are “Cinderella” and “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” Sexton takes these two timeless tales and picks out the ways in which they cause readers to condescend women. She does this deftly and magically in these poems and provokes deep thoughts on the ways women are portrayed in the original tales. Sexton does her best to take the focus of her poem “Cinderella” off of how ugly the step-sisters and move it to how black hearted…

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…

when a prince appears. Then the story ends, Cinderella and her prince are forever seen frozen in their happily ever after. Anne Sexton’s poem Cinderella presents us with the question of why society views Cinderella as the ultimate fairytale of happily ever after. Sexton’s shows us that real life doesn’t give us room for fairytales in this dark, cynical, sarcastic toned poem. Sexton starts her poem with four stanzas of what we can consider modern day rags to riches stories, a stereotypical…

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…

Anne Sexton gives us a glimpse into the most intimate parts of her life through her confessional poem, “The Double Image.” Since Sexton is confessing about her life after post-traumatic stress disorder, we would assume that she is always being completely honest; however, we see that some events of the poem are merely figments of her imagination. Just when we think we understand, she hits us with the brutal reality that is her life. Sexton uses rhymes and writes in child-like phrases to explain…

While Anne Sexton and Robert Fagles were both inspired by the Van Gogh painting The Starry Night, they execute their ideas into two similar yet very different poems. Primarily, despite the fact that both poems are named after the same painting, the subject, their experiences, and the speaker of each poem are different. Additionally, both poets stimulate the reader’s senses through different images to evoke a similar gloomy atmosphere and convey the theme of death and madness. Thus, Sexton and…

Anne Sexton’s poem, “Her Kind,” is a portrayal of a women who do not fit into society. The women of the poem are independent and powerful. Sexton uses two voices in each stanza. Each stanza describes a woman who is an outcast. These descriptions are based on stereotypes of women who go against the norms of society. The repetition of “a woman like that” and “I have been her kind” uncovers the true speaker of the poem. “Her Kind” reveals the expectations society has placed on women and how denying…

Analysis of Sleeping Beauty Almost everyone is familiar with the story of “Sleeping Beauty”, with a classic ending that prince saved the princess and got married. I would simply believe it’s a happy ending story if I didn’t read another version from Anne Sexton. Her version is so much different due to her unfortunate life, which expressed more on the dark side. Such a story is trying to tell people that a miserable childhood may influence a person a whole life, and it’s nearly irreparable,…

The speaker of Anne Sexton 's poem "Mr. Mine" is a woman, as tacitly revealed by the speaker at the beginning of the poem when she asks her audience to "Notice how he has numbered the blue veins / in [her] breast" ("Mr. Mine" 1-2). The poem essentially serves as an extended metaphor in which the speaker describes her male lover, depicting him as an "industrialist" ("Mr. Mine" 5) who was responsible for creating her, a living "city of flesh" ("Mr. Mine" 4). The speaker sustains the metaphor…