Anne Sexton
“A balanced presentation of Sexton would include mention of her major themes, most of which are touched upon in the selection of poems here: religious quest, transformation and dismantling of myth, the meanings of gender, inheritance and legacy, the search for fathers, mother-daughter relationships, sexual anxiety, madness and suicide, issues of female identity,” (Hall 1).
Through a variety of her poems Sexton has conveyed her life by paralleling it to Disney stories, stories that are famous and well-known in the world. She relates herself with the princesses from some of Walt Disney’s famous movies. She takes their world of perfection and fantasy and uses it as an escape from her world of depression and agony.
Depression is an illness that is so hard to work through, so difficult to get rid of or even to put in check. Anne Sexton was said to have post partum depression, and was diagnosed with mental illness; she was in and out of hospitals throughout her whole life and eventually lost contact with one of her daughters due to it. She decided that killing herself was the best way to escape everything, and thus throughout most of her life she attempted suicide multiple times. Sexton’s psychiatrist, Martin Orne, thought that it would be helpful for Sexton to write poetry, and so she entered into poetry workshops and became well known as a poet who paralleled events in her life and the emotions she was feeling to the poems she wrote. She used her poetry to express the emotional anguish that characterized her life. “Anne suffered several serious emotional setbacksâÂ?¦Anne ‘was intermittently hospitalized at Westwood Lodge, in Westwood Massachusetts, for attempted suicideâÂ?¦” (Hall 6). This was after Sexton’s first child’s birth; she was unable to be a mother and sunk deeper into depression attempting suicide many more times. Then she finally found an outlet in writing poetry, a way to express the devastation in her life, the unending depression and the helplessness of not being able to do anything. But, during the beginning of her career she still suffered quite a bit. “During these early years of her career, Sexton experienced personal tragedy along with her professional success. She checked herself in and out of mental institutions,” (Hall 7). Even though Sexton sought release through her poetry she did not quite gain anything too drastic from it, she still sought help in mental institutions and such.
Mental institutions, depression, attempted suicide, all of these things characterized Anne Sexton’s life, but there is another way to view her and her actions. Many people considered Sexton to be unfortunate in her life, with all of the problems she had but in a way she brought a number of those problems on herself. “âÂ?¦psychiatrist Martin Orne reports having asked Sexton early in treatment whether there was anything she felt she could do well, she replied she could be a good prostitute and help me feel sexually powerful,” (Anne Sexton Controversy 1). Sexton must have viewed herself as pretty low, someone undeserving of respect because she said that the one thing that she could possibly be good at is prostitution. Selling the body for money, to let others do sexual things to it is degrading; in moral standards it is wrong. Therefore, looking at what Sexton says here, she looks at herself as undeserving of the privileges and joys that life has to offer. She looks down upon herself, she does not see herself as deserving of the life she has been given. “Both clinicians âÂ?¦ succeeded in feeding Sexton’s inflated sense of personal importance and her already distorted view of her own sexual power,” (Anne Sexton Controversy 1). Sexton viewed herself as a sexual person with no restraints and part of the reason why she was in hospitals on so many occasions is due to the fact that Sexton was restrained and could not enjoy some of the freedoms she so earnestly wanted. Sexton used her disability, her mental illness to get away with various things; she wanted to be coddled. “âÂ?¦Sexton has been lionized as a feminist anti-hero, a victim of the oppressive conventionality of the post-war period; she was also very much a victimizer. She was a victimizer in that she tyrannized her family with her abusive mood lability [sic] and seduced her therapists into dealing with her as someone quite extraordinary-a literary enfant terrible,” (Anne Sexton Controversy 2). Sexton took advantage of her family and her situation in life; she tried to boss them around and she tried to get her therapist involved in a sexual relationship with her. Sexton’s problems went beyond depression; they went deeper into a psychological aspect. She was quite obsessed with her sexual prowess. She tried with her therapist on numerous occasions to begin a sexual relationship. She was psychologically disturbed in this aspect because she needed to feel good about herself and by succeeding in her quest to begin sexual relationships with different men she felt that somehow she was wanted. And yet, this was not enough for her, she still had difficulty with herself and attempted suicide, still being obsessed with how strong her sexual aura was.
Poetry written by Sexton takes on an air of despair of lacking in emotions that label a person as happy, or excited to be alive. Two of Sexton’s poems portray exactly how well she lacks the feelings that make living worth while: “Despair,” and “The Dead Heart.” These two poems speak of how Sexton seems to be chasing despair through her life, through the dark passages, the battles and the paths that have a potential light illuminating them.
“Who is he?
A railroad track toward hell?
Breaking like a stick of furniture?
The hope that suddenly overflows the cesspool?
The love that goes down the drain like spit?
The love that said forever, forever
and then runs you over like a truck?
Are you a prayer that floats into a radio advertisement?
Despair,
I don’t like you very well.
You don’t suit my clothes or my cigarettes.
Why do you locate here
as large as a tank,
aiming at one half of a lifetime?
Couldn’t you just go float into a tree
instead of locating here at my roots,
forcing me out of the life I’ve led
when it’s been my belly so long?
All right!
I’ll take you along on the trip
where for so many years
my arms have been speechless” (“Despair” American Poets).
This poem by Sexton conveys the fact that despair will follow her wherever she goes, her trip to hell or just on the radio as she sits in her car or her home. Sexton expresses how she does not like despair; she does not want it with her on her journey through life. Yet, she concedes to it, in her life and in this poem, she lets it take over.
“It is not a turtle
hiding in its little green shell.
It is not a stone
to pick up and put under your black wing.
It is not a subway car that is obsolete.
It is not a lump of coal that you could light.
It is a dead heart.
It is inside of me.
It is a stranger
yet once it was agreeable,
opening and closing like a clam.
Take the first two lines into consideration; they can directly apply to Sexton’s life. In a way Sexton tried to isolate herself from the world, to protect her, by admitting herself into mental hospitals. She “opened and closed like clams,” her progress went from good to bad, ups and downs.
What it has cost me you can’t imagine,
shrinks, priests, lovers, children, husbands,
friends and all the lot.
An expensive thing it was to keep going.
It gave back too.
Don’t deny it!
I half wonder if April would bring it back to life?
A tulip? The first bud?
But those are just musings on my part,
the pity one has when one looks at a cadaver.
This stanza illustrates a very personal part of Sextons life; it is literally her confession of losing and gaining the people that are close to her in her life. At one point when Sexton went into the mental hospital she lost contact with her youngest daughter and that relationship soured; her daughter did not care to be in her life anymore. She also went through different shrinks and tried with all of them to begin a sexual relationship. Then after each therapist was discarded it was like a lover thrown to the side; forgotten. In the later stages of her life Sexton began to push her husband away, she divorced him even though he protested vehemently.
How did it die?
I called it EVIL.
I said to it, your poems stink like vomit.
I didn’t stay to hear the last sentence.
It died on the word EVIL.
It did it with my tongue.
The tongue, the Chinese say,
is like a sharp knife:
it kills
without drawing blood.” (“The Dead Heart” American Poets).
This poem of Sexton’s compares her heart to something that hides and shelters itself from the outside when danger is near. She expresses how she tries so hard to keep it from getting hurt, from being broken and yet “it is not a stone” and therefore can still feel. She lets it get the best of her; she gave up numerous things in order to get her heart back to life. The way she finally got it to concede to pain and hurt, and to get over such feelings is by only expecting the worse, thus the deep depression she found herself in.
Anne Sexton expressed her life through her poems, and there is a very select few where she paralleled her life through some of Walt Disney’s most famous princess stories. Stories such as Sleeping Beauty which parallels Sexton’s poem of “Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty),” Cinderella paralleling Sexton’s poem entitled “Cinderella” and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs which parallels Sexton’s poem “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” Through these poems Sexton learned to escape into a world of fantasy, a world that appeared to be perfect, and through her poems and took that perfection and distorted it with her life. She tried to make her life match up with that of the characters in these Disney movies; she tried to escape into fantasy. But, this fantasy, this alternate realm was not so much like the movies and the books that the concepts stemmed from. She wrote poems as an escape into a fantasy world and then looked at that world and found it to be too perfect so, in her poems she altered it so that it would not be perfect; a world more like her own.
“Briar Rose
Was an insomniac�
She could not nap
or lie in sleep �
� I must not sleep
for while I’m asleep I’m ninety
and think I’m dying.
Death rattles my throat
like a marble.” (“Briar Rose” American Poets).
Sexton took the story of Sleeping Beauty and turned it into part of her life, the part where sleep was troublesome and life was not as simple and easy as having the prince break through the thorns to reach his “true love.” Thus, she told of numerous princes trying and only one making it through, after a hundred years.
“Many princes
tried to get through the brambles
for they had heard much of Briar Rose
but they had not scoured their tongues
so they were held by the thorns
and thus were crucified.
In due time
a hundred years passed
and a prince got through.” (“Briar Rose” American Poets).
This was not the only poem that connected Sexton’s life to Disney, one of the most famous stories and most well known was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Sexton portrayed Snow White as ignorant; she was told to do something and disobeyed not once but twice.
“Looking glass upon the wall . . .
The mirror told
and so the queen dressed herself in rags
and went out like a peddler to trap Snow White.
She went across seven mountains.
She came to the dwarf house
and Snow White opened the door
and bought a bit of lacing.
The queen fastened it tightly
around her bodice,
as tight as an Ace bandage,
so tight that Snow White swooned.
She lay on the floor, a plucked daisy.
When the dwarfs came home they undid the lace
and she revived miraculously.
She was as full of life as soda pop.
Beware of your stepmother,
they said.
She will try once more.
Snow White, the dumb bunny,
opened the door
and she bit into a poison apple
and fell down for the final time.
When the dwarfs returned
they undid her bodice,
they looked for a comb,
but it did no good.
Though they washed her with wine
and rubbed her with butter
it was to no avail.
She lay as still as a gold piece.” (“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” American Poets). Snow White heard the Dwarfs loud and clear but still opened the door and was tied up with a lace ribbon and left unconscious. Then, a second time she opened the door and was greeted by the same woman, therefore, she should have known better; yet she still took what was offered and was left to suffer the consequences. Sexton knew that throughout life people will do things more than once, knowing they are wrong or knowing that what the effect will be is not the one wanted. Yet, people still do these things, they are fools in a sense and Sexton considered herself to be one. Look at her life; she attempted suicide how many times, she should have gotten it right with the numerous occasions she tried. But, she did not and therefore she had to deal with the consequences of her actions, being in a hospital. Looking at this poem though, you can relate it to Sexton’s narcissism, the selfishness she got wrapped up in due to her declining health and depression.
“Meanwhile Snow White held Court,
rolling her china-blue doll eyes open and shut
and sometimes referring to her mirror
as women do.” (“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” American Poets).
Sexton portrays a character that to many young children and adults who grew up watching this Disney movie as a woman who is still indulgent upon herself because she has unabashed beauty. “And it is Sexton, more than any of her peers has been pronounced guilty of narcissism. As Joyce Carol Oates explains: ‘Sexton has been criticized for the intensity of her preoccupations: always the self, the victimized, bullying, narcissistic self.'” (Gill 2). Sexton was basically Snow White, someone of immense “inner” beauty or so it appeared because in reality it was a person enthralled with themselves, their outer beauty, and not their inner beauty. Sexton conveyed this point through her writing style; getting straight to the point and giving details to support it.
Sexton was a great writer; she composed excellent poems and used them to illustrate a clear picture of her life; from viewpoints unimaginable. For example, she takes herself out of reality and inserts herself into a fantasy world, a world that appeals to the general audience because it has a happy ending; like Cinderella. But, in Sexton’s view of Cinderella the story was more gruesome.
“Her father brought presents home from town,
jewels and gowns for the other women
but the twig of a tree for Cinderella.
She planted that twig on her mother’s grave
and it grew to a tree where a white dove sat.
Whenever she wished for anything the dove
would drop it like an egg upon the ground.
The bird is important, my dears, so heed him.
The eldest went into a room to try the slipper on
but her big toe got in the way so she simply
sliced it off and put on the slipper.
The prince rode away with her until the white dove
told him to look at the blood pouring forth.
That is the way with amputations.
They just don’t heal up like a wish.
The other sister cut off her heel
but the bl ood told as blood will.
The prince was getting tired.
He began to feel like a shoe salesman.
But he gave it one last try.
This time Cinderella fit into the shoe
like a love letter into its envelope.
At the wedding ceremony
the two sisters came to curry favor
and the white dove pecked their eyes out.
Two hollow spots were left
like soup spoons.” (“Cinderella” American Poets).
Sexton expressed how even Cinderella’s father was part of the deal, a person who left her; part of his old life for a new life with his new wife and daughters. And, when the prince came to try and find his bride the sisters cut tried everything to get what they wanted, and that included inflicting themselves with unnecessary pain; cutting off their limbs. Sexton relates to Cinderella the most, in that she went from “rags and riches” and got married and had daughters. Yet, she changes the storyline to better suit her life as it is not as perfect as the true story.
Anne Sexton brought forth her feelings, a part of her life, through her poetry. She was not shy about the fact that she had severe depression and was not healthy, she let it known by the multiple times she attempted to kill herself. Yet, she continued to confess all through her poems. Some poems were ones that linked her life indirectly to Walt Disney’s princess stories, stories that seemed to show perfection, happiness and love but, Sexton took them and gave them an underlying tone of narcissism, pain, suffering, and hardships. She made them more realistic, she took a world of fantasy that she seemed to escape into and tried to turn it into a something that would be more befitting of reality. “These poems seemed to me one culmination of the Romantic and modern tendency to place the literal Self more and more at the center of the poem in such a way as to make his psychological vulnerability and shame an embodiment of his civilization,” (“A Certain Sense of Order” 1). Sexton was a confessional poet; she used herself as the basis for her poems and succeeded by telling her story through her eyes in a manner more cryptic than an autobiography. She expressed the difficulty she had with being a mother, with being a wife and with being a person suffering with mental illness and severe depression.
