Anne Sexton Women

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Feeling satisfied with oneself can be a hard thing to achieve. Surrounded by the perfect plastic bodies of dolls and then looking down at the soft flesh of the real thing can create a sense of unrest in the back of young minds. Females are exceedingly prone to these feelings as their countenance is a large part of their perceived success. Although societal awareness has begun to shift toward self acceptance these emotions are still a very real experience, and poetry has long been a tool used to dispel these feelings. Poets like Marge Piercy, Anne Sexton, and Judith Wright have long been utilizing poetry as a medium for expressing these feelings of inadequacy and in their careers have written works that convey these timeless concerns to their …show more content…
The pressure of women to have a typical, peaceable home life can weigh on them as they begin their lives as young adults. Insecurity about one’s body, intelligence, or personality makes her one of a kind. A kind of outcast, societal leper, or “a possessed witch” (Sexton). Sexton discusses three different types of women in her poem, the recluses, those who mix with unorthodox or less desirable company, and those who lead nontraditional lifestyles. Some women, by chance or circumstance, have come to be alone in this world and generally shun by the rest of society due to some quirk or deep seated unhappiness. These women go about “haunting the black air” (Sexton) and are a “lonely thing,” (Sexton) and is generally considered to be “out of mind” (Sexton). The second type of woman is the type that tends to “march to the beat of her own drum”. A woman like this prepares “suppers for the worms and the elves” (Sexton) of society while “whining, rearranging the disaligned” (Sexton). Although this kind of woman may have the purest of intentions “a woman like that is misunderstood” (Sexton). The final kind of woman that Anne Sexton addresses is the kind that has completely abandons all pretense of social convention. By waving “nude arms at villages going by” (Sexton) this type of woman has left behind the empty life that otherwise would have awaited her in preference for a life of freedom and no shame, a type of …show more content…
The title Portrait can seemingly be equated with a family portrait, the working husband, with his arm loving wrapped around the dutiful shoulders of his wife and in her arms is their progeny. The narrator in the poem describes to the reader her romantic notion at the outset of their marriage. Taking care of her husband and the house seemed almost like a game of make believe where she had been cast the role of wife. Pretending is always fun in the beginning as she states that it was a “heartfelt game when it began” (Wright). Each task a novelty she eagerly tried to please her new spouse, every day felt like a new beginning “and merely living kept the blood alive” (Wright). However as time plodded on her surroundings were all the same and what was once new and exciting gave way to habits and ritual. She watched her life culminate in the nightly act of waiting “for the calm return of those who, remind her: this was a game, when it began” (Wright). The fact that her husband manages to stay calm and regular only adds to the readers grasp of the narrator’s growing restlessness. These feelings of unrest are not unlike the narrators in the previous two poems or the women of today. With a growing sense of competence women are now avidly seeking positions outside the home. The dutiful wife is an institution that is coming to stand less and less in this
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