The Female as the Eternal Pariah in “Her Kind” Essay

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 speaker is the voice of the poem, since “I” is used alot in this poem, it is in first person. I imagined the speaker’s

The word formation is simplistic and does not contain words that are hard to understand and read. All poems have different style and line lengths and as a part of this variety "I, Too" consists of lines that are very short and to the point. He does not use much alliteration in the text and his words do not rhyme, but they relate in such ways to keep the readers' attention.

Anne Sexton was a poet and a woman, but most importantly, she was an outcast. Subjected to nervous breakdowns and admitted to a neuropsychiatry hospital, Sexton must have been all too familiar with the staring eyes and the judging minds of the public. Just being a woman in today's world often can be enough to degrade a person in the public's eye, let alone being labeled as a crazy woman. But Anne Sexton did not let society remain unchallenged in its views. She voiced a different opinion of women through poetry. In Anne Sexton's "Her Kind" the speaker of the poem embraces society's negative stereotype of modern, liberated women and transforms it into a positive image. Two voices, the voice of

Norms in society are the expectations of actions in specific situations. Social norms keep human social relations and behavior stable. Norms are “rules” that have developed within a particular society taking into account its values, culture and way of living. Sometimes, it is even the case that individuals do not have a choice and rarely recognize that fact that social norms have arbitrary origins because they have experienced this during the ongoing process of living (Clinard and Meyer 2011:10). Thus, gender norms are sometimes seen as limiting, disenfranchising and oppressive. People who are in less-favored or less-accepted norms are sometimes pushed to “deviate” from the norm in order to achieve some form of “liberation” from their

The Puritans were a religious group who left the Church of England because they wanted to have more freedom with their religion. They thought the Church of England was “too Catholic”. They believed the Bible and its rules were the number one thing to go by and that all humans were evil and had to overcome their sin. Women had to cover their whole bodies in clothing. They couldn’t show their ankles or wrists. They also had to wear their hair up and out of their face at all times, except if they were in a room alone with only their husband. They always were on one side of the church away from the men or in the back on the church. These women in the society that will be talked about have broken laws and have been misjudged.

As a country, we have come a long way to reaching equality between women and males. During the 19 centuries women fought for their right to vote. When talking about gender, there are a lot issues that continue to be present until this day. Women had to fight for equality during the 19 century which lead up women in today’s society to have a voice. Despite of all the improvement close to gender equality, society still expect particular things from females and males.

A variety of literary devices are used in this poem. After the shift, she repeats the phrase “I rise” for emphasis. Similes show how strong and persevering the speaker is. She compares herself to dust. No matter how many times you clean, dust will always come back. She even compares herself to the sun and moon, which surely rise each morning and night, to prove her confidence. The poem also uses hyperbole and personification. It says: “You may shoot me with your words,/You may cut me with

To begin her dissection of society’s almost degrading cliché’s of how a woman should act, Sexton begins “Her Kind” by writing about the witch stereotype, by using two voices, the speaker’s voice and Sexton’s. Sexton begins the first stanza, by writing about a witch who only comes out at night. She writes, “Haunting the black air, braver the night; dreaming evil, I have done my hitch.” (445: Line 2-3). The being that Sexton is depicting is of the supernatural form as she only comes out at night because she feels that she can best express herself at night. Sexton also writes, “Lonely thing, twelve fingered, out of mind” (445: Line 5). A witch that has twelve fingers is bound to be cast out, by society because of her abnormality. The dark and gothic tone the speaker uses in this stanza such as: possessed, haunting, black, evil, lonely, twelve fingered, out of mind, creates an escape for the speaker who is obviously different from the rest of the world. She feels safe from the judgmental eyes of suburbia, she feels safer to express herself at night.

Methods: The poet in the very first line uses he two words “Your” and “my” to create clear separation or division.

housewife, to stay at home. This is my explanation of the essay, "The Cult of

Gloria Jean Watkins, known by her pen name Bell Hooks (the name of her great grandmother), was born September 25, 1952. She grew up to be the author of more than three dozen books, the topics of which range from gender, race, and class, to spirituality, and contemporary media. Hooks attended Stanford University, The University of Wisconsin, and The University of California, Santa Cruz, eventually earning her P.h.D. In her article, “Understanding Patriarchy,” Hooks argues that patriarchy isn’t only harmful to women, it’s harmful to men as well, in different ways. Patriarchy sets rigid gender roles that say women are to be docile, obedient, and nurturing, while men should be violent, dominating, and aggressive. This ideal greatly emotionally stunts men, and makes it so that they cannot express themselves in any way other than aggression. In this article, Hooks was very effective in explaining and giving examples as to why the patriarchy negatively affects both men and women, and that it is up to both to break free from these constraints and work together to end the patriarchy.

Through three types of women, "Her Kind" reveals the ordeals of women who reject the roles expected of them. They often face isolation and ostracism by society. Sexton uses imagery of a witch as a metaphor. The witch is a modern woman. More importantly, how society views a modern woman. She becomes misunderstood and feared because she refuses to conform. Just as the women in each stanza refuse to conform so does Sexton. She does not comply with the formal format of a tetrameter. The irregularity of the poem complements the subject of the poem that not all women are confined to the roles society has given them. Women who deny these social roles have been condemned for centuries because they are considered strange. Although these women have been

Although Shakespeare did a phenomenal job of portraying the beauty of an imperfect woman instead of the cliche ways of a common love sequence, it is more important to divulge into a fascinating confrontation within Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop. In the poem, a glimpse of the conversation between the Bishop and a woman, whose appearance called for the Bishop’s unwelcomed input, is illustrated within the lines of the stanzas. The bishop went to tell the woman that her appearance made her appear that she lived in “ some foul sty.” Hence the bishop judging her, the woman was led to defend herself against the strikes against her character. She began to expose the truth to the Bishop by explaining that “fair needs foul”, and that the way that she chooses to

Since its publication in 1990, Gender Trouble has become one of the key works of contemporary feminist theory, and an essential work for anyone interested in the study of gender, queer theory, or the politics of sexuality in culture. This is the text where Judith Butler began to advance the ideas that would go on to take life as "performativity theory," as well as some of the first articulations of the possibility for subversive gender practices, and she writes in her preface to the 10th anniversary edition released in 1999 that one point of Gender Trouble was "not to prescribe a new gendered way of life [...] but to open up the field of possibility for gender [...]" Widely taught, and widely debated, Gender Trouble continues to offer a powerful