Analysis Of Her Kind By Anne Sexton

Anne Sexton was a junior-college dropout who, inspired by emotional distress, became a poet. She won the Pulitzer Prize as well as three honorary doctorates. Her poems usually dealt with intensely personal, often feminist, subject matter due to her tortured relationships with gender roles and the place of women in society. The movies, women’s magazines and even some women’s schools supported the notion that decent women took naturally to homemaking and mothering (Schulman). Like others of her generation, Sexton was frustrated by this fixed feminine role society was encouraging. Her poem “Cinderella” is an example of her views, and it also introduces a new topic of how out of touch with reality fairy tales often are. In “Cinderella”, Anne Sexton uses tone and symbolism to portray her attitude towards traditional gender roles and the unrealistic life of fairy tales.

The imagery in the poem, specifically natural imagery, helps use the reader’s senses to develop a vivid depiction of the speaker’s connection to nature and dissatisfaction with the surrounding reality. The speaker’s continued use of the “moon” reflects her attribution of feminine identity and idolistic character to the moon. As opposed to referencing herself and her personal insomnia, she uses the imagery of the moon “beyond sleep” to convey her internal struggles with insomnia and her reality. Throughout the poem, the speaker also refers to shining, reflective surfaces, such as “a body of water or a mirror”, to describe the inverted reality in which the speaker experiences reciprocated love. Reflective surfaces often invert the image that is projected into them, seemingly distorting the true nature and reality of the projected image. The speaker’s reference to this reflective imagery highlights her desire to escape the burden of a patriarchal society and assume an independent and free feminine identity. Specifically, the use of natural imagery from the references to the “moon” and “a body of water” convey the speaker’s desire to take refuge within the Earth or in the feminine identity of the Earth, Mother Earth. Feminine identities are often related and associated with aspects of nature due to the natural cycle of the menstrual period and the natural process of procreation. The speaker takes advantage of these connotations to suggest Earth and natural imagery as an escape from the man-made terrors of male dominated society. In the second stanza, the speaker uses extensive imagery to develop metaphors conveying the speaker’s experience of jealousy of the moon

Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice was first published in 1813(Gary vii) a time when women had “few legal and economic rights or even receiving little respect, women can be seen as oppressed victims of a patriarchal society, subordinate first to their fathers and, then, to their husbands who had, of course, been selected by their fathers” (Swords, 76-82). At first glance one might think that Pride and Prejudice reinforces sexist stereotypes, however upon further examination of Jane Austen and her heroine Elizabeth it is clear that Pride and Prejudice in fact erodes the sexist stereotypes of women.

able to get rid of. At the end of the poem Sexton admits the thoughts of suicide are something you can never get rid of, “and yet she waits for me, year after year” (line 25). Sexton justifies the reasons for her suicide by saying that her thoughts and bad memories will never stop coming back because this has been happening for years and years now there is no going back for Sexton. She leaves us with the last stanza filled with unfinished things. This could be a metaphor for her life that is unfinished because of her death occurrence.

The authors use of imagery paints a disconsolate scene of the struggles of young women. Anne Sexton grew up in a rather dismal home, noting abuse and neglect. Her parents were moderately wealthy, but mentally unavailable. Her depression took a turn for the worst after the birth of her first child. Since that severity wasn’t always there to haunt her, it

Anne Sexton was a junior-college dropout who, inspired by emotional distress, became a poet. She won the Pulitzer Prize as well as three honorary doctorates. Her poems usually dealt with intensely personal, often feminist, subject matter due to her tortured relationships with gender roles and the place of women in society. The movies, women’s magazines and even some women’s schools supported the notion that decent women took naturally to homemaking and mothering (Schulman). Like others of her generation, Sexton was frustrated by this fixed feminine role society was encouraging. Her poem “Cinderella” is an example of her views, and it also introduces a new topic of how out of touch with reality fairy tales often are. In “Cinderella”, Anne Sexton uses tone and symbolism to portray her attitude towards traditional gender roles and the unrealistic life of fairy tales.

Reading literature, at first, might seem like simple stories. However, in works like William Faulkner's “A Rose for Emily,” Katherine Mansfield's “Miss Brill,” and Kate Chopin's “The Storm,” the female protagonists are examples of how society has oppressive expectations of women simply because of their gender.

The poem starts with the statement, “a woman who loves a woman is forever young” (Sexton 1-3). These beginning lines set a common theme of eternal youthfulness and lesbian desire. In her introduction, Sexton also plays on the imagery of old versus young in her descriptions of “old breast against young breast”

Stereotypes are so damaging to culture and self-expression, not necessarily because they are false or racist, but more so because people, like Mrs. Turner, often feel obligated to fit in with a stereotype. People go to desperate measures to play the role that they feel is socially acceptable and at times will sacrifice their own happiness. Janie’s character is submissive to the stereotypes that dominate her life which in turn causes her to sacrifice her happiness and her dream of being in love. Hurston uses Janie to show her readers how harmful stereotypes are when a person follows them. Readers can witness this through Janie’s relationship with Joe Starks. When Janie is offered to make a speech Joe imposes a sexist label on her that dictates Janie’s life for the rest of their marriage. He humiliates her in front of the town saying, “Mah wife don’t know nothin’ ‘bout no speech-makin’. Ah never married her for nothin’ lak dat. She’s uh woman and her place is in de home” (Hurston 43). Because Janie still has the mindset that she must do as she is told, she allows Joe’s sexist stereotype to limit her self-expression despite her discontent

Moreover, women get their perspectives of love, and men in general, from their past experiences or from what they’ve seen around them. One loses hope on being happy when a traumatic event in a relationship of any kind happens. Rooney remarks: “A feminist isn’t born a feminist; she is born from her understanding of the world and how her parents conducted themselves with each other…experiences are the platforms in which any life is held by” (15). Despair is the perfect way to describe how one feels when life doesn’t turn out the way one thinks it will. Sexton’s poem shows her view on the world and the reader can tell that she has a sort of grudge with happiness.

In history as well as literature, women have been portrayed as weak creatures that share no place of importance in society. Both Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, and Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, begin with female protagonists who are objects of scorn and derision from others in their respective towns. However, by characterizing these women through the remarks of others and through their physical appearance, the authors show that despite the negativity and their unorthodox appearances, these women have tremendous inner strength and an inordinate power over those who would judge them.

Everywhere we look, we see differences in race, gender, and status. Some people are held to a higher standard and are given more privilege than others. This inequality is seen today and was seen throughout the 18th century. Not many women have the courage to speak out about what happens, but two brave female authors have done so. Jane Austen wrote Northanger Abbey and Frances Burney wrote Evelina, and both novels bring to light the injustices women face. Both female authors used the negative aspect of gender roles that come along with growing up as female to show that an individual can surpass limitations and stereotypes through personal strength.

Many great literary and artistic geniuses have been troubled with deep melancholy and phrenic illness. Anne Sexton is an example of a poet with such quandaries who utilized her personal despair to inspire her poetic works. Sexton’s raw material on the inequality of women in a flawed society has sprouted an uproar for change.

The speaker refers to the night as his acquaintance. This implies that the speaker has a lot of experience with the night, but has not become friends with it. Thus, because even the night, which has been alongside the speaker in comparison to anything or anyone else, is not a companion to the speaker, the idea of loneliness is enhanced. In addition, “rain” (2) is used to symbolize the speaker’s feelings of gloom and grief, because there is continuous pouring of the rain, which is unlikely to stop. In line 3, “city light” is used to convey the emotional distance between the speaker and society. Although the speaker has walked extensively, he has not yet interacted with anyone – thus distancing himself even further from society. Moreover, the moon, in lines 11 to 12, is used as a metaphor of the speaker’s feelings. The speaker feels extremely distant from society that he feels “unearthly.” The idea of isolation and loneliness in this poem is used as the theme of the poem; and the use of the setting and metaphors underscores the idea that the speaker feels abandoned from society.

Anne Sexton’s poem “The Room of My Life,” in which she performs the role of speaker, metaphorically relates her feelings of emotional agony and alarming sense of anxiety to a hypothetical room and its contents. Beginning by placing herself in this room, she creates a dark image that expresses her deep feelings of isolation and despair. Sexton then concludes her work with the realization that the objects within her room are constantly changing, which, according to the poem, are compelled to do so “by all the words in [her] hands and the sea that bangs in [her] throat.” Her expressions related to continual change throughout this piece express personal insecurity and anxiety for writing ubiquitously present in this poem’s lines, her style of