In “Briar Rose,” Anne Sexton utilizes a classic fairy tale to inform the reader of her own childhood experiences with sexual abuse. Instead of simply retelling the story, she puts a new twist on it and transforms it into an elaborate metaphor: Sexton is the Briar Rose from her own story. Not so much a cry for help as a plea for awareness, Sexton uses carefully crafted words to depict Briar Rose’s and her own struggle to expose the perpetrator of sexual abuse. She also uses her adaptation of the story to address how cultures view claims of sexual violence (particularly incest), marriage, and the relationship between genders. Sexton’s “Briar Rose” begins by the King hosting a christening for his new daughter, Briar Rose. He invites all but the thirteenth fairy to the event, and in her bitterness, she prophesizes that Briar Rose will prick her finger on a spinning wheel and die at the young age of fifteen. The twelfth fairy alters the spell so that Briar Rose will only sleep for a hundred years rather than perish. The king rids the kingdom of every spinning wheel and forces every male in the kingdom to “scour his tongue with Bab-o” (Sexton 109). Despite her father’s precautions, on her fifteenth birthday Briar Rose does prick her finger on a spinning wheel and falls into a hundred-year sleep. Finally, at the end of these hundred years one prince makes the voyage into her kingdom and kisses her, to which she awakens, crying “Daddy! Daddy!” This exclamation implies that Briar Rose is expecting her father to be the one waking her. She is so accustomed to being awoken by his advances that she automatically assumes it is he rousing her from her slumber. Preceding the actual retelling of “Briar Rose,” Sexton penned an introductio... ... middle of paper ... ...cles under her eyes and a look of weary resignation upon her face with an older man lying on top of her, caressing her face. Briar Rose was, in a way, forced to accept her father’s abuse as a part of her life because even if she cried out, no one would listen. When the original fairy tale was published in the early 1800s, most people would have quickly and quietly dismissed her claims. In the mid-twentieth century, Sexton experienced the same thing. Most accusations of sexual abuse at the time were quite simply ignored. Sexual violence was a topic to be avoided, especially when it concerned incestuous relationships (Skorczewski 323). Works Cited Sexton, Anne. Transformations. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1971. 106-112. Print. Skorczewski, Dawn. "What Prison Is This? Literary Critics Cover Incest in Anne Sexton's "Briar Rose"." Signs. 21.2 (1996): 323. Print.
Everyone has once been someone that they aren’t necessarily ashamed of, but something they aren’t anymore. When you’re in school, everyone is different; between the popular kids, the jocks, the cheerleader, the dorks, the Goths, and all the other “types” of people. In “Her Kind,” Anne Sexton shows that she has been a lot of different women, and she is not them now. In this paper we will be diving into the meanings behind the displaced “I,” the tone and reparation, and who Anne Sexton really is and how that affects what she is trying to let people see through this poem.
In “Ashputtle”, the main ‘Cinderella’ character, Ashputtle, decides immediately she wants to go to a ball which the prince is throwing. She makes every effort to do so. She prepares her stepsisters while pleading with her stepmother for permission to attend. She secretly calls upon magical animals which she controls, namely birds, to perform her assigned work. When all of this fails to get her to the ball, she resorts to the use of magic again, this time to produce a stunning gown. Upon her arrival, the prince is immediately enamored with Ashputtle. Though the prince is perhaps not the brightest man, he a valuable and powerful asset for any poorer woman to be associated with. After placing the prince under the spell of her beauty and charming , Ashputtle fearlessly uses magic to inform the prince he has retrieved the wrong bride.
When analyzing a classic fairytale such as, Snow White, by the Brothers Grimm through a feminist lens, it is clear that it is a phallocentric fairytale that includes stereotypes, gender roles, the male gaze, and paternalism.
The incestuous nature of story telling which is featured in Ahab's wife is reminiscent of the Anne Sexton's poem, Briar Rose. Una is in a constant search for sustenance. Her mind as cannot exist without the hope of learning and engulfing knowledge. As a child, it was the occupation of her father to appease her insatiable appetite. This was done with stories and the boundless possibilities she was allowed to find within the recesses of her mind. As time progresses and Una grew, her father started to question the conclusions and presumptions that these internal scavenger hunts were building within her.
Anne Bradstreet starts off her letter with a short poem that presents insight as to what to expect in “To My Dear Children” when she says “here you may find/ what was in your living mother’s mind” (Bradstreet 161). This is the first sign she gives that her letter contains not just a mere retelling of adolescent events, but an introspection of her own life. She writes this at a very turbulent point in history for a devout Puritan. She lived during the migration of Puritans to America to escape the persecution of the Catholic Church and also through the fragmentation of the Puritans into different sects when people began to question the Puritan faith.
To overcome her troubles, she married at age nineteen and attempted to settle into the role of housewife and mother (Discovering Biographies 2). Shortly after her marriage, Anne enrolled in a modeling course at the Hart Agency and lived in San Francisco and Baltimore (Academy of American Poets 1). During this time Anne was also educated at Earland Junior College from 1947- 1948 (Twentieth Century American Literature 2). Through out her early twenties, Sexton began to experience bouts of depression that eventually led to hospitalization (Discovering Biographies 2). In 1955, after the birth of her second daughter, Sexton attempted suicide (Discovering Biographies 2). She was then placed under the care of Dr. Martin Orne, who encouraged her to write poems as a form of therapy (Discovering Biographies 1). “Poetry gave me a rebirth at age twenty-nine” (American Literature 3591), Anne quoted many times during her career. Anne deeply admired and attempted to emulate the confessional poem “Heart’s Needle” by Shodgrass (Discovering Biographies 2). Sexton decided to enroll in Robert Lowell’s graduate writing seminar at the Boston Center for Adult Education (Discovering Biographies 2). She then went on to be a scholar at the Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study from 1961- 1963 (American Literature 3596).
While other, less accomplished writers use violence to shock or provoke, Joyce Carol Oates is usually more subtle and inventive. Such is the case in "Naked," the story of a forty-six year old woman whose placid outer identity is ripped away by a brutal assault while out hiking not far from her fashionable, University Heights neighborhood. Like many of Oates' stories—and in this regard she probably owes something to Flannery O'Connor—"Naked" focuses on a woman so entrenched in her rigid self-image that nothing short of violence could make her vulnerable to a humbling, though redemptive, self knowledge.
In Feminism and Fairy Tales, Karen E. Rowe asserts that “popular folktales” have “shaped our romantic expectations” and “illuminate psychic ambiguities which often confound contemporary women.” She believes that “portrayals of adolescent waiting and dreaming, patterns of double enchantment, and romanticizations of marriage contribute to the potency of fairy tales” makes “many readers discount obvious fantasy elements and fall prey to more subtle paradigms through identification with the heroine.” As a result, Karen Rowe contends “subconsciously women may transfer from fairy tales into real life cultural norms which exalt passivity, dependency, and self-sacrifice as a female’s cardinal virtues suggest that culture’s very survival depends upon a woman’s acceptance of roles which relegate her to motherhood and domesticity.” It is undeniable that numerous folk tales implant male chauvinism into women’s minds and thus convey an idea that woman should obey and depend on men. However, Rowe neglects the aspect that many other folk tales, on the contrary, disclose the evil and vulnerable sides of man and marriage and thus encourage women to rely on their own intelligence and courage other than subordinating to man. The Fairy tales “Beauty and Beast” and “Fowler’s Fowl” challenge Rowe’s thesis to some extent and exemplify that some fairy tales motivate women to be intelligent and courageous and to challenge patriarchy.
“Royal Beatings” begins in the imperfect tense with Rose telling us what her life was like. Her attitude and her circumstances are immediately revealed. Her mother had died when she was still a baby, and so she grew up with “only Flo for a mother.” Her father was not readily available and somewhat scared Rose. Rose loves her family but is not like them; she is clumsy instead of clever and had a need to “pursue absurdities.” Characters are revealed and emotions are discovered but the story does not become about action until nine pages into the story. Then, the reader is thrust into present tense action. Rose vividly describes a Saturday of which she and Flo argue and irritate one another. Rose’s father is called in from his shed by Flo and so he gives Rose what the r...
...present powerful characters, while females represent unimportant characters. Unaware of the influence of society’s perception of the importance of sexes, literature and culture go unchanged. Although fairytales such as Sleeping Beauty produce charming entertainment for children, their remains a didactic message that lays hidden beneath the surface; teaching future generations to be submissive to the inequalities of their gender. Feminist critic the works of former literature, highlighting sexual discriminations, and broadcasting their own versions of former works, that paints a composite image of women’s oppression (Feminist Theory and Criticism). Women of the twenty-first century serge forward investigating, and highlighting the inequalities of their race in effort to organize a better social life for women of the future (Feminist Theory and Criticism).
Hopkinson uses the narrator to spread a moral similar to Perrault's three hundreds year ago. Girls, especially when young and inexperienced, need to be careful when encountering nice and charming men due to its risk to ends in a completely undesirable situation. This is when the grandmother intervenes, she tries to complete her granddaughter's education by notifying her on that special affair and which will provides her advices to avoid the same experience. Indeed, fairy tale has an educational mission in addition of its entertainment. Hopkinson provides a moral to the reader through a modern and revisited tale, maybe more adapted to nowadays reader but without weakening its quintessence.
They serve many purposes, as both demonstrated by Lurie’s article “What Fairy Tales Tell Us,” as well as what is investigated in this paper. Nevertheless, one must keep in mind how dated of many of these stories are; what some may view as having a deeper meaning, such as abuse, may also be reflecting the habits and occurrences of the time period, such as seen in “Hansel and Gretel.” That is not to say, however, that these stories are to be taken lightly. Ostensibly, romantic tales where true love is apparently the only motive may actually be harbouring important ethics and beliefs. This can be seen in the tale of Sleeping Beauty; criticized in modern times for being a feminist’s nightmare, the tale actually consists of genuine messages about the world. It takes insipid daily lessons and turns them into something magical, or, more eloquently, “the fairy tale survives because it presents experience in vivid symbolic form”
As the world has transformed and progressed throughout history, so have its stories and legends, namely the infamous tale of Cinderella. With countless versions and adaptations, numerous authors from around the world have written this beauty’s tale with their own twists and additions to it. And while many may have a unique or interesting way of telling her story, Anne Sexton and The Brother’s Grimm’s Cinderellas show the effects cultures from different time periods can have on a timeless tale, effects such as changing the story’s moral. While Sexton chooses to keep some elements of her version, such as the story, the same as the Brothers Grimm version, she changes the format and context, and adds her own commentary to transform the story’s
Many short story writers have written about the gender and role of woman in society. Some of these stories express what Barbara Walter calls, “The Cult of True Womanhood” meaning the separation of both man and woman in social, political and economic spheres. In order to be considered a “true woman” woman were to abide by the set of standards that were given to her. Women were expected to live by the four main principal virtues - piety, purity, submissiveness, and domestication. In Kate Chopin’s short story, “The Storm,” Calixta the main female character breaks away from “The Cult of True Womanhood” when she has a sexual encounter with her past lover Alcée. The storm goes through many twists and turns that tie with their adulterous actions. Although she breaks away from the four main principal virtues, she in the end is considered to be pure innocent of heart because the action in which occurred happened instantly, and as white as she was, she was taken away from her innocence.
The poem "Her Kind" by Anne Sexton displays an aspect of the author’s life in a more emotional state. In the poem Sexton describes her journey of life as a woman; she remembers all the hardships she has been challenged with and emphasizes that her path through life was not all in sunshine. Throughout, the poem she uses incredible language to describe her hardships that she faced. She overall connects this to the fact that she is a woman. Anne is not angry at the fact that she has to face all the hardships as a woman but instead agrees that she is a brave woman. Although, her journey through life has made her feel constantly criticized as well as an outcast in the female world, she believed that she is just one of a kind.