Lenae Gomez
ENG 110.3
Professor Unger
February 11, 2013
Au Contraire In “Conte” by Marilyn Hacker, Cinderella shows the reader a glimpse of her life after the childhood tale ends, a less happier ending than the original story implies. She feels trapped in a constant state of misery and boredom in the royal palace. Without life experience guiding her, Cinderella is in a dilemma caused by her ignorance of the potential consequences of her actions. With the use of irony, structure, and diction, “Conte” shows how innocence and naïveté result in regrettable mistakes that create life experience. The poem deviates from the basic fairy tale through the use of ironic predicaments. Cinderella makes a bold statement from the beginning:
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The poem is in free verse with no meter and consists of twenty-eight lines in one big stanza. The poem has all the elements of a letter with the most conclusive evidence being at the end of the poem: “Yours, C” (28). A letter is a personal form of writing and gives the reader an inside perspective into Cinderella’s palace life. Most of the sentences are declarative sentences, making the exceptions more obvious in the poem. One of the exceptions is found on lines 17 and 18, where the sentence ends in an exclamation point: “Why not throw it all up, live on the coast / and fish, no, no, impossible with wives!” The exclamation point emphasizes the idea that she feels trapped in her situation as a wife. She wants to find a way out of her misery. On lines 20 and 21 there is a question mark on each line: “or cut my hair, teach (what?) little girls / and live at home with you?” Cinderella reiterates that her options are limited because of her minimal experience in the world. “Conte” uses a couple parentheses within mid-sentence. Cinderella uses the parentheses to convey deeper explanation of her thoughts. For example, Cinderella writes, “Ladies / ignore me, or tell me all their petty secrets / (petty because they can’t attend meetings) / about this man or that” (4-7). She does not censor her meaning of petty. Her true feelings show in the letter and validate the rough situation that Cinderella is stuck in. At the end, Cinderella asks her
Cinderella is a childhood fairytale that we all love and remember. It is a tragedy that turns into love and happily ever after in the end. In contrast to this popular story, Anne Sexton's version of Cinderella is a dark and twisted version of the classic fairy tale. It takes on a whole new perspective and is fairly different from the childhood fairytale that most of society knows. The poem takes less of a focus on the happy ever after in Cinderella and makes it into vivid bloody and violent images. She retreats more toward the pain and neglect. The poem is not based off the Disney version of Cinderella, but rather original dark version by Brothers Grimm. Sexton uses a very sarcastic and
Cinderella, by Sylvia Plath portrays a famous fairy tale scene in detail. Plath uses many poetic devices such as assonance, alliteration, and rhyming words. These help create a smooth, silky tone and make it seem as if the words are dancing before the reader’s eyes.
In conclusion, Anne Sexton’s poem has a negative tone and characterization of Cinderella compared to the Disney film. These differences are made apparent in the differences in plot between the two
Sexton’s curt style in “Cinderella” is used to convey a satirical tone. She approaches this piece by first telling four short stories; one references a nursemaid “some luscious sweet from Denmark who captures the oldest son’s heart” (line 7). By choosing “luscious sweet” to explain the maid, Sexton suggests the woman is beautiful and only uses her looks to win the man’s love. Implying the maid has nothing else to offer other than her aesthetics, Sexton questions a stereotype of women and shows her negative thoughts of this common assumption. Sexton begins to
Cinderella’s story is undoubtedly the most popular fairy tale all over the world. Her fairy tale is one of the best read and emotion filled story that we all enjoyed as young and adults. In Elizabeth Pantajja’s analysis, Cinderella’s story still continues to evoke emotions but not as a love story but a contradiction of what we some of us believe. Pantajja chose Cinderella’s story to enlighten the readers that being good and piety are not the reason for Cinderella’s envious fairy tale. The author’s criticism and forthright analysis through her use of pathos, ethos, and logos made the readers doubt Cinderella’s character and question the real reason behind her marrying the prince. Pantajja claims that
The fairytale of Cinderella is a fantasy carrying multiple heroic traits. Growing up in a world of misunderstanding and mistreatment, Cinderella faces the struggles and hardships in which a hero requires to thrive. While Cinderella lives with her well-appreciated stepsisters, she becomes aware of the prince who every woman in the land desires. Once Cinderella acknowledges the fact that she is the one meant for the prince, she aspires to fulfill her goal of marriage between Cinderella herself and the Prince. However on Cinderella’s journey to accomplish her goal, she finds herself running out of the time she is given to do so. Once her time runs out, all of her beautiful accessories and mystical creatures morph back into their ordinary selves. At this point, Cinderella enters a metaphorical darkness in which she has lost everything she needs to achieve her goal of the prince. Leaving her ball once the clock had struck midnight, Cinderella did not even have the ability to say goodbye to her prince, and in addition, lost her
Traditionally fairytales have morals for their audiences. Throughout time, these stories develop themes and ideas that allow readers to discover their purpose. These versions let the audience envision the story from a newer perspective. Modified versions reveal the underlying cause of the storyline and its characters. It is clear that “The Little Glass Slipper” published by Charles Perrault in 1697 and “Cinderella” published by Brothers Grimm in 1812, display the overall modification of the main idea. Within both tales these themes can be represented through the change in time, the overall plot and character development.
Many generations of children and adults are inspired by the fantasies of fairy tales. This effect has a greater influence on the little girls that base their childhood on these stories. However, Anne Sexton’s Cinderella expresses a story about the fictional character Cinderella through a woman’s point of view. The poem portrays the truth behind the traditional ideas of the classic fairy tale. Sexton’s uses humor to mock the original fairy tale to expose the truth that many people don’t recognize. Through Sexton’s alternative of the fairy tale, the reader can infer that Sexton’s poem resembles her life, and the life of many others. Sexton expresses herself in the escapism she pursued, and revealing the truth about what the media portrays of
‘Cinderella’ 'Cinderella' is a poem written by Anne Sexton stating that fairytales are unrealistic. Sexton includes various effective language features in her poem such as metaphor, simile and sarcasm to emphasise how preposterous fairytales truly are. This poem argues that fairytales are outrageous and untrustworthy. Firstly, Sexton uses a lot of similes to express how perfect or horrible someone or something genuinely is.
Charles Perrault’s fairy tale “Cinderella” is a story of a beautiful and kind girl who does not have a desirable family. Cinderella lives with her stepmother and stepsisters; they are all rude women that mistreat Cinderella. There is a ball that the girls are invited to, but only the stepsisters are allowed to go. Cinderella’s fairy godmother appears and sends her to the ball in a beautiful gown, coach, rodents-turned-horses-and-footmen. The prince falls in love with Cinderella who loses her shoe on the way home.
In Anne Sexton’s poem “Cinderella” she retells the Grimm Brothers’ version of the fairytale. She keeps the same storyline as in what happens to the characters, but she adds in some extra parts. The most added and influential part is the line “That story”. The repetition of this line brings a whole new tone to the “happily ever after” ending. According to blogger Benjamin Lim, “This lends a whole new perspective to the story of Cinderella from being a childhood rags to riches fairytale to being one that is cliché or looked upon with negative feelings.” These negative feelings are that Cinderella and the prince are not living a happy ending.
The main message behind the Cinderella fairytale is that you should always proceed for what you believe in and never stop fulfilling your dream because the main title role Cinderella never gave up even after being enslaved
As Keats has his nightingale, and how Cinderella has her fairy godmother and Adeline, her Aunt. They all act as some counterpart towards what discontents them; the physical world and for Cinderella and Adeline, being unwanted/unloved. The nightingale’s song makes him extremely happy and Cinderella’s fairy godmother enables her to attend the ball, although in Chinese Cinderella, Adeline’s Aunt does not allow her to attend university (since she was separated from her and didn’t know of her current status) but instead is the fundamental that drives (her grandpa as well) her to pursue her dream, which eventually gets her into university, by her father’s approval. The last two lines of the poem (“was it a vision, or a waking dream? fled is that
Walt Disney’s adaptation of “Cinderella” is one of the sweetest and most popular Disney stories. However, the original story of “Cinderella”, written by the Grimm Brothers’, is anything but sweet. The Grimm Brothers’ story focuses on a child that is abused and neglected by her family. Besides the abuse, this fairy tale is extremely brutal and gory. The Grimm Brothers’ also made this story exceptionally complicated, especially for the young children it was written for. Because this story contained remarkably dark elements, parents began to believe that the Grimm Brothers’ tales were too violent for their children. In 1950, Disney made this violent and complex fairy tale into a simpler and more appropriate tale while still maintaining the story’s basic plot. Although both stories are extremely different from one another, they each share many similarities.
Anne Sexton was an American poet, known for her highly intimate and sometimes even controversial writing style. She started writing poetry in 1952 after being advised to do so by her psychiatrist, whom she has been meeting to address her recessing mental health. In one of the collections, called Trasformations, Sexton re-tells Grimm’s Fairy Tales in her own unique confessional style, often using the absurdity of these stories to expose flaws and complexity of the surrounding world. By slightly mocking the themes of the fairytales, Sexton succeeds in making us question what is underneath their perfect facades. I would like to concentrate onto her re-tell of Cinderella and how it differs from the Brothers Grimm’s version.