The Indecisive Feminist: Study of Anne Sexton's Revisionist Fairy Tales

Nadia Fayidh Mohammed

doi:10.7575/aiac.alls.v.6n.1p.31

Abstract

Fairy tales to female writers are major resource for their abundant writings, but for the feminist poets since 1960s, they become essential subject matter to often deal with in their literary production. With the motivation to address the conventional tradition of patriarchal society, and re-address the stereotype females inhabiting these tales, feminist writers set upon revealing the underlying sub-context of these tales, presenting them with more adult-suited themes. Anne Sexton's Transformation is a pioneering revision of Grimm's fairy tales in which the poet does not only satirize the patriarchal society she grew up in, but she also rejects the female stereotype that her upbringing intended her to be. In the following paper, the feminist messages which Sexton's fairy tales intended to deliver are examined to reveal the poet's position concerning feminism and her relationship with female role-models and the male figures she presents in her fairy tales. Keywords: Anne Sexton, feminism, fairy tales, revisionism, postmodernist poetry, Transformations

Highlights

Gina Dalfonzo, in reviewing Disney's new fairytale-based movie "Frozen", reported that having the prince charming turning to villain was the scariest element in the movie [Dalfonzo, 2013: 1+]
The maternal wisdom, the heroism of the prince charming, the salvation guaranteed by the dominion of the male-figure and the happy endings within conventional social norms, which were traditionally underlying elements of fairy tales, are shattered away by more gender-oriented narratives
After the second wave of feminism during the end of 1960s, many female writers ventured on exploring and revising the stereotypes supported by these fairy tales, defying the expectedly heroic boy/prince charming, the silent accepting girl, and most importantly, the over-estimated happy endings [Sage, 1999: 231-2]

Summary

Introduction

Gina Dalfonzo, in reviewing Disney's new fairytale-based movie "Frozen", reported that having the prince charming turning to villain was the scariest element in the movie [Dalfonzo, 2013: 1+]. One of the pioneering works in fairy-tales revisions is Anne Sexton's Transformations (1971) which "broke the spell" of Grimm's' fairy tales [Sage: 233]. In her tales, Sexton satirizes traditional paradigms of heroism, romance and virtues, transforming them to tales of greed, incest, and violence. Sexton satirizes traditional paradigms of heroism, romance and virtues, transforming them to tales of greed, incest, and violence Her chief motive was exploring material outside her troubled reality and her self-crises after engaging most of her poetic energy in "confessing" intimate details of her life. The following discussion of Anne Sexton's fairy tales argues that in spite of the poet's attempts to assert a feminist attitude and establish the objectivity which has been missing in her early poetry, Transformations is haunted by the same dilemma and struggle for identity that Sexton's early poems have often expressed

Sexton and Feminist Poetry

Transformations