Anne Sexton, one of the most confessional poets of the 20th century, is known for her bold and unsettling explorations of identity, femininity, madness, and mortality. Her 1971 poem Cinderella, a dark and satirical retelling of the famous fairy tale, captures her unique voice and critical perspective on gender roles and societal myths. But why did Anne Sexton write Cinderella? What drove her to reinterpret a well-known tale of magical transformation and idealized romance in such a grim and ironic tone?
To understand her motivations, we must first look at Sexton’s broader poetic mission, the socio-political context of the time, the literary tradition she was engaging with, and her own personal struggles. In this article, we will examine each of these elements to uncover the deeper reasons behind Sexton’s writing of Cinderella, and how the poem speaks to larger issues about gender, narrative, and disillusionment.
The Confessional Voice and Feminist Consciousness
Sexton as a Confessional Poet
Anne Sexton emerged as a key figure in the confessional poetry movement, alongside poets like Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, and W.D. Snodgrass. Confessional poetry is known for its deeply personal subject matter, exploring topics such as mental illness, family, sexuality, and death. Sexton’s poetry often drew on her own life, including her experiences with depression, therapy, and her complex role as a woman in a patriarchal society.
Yet, by the time Sexton wrote Cinderella, she had begun to expand her poetic vision beyond personal confession. In her collection Transformations (1971), where Cinderella appears, she turned toward cultural myths, particularly fairy tales, to examine how these stories shape collective identities, especially women’s roles and expectations.
A Feminist Rewriting of Fairy Tales
In Transformations, Sexton rewrites seventeen fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm. She does so not to delight or entertain, but to expose the disturbing gender politics beneath their surfaces. Sexton had become increasingly interested in how women were conditioned to view their lives through a narrow lens of beauty, passivity, and marriage.
By the 1970s, second-wave feminism was gaining momentum. Writers and critics were questioning traditional female roles in literature, media, and society. Sexton was influenced by these ideas. Her reinterpretation of Cinderella is not just literary parody—it is feminist critique. She challenges the romantic ideal that marriage is a woman’s ultimate destiny, and questions the notion that suffering is always rewarded with happiness, as if by magic.
Deconstructing the Fairy Tale: The Themes of Cinderella
The Illusion of the Happy Ending
One of Sexton’s primary aims in Cinderella is to challenge the myth of the “happily ever after.” The poem follows the structure of the traditional story, but it is interspersed with ironic asides and dark imagery. Sexton opens the poem with a list of improbable success stories: a plumber who wins the Irish Sweepstakes, a milkman who becomes a millionaire. These examples set the stage for her central argument—fairy tales, like these anecdotes, are built on fantasies that rarely reflect real life.
In the final stanza, Sexton concludes the story of Cinderella and her prince:
“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…”
The repetition of “never” emphasizes the artificiality of this perfect life. The marriage is not portrayed as a real human relationship but as a sterile and frozen tableau. Sexton’s tone is biting and sarcastic. She wants the reader to see that the “happy ending” is a static illusion—a cultural ideal that fails to reflect the messiness of actual life.
Marriage as Entrapment
In traditional fairy tales, marriage is the reward for a woman’s virtue and endurance. But Sexton presents marriage in Cinderella as a kind of imprisonment. The museum imagery suggests lifelessness and display. The dolls do not live, they are exhibited. In this way, Sexton critiques the way marriage is romanticized as a goal for women, while in reality, it can lead to loss of identity and agency.
By showing how Cinderella is rewarded not for her intelligence or courage, but for her beauty and obedience, Sexton underscores the transactional and superficial nature of traditional gender roles. The prince does not know her character—he recognizes her only by her shoe. This highlights how little agency Cinderella has in her own fate.
Violence and Punishment
Sexton retains the gruesome elements of the original Grimm tale, where the stepsisters mutilate their feet to fit the slipper and are later punished with blindness. These moments are presented matter-of-factly, almost clinically. Sexton doesn’t flinch from brutality; instead, she uses it to underscore the cruel absurdity of the narrative.
Fairy tales often suggest that good is rewarded and evil punished, but Sexton complicates this binary. The stepsisters’ self-mutilation is a desperate attempt to fit into a system that values women only for their appearance. Their punishment does not feel like justice but rather like a warning: this is what happens when women compete in a system that devalues them.
Personal Resonance and Psychological Depth
Sexton’s Struggles with Identity
Anne Sexton’s own life was marked by tension between traditional female roles and personal authenticity. She was a wife and mother, yet she felt constrained by these expectations. Her poetry often reveals a woman grappling with depression and societal pressure, trying to find meaning in roles that felt imposed.
In Cinderella, we can see reflections of Sexton’s personal disillusionment. The poem’s sarcastic tone and the bleak portrayal of romance and domestic life suggest her skepticism about the narratives she may have once believed in. The fairy tale becomes a metaphor for false hope—hope that love or marriage can “fix” a woman’s life, when in fact it may only mask deeper wounds.
The Use of Irony and Detachment
Sexton uses irony as both a literary technique and a coping mechanism. In Cinderella, she distances herself from the story by using a narrator who sounds amused, even indifferent. This detachment allows her to critique the tale without directly implicating herself in its fantasy.
However, the ironic voice also hints at emotional pain. Beneath the sarcasm is a sense of betrayal—that the stories girls are told growing up do not prepare them for the complexities of adult life. Sexton’s retelling is not just critical; it is mournful. It reflects a sense of loss—not just of innocence, but of belief in a system that promised happiness but delivered emptiness.
Intertextuality and Literary Subversion
Engaging with the Brothers Grimm
By choosing to work with the Grimm tales, Sexton aligns herself with a tradition, only to subvert it. The Brothers Grimm compiled these stories as a way of preserving German folk culture, but they also edited and reshaped them to suit bourgeois morality. Over time, fairy tales became sanitized narratives used to teach children social norms.
Sexton reclaims these tales and restores their darker elements—not for horror’s sake, but to question the values they promote. In Cinderella, she shows that the story is not harmless. It reinforces a worldview where women are passive, beauty is paramount, and suffering is only worthwhile if it leads to marriage.
Breaking the Narrative Spell
Fairy tales are powerful not only because of their content but because of how they are told. They create a hypnotic rhythm, a sense of inevitability. Sexton disrupts this rhythm. Her poem is filled with abrupt shifts in tone, modern language, and jarring imagery. She breaks the narrative spell so that the reader cannot lose themselves in the fantasy.
By doing so, Sexton invites the reader to become conscious of how stories shape their expectations. She exposes the machinery of the fairy tale—the formula, the archetypes, the false hopes. This act of exposure is itself a form of liberation.
Legacy and Relevance
Influence on Feminist Literature
Sexton’s Cinderella paved the way for other feminist writers to challenge dominant narratives. Poets, novelists, and playwrights have since reinterpreted fairy tales to highlight gender inequality and explore women’s inner lives. Works like Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber and Margaret Atwood’s poetry owe a debt to Sexton’s bold reimaginings.
Continuing Importance Today
Even today, the themes of Cinderella remain relevant. Popular culture continues to perpetuate romantic myths and gender stereotypes. From Disney movies to reality TV, the idea of being “chosen” by a prince-like figure still exerts cultural power. Sexton’s poem reminds us to question these narratives and to seek stories that reflect complexity, struggle, and authenticity.
Conclusion
Anne Sexton wrote Cinderella to deconstruct a cultural myth that had long gone unchallenged. Through irony, dark humor, and feminist critique, she exposed the dangerous illusions embedded in the fairy tale. For Sexton, Cinderella was not a story of hope, but a warning—a portrait of how society conditions women to accept passivity, compete for male attention, and dream of salvation through marriage.
In revisiting and rewriting this tale, Sexton gave voice to her own disillusionment and helped pave the way for a more honest, inclusive literature. Cinderella is more than a poem; it is a mirror turned toward society’s most cherished fantasies. And in that mirror, we see not just a princess and a slipper, but a deeper truth about how we live, love, and imagine ourselves.
