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Analyzed cinderella poem by anne sexton
Changing roles of women in twentieth century literature
20th century gender roles in literature
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Recommended: Analyzed cinderella poem by anne sexton
"A woman like that is not a woman, quite,” admits the speaker in “Her Kind,” a short poem written by Anne Sexton, as the piece twists the mother’s and homemaker’s traditional actions into a midnight fairy tale, as they must become as one worms through the dark woods of a troubled mind. On the surface, the poem follows a self-proclaimed witch, who flies, dwells in the forest, and is even burned at the stake. However, the nature of the imagery used, and the couplet ending each stanza provide the initial hint at the figurative meaning of the piece. That in stanza two the speaker works with, “skillets, carvings, shelves, closets, silks…” and fixes suppers, rearranging what is out of order, all suggest the work of a housewife. The couplet ending each stanza makes it clear that …show more content…
For some, the expectation to stay home, give up work, mind one’s husband, take care of children, and even just having children was so great that it overruled the wishes of such women, the social pressure to live a certain type of life tangible in everything from advertising to entertainment to law. The structure of the piece itself supports this idea: There are three stanzas, each seven lines, each with a repeating rhyme scheme (with only one discrepancy in the sixth line of the second stanza). Even the number of syllables only fluctuates slightly, clinging to a general number of nine, with the final couplet being eleven, then five syllables. The irregularities in the quantity of syllables, and the single break from the rhyme scheme among a biblically numbered work do conjure a speaker literally confined in the structure, with the “imperfections” perhaps the manifestation of her attempting to escape what has been imposed upon her, or her inability to fit into the role despite attempting
I chose to start this paper by quoting an entire poem of Anne Sexton's. Why? Because no one told the story of Anne Sexton's life as often or as well as Anne Sexton herself. Over and over she wrote, recounted, and recast her struggles with madness, her love affairs, her joys and griefs in parenting, and her religious quests. For example, "Rowing" touches upon the need for Anne to tell stories about herself, her longing for connection with others, her mental problems, and her searching for God - one could not ask for a better introduction to the world of Anne Sexton.
As a housewife and a mother, Godwin's protagonist leads a fairly structured life. Her activities are mostly confined to caring for her husband and child and caring for their home. Though she is obviously unsatisfied with this, as shown by her attempts to discard this role, she is not comfortable without such a structure. Even when she has moved into the white room, she develops a routine of brushing her hair in the sun each day. When she decides to write a poem, she shies away from the project once she realizes how many options are open to her; the idea of so much freedom seems to distress her. Even when she thinks that "her poem could be six, eight, ten, thirteen lines, it could be any number of lines, and it did not even have to rhyme," the words themselves are rushed, the pacing of the sentence communicating her nervousness and discomfort.
“Whenever one person stands up and says, “Wait a minute, this is wrong,” it helps other people do the same” by Gloria Steinem. Sister Rose Thering was that one person who stood up also known as an upstander. Sister Rose Thering stood up for the Jewish people and rooted out the anti-Semitism in the Christian religion. Sister Rose was a marvelous upstander and inspires me to be an upstander, too. She lived and worked as an upstander inspiring people and she inspires me.
Not only the words, but the figures of speech and other such elements are important to analyzing the poem. Alliteration is seen throughout the entire poem, as in lines one through four, and seven through eight. The alliteration in one through four (whisky, waltzing, was) flows nicely, contrasting to the negativity of the first stanza, while seven through eight (countenance, could) sound unpleasing to the ear, emphasizing the mother’s disapproval. The imagery of the father beating time on the child’s head with his palm sounds harmful, as well as the image of the father’s bruised hands holding the child’s wrists. It portrays the dad as having an ultimate power over the child, instead of holding his hands, he grabs his wrists.
The child-voice of the poem can represent,on a deeper level, that innocence young girls lose as they become women and find themselves being "chuffed off like a Jew," often reluctantly or unknowingly, into the expected roles for women in marriage and childbearing---when fairy tale expectations of love crash into the reality of the Sisyphian tasks of dishes, cooking,cleaning,laundry, child care, when so many women have their dreams and identities erased under the daily grind of domesticity---a different sort of confinement, slavery, suppression, another and altogether different kind of death and destruction of the spirit.
Poetry "should be a shock to the senses. It should also hurt" Anne Sexton believed (Baym 2703), and evidence of this maxim's implications echoes loudly through the writing of Sexton as well as through the work of her friend and contemporary Sylvia Plath.
In the fifth stanza, we are introduced into a shift in attitude. Unlike before, she is acknowledging that they might dislike her work from the fact that she is a woman. She gives examples of what they could possible say such as: “my hand a needle better fits”(ll.26) and “if what I do prove well, it won’t advance, they’ll say it’s stol’n, or else it was by chance.” (ll.29-30). Bradstreet in line 28, is referring to those who dislike her work because of her sex as “they.”
As soon as the poem begins, the reader detects a feeling of melancholy. The opening line "The Muses are turned gossips" immediately creates a negative tone. Muses (inspirations) are usually thought of as being good and uplifting, here they are being turned into something that is generally thought of as being bad. As the poem continues, a sense of sarcasm can be detected at the end of the author's reference to this day. She details the way the women ("domestic Muse") come from where they live in a most woeful way "prattling on" and going by mud where there are drowning flies and an old shoe. Then she ends this section by saying, "Come, Muse; and sing the dreaded Washing-Day." If something is dreaded, a person is not going to be singing about it, even though the men would probably like to see that. The description of marriage in the next line is interestingly negative. " Beneath the yoke of wedlock bend,..." a yoke is put on an ox which is a beast of burden! I suppose the women feel exactly this way because they seem to have no choice in the matter.
The poem itself is made up of the ten commandments, each followed by a hasty amendment ironically excusing Victorian behaviour. However, while this may be their apparent function, their true function is to expose the Victorians for the hypocrites they are by revealing the discrepancy between their supposed morals (for example “Bear not false witness;” (l. 17)) and their actions (“let the lie | Have time on its own wings to fly:” (l. 17-18)) which, relative to these morals, could well be described as debauchery.
Jonathan Swift’s poem, “A Lady’s Dressing Room,” represents a man’s love for a woman as the author, Strephon, and audience explore the happenings inside a woman’s bedroom. Like many other men, Strephon is an obsessed lover whose vision of women is distorted by eighteenth century radical ideals of love and beauty. While the poem is a satire, Swift tries to establish that love is blind and presents that love is only based on beauty of women. By introducing an idealistic lover into a realistic environment, he examines the disturbing end results as Celia falls from her godlike state. As she is humanized, Swift successfully demolishes the ridiculous fantasies of love and beauty, and men are also able to see more clearly behind the clothing and make-up. In “A Lady’s Dressing Room,” Swift exposes the contradiction between idealized love created by eighteenth century society and reality, as he forces Strephon see past Celia’s façade by investigating Celia’s dressing room and discovering traumatizing facts as well as disillusioning him with the help of Swift’s vivid description.
In reference to the subtlety of language, Robert Frost once said, “Poetry is what gets lost
In relation to structure and style, the poem contains six stanzas of varying lengths. The first, second, and fourth stanzas
In Anne Sexton’s “Wanting to Die,” Sexton openly expresses her thoughts on death and her obsession with suicide. While one may have a hard time understanding how someone can choose to commit suicide, Sexton helps her readers understand how to a suicidal mind death is a sanctuary because life is everything but simple. “Wanting to Die” was initially an addendum attached to a letter written to one of Sexton’s friends when asked why Sexton was attracted to suicide, in which Sexton then addressed the question in conversational and poetic form. Her poem is free verse and written in first-person, hinting at how the author herself, was suicidal, making this poem confessional poetry.
...’. The poet also suggests that the woman joins the man in the poem or chant and together they are expressing their sadness and problems ’and now she joins in his dirge’; the poet also mentions that that despite the woman also singing or chanting, her mind or thinking is on something else ‘but as if her thoughts were on distant things’. The poet states that the women to be swaying her head like the man in rhythm with the chants but in a more decent manner ‘and carries like a Turk’s-head, but more in nursing white’.
The poem ends disturbingly with "With wasteful, weak, propitiatory flowers". The structure of the poem with nine verses of six lines adds up to 63, but that last odd line makes it more regular, it makes 64 which suggests 8x8, so that the last line might seem a bit irregular and odd but it also completes the poem (and also the rhyme scheme).