A Woman Like That, Anne Sexton

1013 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Confessional poetry

Throughout Anne Sexton’s “Her Kind” the reader is often wondering who is the voice of the persona. Many people believed that the “I” in the poem was referring to Anne Sexton. Anne was often labeled as a confessional poet. From Sexton’s point of view confessional poetry is poetry of suffering. The suffering is generally unbearable because the poetry is often about a psychological breakdown. The psychological condition of most confessional poets, including Anne Sexton, has been subject to many literary discussions. Sexton would use her own personal experience from life to create her poems. After analyzing “Her Kind”, the poem reflects Sexton’s confessional poetry about her mental illness, revealing that Sexton is the persona behind the poem.

In the course of the poem, the refrain “I have been her kind” is a very prominent line. The refrain suggests that Anne Sexton is the persona of “Her Kind”. This specific passage makes the reader realize that others may also feel excluded and unwelcome by society. At the end of each stanza, “I” is displaced from sufferer onto storyteller with the lines “A woman like that … I have been her kind” (Colburn, 448). Numerous lines throughout the poem include “I”. This shows that this is a confessional poem, and how willing the speaker of “Her Kind” is to discuss her life. Sexton was never shy about writing about her personal life. Many of her poems tell stories about her life. Her honesty throughout her career has brought her great success.

Anne Sexton had gone through many traumas throughout her life; she claimed she was sexually abused as a child, and had a permanent mental illness. Married at age nineteen to a man in the wool business, Sexton had two daughters. Severe depression followed the birth...

... middle of paper ...

...afraid of something that is real” (Colburn, 145).

To conclude, the poem “Her Kind” has the voice of Anne Sexton as the persona. Sexton has used her own lifetime traumas, and her views on society throughout her life to write an autobiographical, confessional, poem. The poem is a walk down memory lane for Sexton; remembering the hardships she had gone through in her lifetime. Her honesty in the poem creates a very open and heartfelt vibe that compels the reader to want to learn about Sexton’s past, and the contribution mental illness had made to her life.

Works Cited

Colburn, Steven E. Anne Sexton: Telling the Tale. Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 1988.
George, Diana Hume. Sexton: Selected Criticism. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988.

Sexton, Anne. “Her Kind.” In The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton: Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981, pp. 15-16

Show More
Related

  • Vivian Bearing Character Analysis

    1398 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Margaret Edson’s W;t, Vivian Bearing, a renowned professor of seventeenth-century poetry, struggles with her diagnosis of stage-four metastatic ovarian cancer. During Vivian’s time in the hospital, two of her main caretakers—Susie, her primary nurse, and Jason, the clinical fellow assigned to her—have vastly different goals for the procedure. The juxtaposition of Jason and Susie, whose values and approaches to life drastically differ, shows the progression of Vivian’s character from one who values knowledge above all else, like Jason, to one who realizes that kindness is the only essential part of life, like Susie.

    Read More

  • Life of Anne Moody

    1048 Words  | 3 Pages

    The story of Anne's childhood must be appreciated in order to understand where her drive, inspiration, and motivation were born. As Anne watches her parents go through the tough times in the South, Anne doesn't understand the reasons as to why their life must this way. In the 1940's, at the time of her youth, Mississippi built on the foundations of segregation. Her mother and father would work out in the fields leaving Anne and her siblings home to raise themselves. Their home consisted of one room and was in no comparison to their white neighbors, bosses. At a very young age Anne began to notice the differences in the ways that they were treated versus ...

    Read More

  • Intersectionality Theory In Gwendolyn Brook's In The Waiting Room

    922 Words  | 2 Pages

    She questions “why should I be my aunt / or me, or anyone?” (75-76), perhaps highlighting the notion that women were not as likely to be seen as an induvial at this time in history. Additionally, she questions, almost rhetorically so, if “those awful hanging breasts -- / held us all together / or made us all just one?” (81-83). This conveys the questions of what it means to be a woman: are we simply similar because of “awful hanging breasts” as the speaker of the poem questions, or are we held together by something else, and what is society’s perception on this? It is also interesting to note Bishop’s use of parenthesis around the line “I could read” (15). It may function as an aside for the reader to realize that the six year old girl can in fact read, but also might function as a wink to the misconstrued notion throughout history that women were less educated and didn’t

    Read More

  • Psychiatric Evaluation and Diagnosis of Virginia Woolf

    773 Words  | 2 Pages

    I have chosen to write about Virginia Woolf, a British novelist who wrote A Room of One’s Own, To the Lighthouse and Orlando, to name a few of her pieces of work. Virginia Woolf was my first introduction to feminist type books. I chose Woolf because she is a fantastic writer and one of my favorites as well. Her unique style of writing, which came to be known as stream-of-consciousness, was influenced by the symptoms she experienced through her bipolar disorder. Many people have heard the word "bipolar," but do not realize its full implications. People who know someone with this disorder might understand their irregular behavior as a character flaw, not realizing that people with bipolar mental illness do not have control over their moods. Virginia Woolf’s illness was not understood in her lifetime. She committed suicide in 1941.

    Read More

  • Commentary on Anne Sexton´s Poem, A Twist on the Tale of Cinderella

    582 Words  | 2 Pages

    At one time or another, the beautiful fairy tale Cinderella has been in nearly every child’s life at one time. Anne Sexton manages to put a twist in her version of Cinderella, born in 1928-1970. Sexton was well-known as an Outstanding Contemporary poet with a vivid style of writing in her literature. The irony way of word choices was used in this poem not holding back on the sarcasm, harshness, to dramatize the events in the story. The Cinderella fairy tale becomes a makeover of a beautiful poem to a dark, amusing version of the original poem. “I think poetry should be a shock to the senses, it should almost hurt” (Sexton, p. 250).

    Read More

  • The Characters Of Maggie In The Nun Priest's Tale

    705 Words  | 2 Pages

    Being raised up in a dreadful environment with abusive parents will surely cause your life to deviate from ones that were raised in a loving home. Maggie, whom’s life were portrayed with a sense of individuality were purposed to manufacture a sense of uniqueness, and yet her outlook on people and life are anything but unprecedented. The story that started with full potential were written away as she head towards a gloomy future full of persecution and abandonment. Maggie is no different than most people from centuries before and after her time due to her failure in separating personal desires from professional ones which is illustrated in her consciousness in appearances, her will of dependency, and her opportunistic outlook.

    Read More

  • Comparing For My Daughter 'And Her Kind'

    496 Words  | 1 Pages

    There are similarities and differences in the poems For My Daughter written by Weldon Kees, and Her Kind written by Anne Sexton, although reading the two poems at first it is hard to distinguish in what ways the two compare in being but there are a few key important factors both poems have similarities in.

    Read More

  • In Honor Of That High And Mighty Princess Queen Elizabeth Of Happy Memory By Anne Bradstreet?

    1296 Words  | 3 Pages

    Anne Bradstreet wrote poetry in a time when only Puritan men were publishing writing, mostly about their faith and religion. Thus, she was the first woman in the colonies to be published and received a lot of criticism for it. At this time, there were roles that women were expected to fill, specifically wife and mother roles, and going against these roles could have grand consequences. While her poems may seem simple and domestic, they contain a more complex meaning when looked at closely. Through many of her poems, Bradstreet expressed her frustration towards her society’s gender norms and went against the Patriarchal ideas of the Puritan society.

    Read More

  • Anne Sexton

    1725 Words  | 4 Pages

    Often, the reader cannot help but feel a bit disheartened after reading a collection of Anne Sexton’s poems. Sexton herself was disheartened with the prospect of life, killing herself at the age of 45 after years in and out of mental facilities. Her poems certainly take cynicism to an extreme, but they remain the type of extreme valuable to the literary canon. Her poetry leaves the reader questioning the world around him, now able to see stories and past experiences in a new light. And although in the case of Sexton this light may be a shadow, the new depth it adds highlights to us that which we hold truly pure.

    Read More

  • Anne Bradstreet

    1133 Words  | 3 Pages

    The poem For Deliverance from a Fever is a beautiful poem by Anne Bradstreet. The use of rhyme and rhythm throughout this poem depicts to me that Anne had an exceptional understanding of poetry and how to write poetry. Anne uses a great array of words to make the poem more appealing to not only the reader but also herself. This finely written poem portrays to me that Anne was a very spiritual women but maybe had doubts about everything going on around her. The course of this paper will iterate what the poem For Deliverance from a Fever by Anne Bradstreet means to me.

    Read More

  • Literary Analysis Of Anne Sexton's 'Cinderella'

    1211 Words  | 3 Pages

    Anne Sexton’s poem “Cinderella” is filled with literary elements that emphasize her overall purpose and meaning behind this satirical poem. Through the combination of enjambment stanzas, hyperboles, satire, and the overall mocking tone of the poem, Sexton brings to light the impractical nature of the story “Cinderella”. Not only does the author mock every aspect of this fairy tale, Sexton addresses the reader and adds dark, cynical elements throughout. Sexton’s manipulation of the well-known fairy tale “Cinderella” reminds readers that happily ever after’s are meant for storybooks and not real life.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Fun Home By Alison Bechdel

    1180 Words  | 3 Pages

    Her family life is depicted with contradictions of order and chaos, love and animosity, conventionality and avant-garde. Although the underlying story of her father’s dark secret was troubling, it lends itself to a better understanding of the family dynamics and what was normal for her family. The author doesn’t seem to suggest that her father’s behavior was acceptable or even tolerable. However, the ending of this excerpt leaves the reader with an undeniable sense that the author felt a connection to her father even if it wasn’t one that was desirable. This is best understood with her reaction to his suicide when she states, “But his absence resonated retroactively, echoing back through all the time I knew him. Maybe it was the converse of the way amputees feel pain in a missing limb.” (pg. 399)

    Read More

  • Anne Sexton: Cinderella

    1183 Words  | 3 Pages

    Kasdano, Michelle. "Poetry: The Legacy of Anne Sexton." Helium (2007). Web. 31 Aug 2011. .

    Read More

  • Word Choice and Tone in Bradstreet's "The Author to Her Book"

    921 Words  | 2 Pages

    After reading "The Author to her Book," it helps to know about the author's background. Anne Bradstreet wrote this poem after she had received her recently published book. The problem was that she did not want her book published. In her eyes, it was unfinished and full of mistakes. In the poem, she treats the book as a child and uses a satirical tone. Her choice of words and tone are very important to the theme of the poem. Some readers, mainly logical, would think that the author is simply talking about a child. The truth is that she is talking about her recently finished book. Bradstreet shows a mixture of emotions toward what just happened.

    Read More

  • Two Different Attitudes, Two D

    665 Words  | 2 Pages

    In this essay I am going to compare and contrast the speakers and the stories of 'Homage to my Hips'; and 'Her Kind';. The speakers in this stories have very different attitudes, and approaches in telling their story about the same topic. While talking about the oppression of women, both Lucille Clifton and Anne Sexton take the own stance on the situation. While Clifton expresses her proud and self-confident attitude, Sexton on the other hand speaks in a very snotty, self-righteous tone. Each of these extremely influential woman, that I will be talking about describe their own individual experiences. These experiences create a very clear, individualistic tone that makes the poems of these two writers differ in many ways.

    Read More

More about A Woman Like That, Anne Sexton

Open Document