Reading roundtable #7: Transformations trio

Join us for discussion of 'The gold key', 'Cinderella', and 'Snow White and the seven dwarfs' by Anne Sexton

For Issue seven, we are examining three of the seventeen fairy-tale poems in Anne Sexton’s collection Transformations (first published in 1971) including ‘The gold key’, ‘Cinderella’, and ‘Snow White and the seven dwarfs’. By the time the American poet wrote Transformations, she had already published four books of poetry, including Live or Die (1967), which won the Pulitzer Prize.

In the introduction to The complete poems: Anne Sexton (1999), Maxine Kumin underscores the diametrical oppositions found in critical commentary about the poet’s work: ‘The intimate details divulged in Sexton’s poetry enchanted or repelled with equal passion’. According to Kumin, in Transformations Sexton takes things a step further by adding a ‘society-mocking overlay’. Of particular interest is her focus on the stereotypical female representations found in the Grimm fairy tales: the dutiful daughter, the wicked witch, and the evil stepmother. She then transforms these familiar tales even further by layering references to American pop culture:

the Queen in ‘Rumpelstiltskin’ is ‘as persistent/ as a Jehovah’s witness’; Snow White ‘opened her eyes as wide as Orphan Annie’s’, and Cinderella in her sooty rags looks like Al Jolson (Kurmin xxviii-xxix).

Sexton—who struggled with psychotic episodes and suicidal impulses—has little use for the traditional ‘happily ever after’ endings tacked on to the tales during the editing and development process by Wilhelm Grimm.

Cinderella and her prince end up as ‘Regular Bobbsey Twins./ That story.’ And the princess and her husband in ‘The White Snake’ are condemned by way of a happy ending to ‘a kind of coffin,/ a kind of blue funk’ (Kurmin xxviii-xxix).

Indeed, Sexton finally lost her battle with depression and committed suicide on October 4, 1974.

Anne delineated the problematic position of women—the neurotic reality of the time—though she was not able to cope in her own life with the personal trouble it created. It is true that she attracted the worshipful attention of a cult group pruriently interested in her suicidal impulses, her psychotic breakdowns, her frequent hospitalizations, it must equally be acknowledged that her frankness succored many who clung to her poems as the Holy Grail. Time will sort out the dross among these poems and burnish the gold (Kurmin xxxiv).

A quick recap on reading roundtables at The Orange & Bee

The reading roundtables are only available to paid subscribers. If you haven’t moved to that level yet, we hope you will consider joining us. Each reading roundtable includes an introduction to a specific text; an exploration of connected social, cultural, and/or scientific material; and some questions to ponder.

There are no set rules or guidelines to follow. Whatever your responses (thoughts! feelings! wonderings!), we invite you to offer them courageously and boldly. The only thing we ask is that you take an approach to the text that’s largely curious and appreciative, focused on engaging deeply and honestly with the text, and with each other.

In this collaborative space, we are hoping to spark creativity through close reading. Other things we hope to see emerge include insights into the craft of writing, the connection between folkloric traditions and contemporary writing, and a deeper understanding of the focus of our reading (Sexton’s poems this time) through active engagement.