Analysis on Transformations by Anne Sexton

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Furthermore, after doing some research I came across the fact that Sexton herself had a weird relationship with an Aunt as a young girl and she left her for a male. This can lead you to believe that perhaps “Rapunzel” is not just about the fairy-tale, but maybe it is about the poet’s personal experiences. Anne Sexton is putting herself in Rapunzel’s shoes.

Moving on, the story of “Cinderella” is used by Sexton to critique societies’ feminine expectations by mocking the perfect “happily ever after” fairy tale ending. Sexton retells the story with dark humor and mischievousness, so that the reader can reevaluate their thoughts on fairytales. Nearly every one of Sexton’s tales end in marriage, and most of them are seen as some form of either selfishness or imprisonment. This is illustrated in “Cinderella” when the marriage between Cinderella and the prince is described as pathetically simple. “Here, Sexton expresses her feminist message that it seems totally ridiculous that all the women in this story become confused and are wrecked as a result of seeking a successful marriage by blindly adhering to the tenets of a patriarchal society” (Fukuda).

In Sexton’s poem things get darker and more painful than in the original tale. In the poem, Cinderella’s father is alive and treats her just like her stepmother and stepsisters do. Unlike the Disney version where Cinderella is his main priority and only when he dies the stepmother starts treating her badly and forces her into being a servant. Before the fairytale stars the reader can get a distinct sense of the mocking tone used in the poem when the speaker addresses four stories: one of a plumber who wins the lottery, one of a nursemaid who marries her boss’s son, a milkman who makes a fortune in real estate, and a charwoman who becomes rich after a bus she was on crashes, and she collects on insurance. The progression of these stories themselves lay cynicism into the poem and the whole idea of a happily ever after. At the end of the poem Anne Sexton goes on to describe Cinderella’s happily ever in a very sarcastic manner: “Cinderella and the prince/ lived, they say, happily ever after,/ like two dolls in a museum case/ never bothered by diapers or dust,/ never arguing over the timing of an egg,/ never telling the same story twice,/ never getting a middle-aged spread,/ their darling smiles pasted on for eternity./ Regular Bobbsey Twins./ That story” (Sexton 56-57). As stated before, Sexton is mocking this idea of happily ever after because she does not believe people live happily ever after. She is using this to express her opinion on the superficiality of fairy tales, because they give people unrealistic expectations on life.

In “Briar Rose,” Anne Sexton applies a classic Sleeping Beauty fairy tale to let the reader know of her own childhood experiences and struggle with sexual abuse. Instead of simply retelling the story, she puts a new twist on it and transforms it into a sophisticated metaphor: Sexton is putting herself in Briar Rose’s shoes. Not as a cry for help, but more as a demand for awareness. Sexton uses carefully crafted words to depict Briar Rose’s and her own struggle to expose the predator of sexual abuse. She also uses her adaptation of the story to address how cultures view claims of sexual violence. The fairytale, within the poem, pretty much sticks to the Grimm Brothers’ version. The middle part of the poem narrates how the King is hosting the princess’ baptism and he invites twelve fairies to the event to give a blessing to the baby, but does not invite the thirteenth fairy. The last fairy shows up uninvited and out of anger and 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 fall into a deep and long sleep instead of dying. The king gets rid of every spinning wheel in the kingdom, just like in the original fairytale. The differences are mainly in the opening and ending which make the reader look at the poem distinctively. The opening hints that Briar Rose’s father sexually abuses her and the ending suggests that he sexually abuses Briar Rose during her remarkably deep and long sleep.

The poem does not only challenge the events of the traditional fairy tale, but also serves to expose a problem that causes a lot of women’s perpetual suffering. Briar Rose’s daring proclamation of her father’s sexual abuse towards her, ironically shows reality using no other than a fairy tale. The poem shows that even though women are often portrayed with lady-like qualities in fairy tales, within them are painful and traumatic experiences created by the patriarchal society. I believe that Sexton is trying to get the reader to see that there is much more than what they see on the surface, that Briar Rose is being abused by her own father, which might be the same kind of abuse Sexton suffered from as a young girl. It looks like Sexton uses the poem to deal with her own haunting past.

In Sexton’s “Red Riding Hood” she begins by warning of the deceivers, who are all around us, waiting to tell us lies. She also uses her poem to suggest that women’s roles are an issue for a few reasons: Red Riding Hood obeys her mother causing her to travel through a dangerous forest by herself. She stops for the wolf, a male authority, trusts him, follows his instruction, but as a result is eaten by him. It is stated that the wolf is killed by his own weight when in reality the girl and her grandmother kill him by filling his stomach with stones. The women kill him indirectly so they can continue to appear proper and decent, sticking to society’s standards of women. Sexton uses the Brothers Grimm version to express her parody of these themes in her poem, specially the topic of submission to patriarchal authority.

An example, in regards of male authority, is the huntsman in the poem. The huntsman in the poem is characterized as a heroic male figure who, with his intelligence, quickly realizes that Red Riding Hood and her grandmother are in the wolf’s stomach and he heroically saves them. The good and courageous huntsman is the positive character in the poem because Red Riding Hood and her grandmother would not be alive if it were not for him. Sexton is mocking the idea that the women were dependent on him for their survival and should be grateful to him. The huntsman perfectly carries the message of the submission to male authority and the brutal patriarchal culture.

Before the wolf is murdered, Red Riding Hood does not appear smart and is easily deceived. She acknowledges to her society’s standards of how a woman should be obedient by stopping and trusting the male authority of the wolf. After being