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. The double “I’s” are the most important aspect of this poem and need to be understood. Everything in this poem is revolving around them. These “I’s” are undifferentiated, but double. All the way through this poem Sexton uses this first “I” to posses a witch (first stanza), a house wife (second stanza), and an adulterous vixen (third stanza) whose power stems from disfigurement, sexuality, and magic. Middlebrook’s whole reference was about these double “I’s” as she says, “Two points of view are designated "I" in each stanza.” In the first few lines of “Her Kind” Sexton gives an identity to the first “I,” but all the way through doesn’t give the second “I” an identity. Sexton shows us this first “I” characters identity in the first few lines of each stanza: I have gone out, a possessed witch, Haunting the black air, braver at night; Dreaming evil, I have done my hitch Over the plain houses, light by light: Lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind. (1-5) Throughout the whole poem we really don’t know anything about the second “I” other than the fact that it has, as sexton says, “been her kind.” These two “I’s” come together in one way, that they are disturb... ... middle of paper ... ...a convention a life, for that was how I was brought up, and it was what my husband wanted of me. But one can’t build white picket fences to keep the nightmares out.” These feelings added a lot to her poems. She felt alienated as a house wife. In a lot of other interviews she her alienation as witchery, the “middle aged witch,” Sexton called it. Who she is as a poet, feminist or not, her experiences where what she wrote about and how she connected with the world and how she got away from her life as the, “middle aged witch,” or house wife. With the Double “I”, the tone and repeation, and who she was as a person, house wife, and poet. The very end of each stanza in “Her Kind”, “I have been her kind,”(7) isn’t just there. This is where she can connect with both her madness as the witch, adultress, and a housewife, with the “kind” she real was, a woman who writes.
A Room of One’s Own and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Aurora Leigh (Book I)”, the women’s voices are muted. Female characters are confined to the domestic spheres of their homes, and they are excluded from the elite literary world. They are expected to function as foils to the male figures in their lives. These women are “trained” to remain silent and passive, not only by the males around them, but also by their parents, their relatives, and their peers.
Surprisingly, the poem shifts its focus off of love and to a very similar subject, although it has a slightly less favorable connotation: desire. "Tomorrow [is] getting shorter, even as we speak. In this flinty age of materialism we've gorown fond of witches - they embody our with to believe, to immerse ourselves...to be welcomed into imprudence, the elevated tor, unbreakable oath." She seems to be reaching out, saying that people in general have succumbed to materialism, that the ideal of love as it was presented previously was something which is quickly becoming lost to humanity. The people will now turn to "witches," symbolically implying that mankind will follow a false path in the hopes of his own advancement.
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.
Anne Bradstreet can be considered as a strong-willed but sensitive Puritan woman. Her poetry includes a combination of sarcasm and dispute against certain issues involving the unequal rights between men and women, and sentimental writings about her own emotions. She mostly writes about her feelings towards events going on in her personal life and not so much about politics or social phenomena. She did not write so as to put on a show or to be socially correct, but about her genuine feelings. She writes about being a woman and all the things that come with it, family, love, sorrow and seeking equality. She also incorporates her religious beliefs strongly in her poem as a driving force to reconciliation between herself and God. Anne Bradstreet was an eloquent poet who was able to convey her innermost feelings to the reader through various techniques and diction.
Four disturbed characters from four different time periods who all desire the same thing: the destruction of others. Ultimately, this has led to the ruin of them. Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeths thirst for power, Browning’s persona motivated by revenge that has been consumed by the green-eyed monster, the necrophilia fantasies of Duffy’s Havisham with her also being obsessed over jealousy and Brontë’s character who is challenged by the thought of choice. All of these women share and unhinged mind. Society has made them believe as though they have no power. The fact that the persona within ‘Spellbound’ is assumed to be female goes to show the influence society has over us even today. This is why these poems are important, as they still represent the society which we are surrounded by. The characters were definitely not born in this way but were moulded over time. It is very difficult to put yourself in the shoes of these women as they are different in many ways; however, they are all united in their uneasy mind-set.
...estrictions forced upon them. She used her writing to examine, express, and voice her dissatisfaction with the masculine long-established society, and emphasized a woman’s self-definition. She showed it was a woman’s responsibility to safeguard her own happiness as well as to follow the heart’s desire without trepidation. Her use of sympathetic female characters was a brilliant way to advocate contemporary feminist issues.
“Her Kind” by Anne Sexton was initially called “Night Voice on a Broomstick” holding a concluding stanza that lacked a powerful image, theme, and a prevailing tone. With tedious and constant revision, she finally introduced a refrain, “I have been her kind”, that would forever alter the poem. Dual points of view are labeled "I" in each stanza, however, through the use of the parallel yet double "I," the poem crafts a single character identified as a possessed witch to be later disconnected through perception. In doing so, Sexton created a piece of work that cunningly finds a way to embody a state symbolized not necessarily through the words, but through expressions that desire to be understood. Ultimately, without this refrain and that powerful “I”, she wouldn’t have been able to stage the platform into "like that" to deduce, observe, and support her alter ego in the same line, nor encompass these dual characters and symbolized the misconceptions Sexton wished to portray
Throughout history, women have been treated as a subordinate. There have been different standards for education, at women’s disadvantage, different social standards, different responsibilities for men and women, different expectations, different standards for “goodness”, different criteria for virtuousness. We see examples of these injustices throughout the text of Evelina as well as in the excerpts in the course packet.
"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
One of the central characters in the poem is that of Alison, a woman who is married to an older man called John the carpenter, “this carpenter hadde wedded newe a wyf”. Alison's attractions are suggested primarily by animal similes and she is described as radiant “ful brighter was the shining of hir hewe”. Alison’s beauty cannot be separated from her animation and vitality. This, with a hint of naivety, is suggested by the comparisons to "kide or calf" and (twice) to a colt. Alison is soft as a “wether's wolle” and her voice is like the swallow's. A supple, sinuous quality of her figure is suggested in the sim...
After she does this, she is no longer wanted by them. I think this represents a woman who is known to have had sex no longer being wanted because she is “impure.” During the time that this poem was written, chastity and moral reputation was highly valued.
As the author narrates through the poem she tells her audience about, the life of a young girl maturing through life, with the challenges of puberty talking over. For instance the opening stanza uses the innocence of a young girl, who life transitions with the fascinating works of puberty. Leading into (line 1) “the girlchild was born as usual”. Describes her being as any other girl born into this world. Continuing to (line 2-4) “presented dolls that did pee-pee and mature GE stoves and irons and wee little lipsticks the color of cherry candy”. Describes the girl innocence as she receives all these toys to play wit, or can also be interpreted into the role she will take as she grows older. Furthermore as the stanza ends, it speaks about
... –‘. The poem is written as lyrical, exploring emptions, sensations and the human condition using the word I in the first sentence.. ‘Dickinson reminds a reader that the “I” in her poetry does not necessarily speak of the poet herself: “When I state myself, as the Representative of the Verse – it does not mean – me – but a supposed person” (Emily Dickinson Museum, 2009)’.
Although the poem shows us the girls as living “down the hall” (9) from each other in their college dormitory, it also suggests another indirect possibility that, at the very moment of the present action, this other girl, the quiet one, is just “down the hall” waiting to see another counselor during two parallel sessions that the mothers have “seen to” (10). Perhaps, the other girl’s mother is with her, too. The other girl may be “quiet” precisely because the narrator chooses not to give her a separate story. If this is the case, her “terra cotta” lover stands in as
I also relly like this poem. You make a good point as in reference to the sept sisters mutilating themselves in pursuit of the prince, "Barbie Doll" also touches on this. The part of your post that stood out most to me was when you mentioned the advice Cinderellas mother gave her and that you felt that her mother only wanted the best for Cinderella. I think that is part of what Sexton is saying, that parents are telling the daughters to be devout and good, and their sons to be useful, noble and strong and that these gender specific stereotypes start our children on a potentially dangerous road of self-doubt and false idea of happiness.