Anne Sexton Cinderella

From Rags to Riches: That Story From a young age, young girls read stories and fairy tales about how the beautiful girl meets Prince Charming. They get married, and live happily ever after. This idea for girls, that one day they will meet their knight in shining armor and live a happy life together, is a warped view of the real world. That will also make their expectations somewhat higher about what their dream guy will be like when they do meet him. Anne Sexton’s, “Cinderella”, can be analyzed using Feminist criticism based on the way that Sexton dislikes this “perfect ending” scenario and that women do not need to marry a rich man to be successful. Sexton starts off the poem with a few scenarios where people become rich in different ways,
but still go from “rags to riches” fairly easily in each scenario. A few of the scenarios are things such as “…the nursemaid, some luscious sweet from Denmark/who captures the oldest son’s heart. /From diapers to Dior. / That story.” (5-10) There is also a milkman who goes into real estate and becomes rich and a charwoman who collects insurance from her broken bus. Those three are all examples of how people’s expectations of what their lives will be, or at least what they want their lives to be like. With all of the fairy tales that are heard today and told to young children, at some point in time people are going to expect too much from life and think that everything is going to end with a “happily ever after” like fairy tales do. It also warps women’s idea of how their lives will turn out as well. Because young girls are so deluded by the thought of meeting their “Prince Charming” and will live “happily ever after” like in the stories, who knows how her life will actually turn out after having her mind warped as well as her expectations of love and marriage. Also, young women’s expectations for love will also be warped and deluded. Love does not always happen on the spot, as it is told in “Cinderella”.
The first example of a woman marrying a man just to be happy would be when Cinderella’s father marries another woman some time after her mother dies.
“A rich man / . . . took another wife with two daughters.” (23 – 28) The only reason why Cinderella’s step-mother married her father was because of his money. As many depictions of the story of “Cinderella” are told, the step-mother marries for gain, faking love just to obtain the riches and wealth of the man. The greed is evident in any version that a person comes across. Another reason for Cinderella’s step-mother marrying her father would be two step-sisters that come into the family with their mother. The way that Sexton describes the step-sisters, gives a fairly good picture of how the two girls really are. “Two daughters, pretty enough / but with hearts like blackjacks.” (28 – 29) The step-sisters with their blackened hearts, most likely from being spoiled, are also taught a lesson by their mother in any version of “Cinderella”: marry a rich man. That is a perfect example of feminist criticism and what Sexton was so disgusted with in this story and others like
it. The next two examples would be Cinderella’s two step-sisters.
They do what they can just so they can marry the prince, even cutting off parts of their own feet. “The eldest / . . . sliced it off [her big toe]” and “The other sister cut off her heel” (81 - 88) The fact that these two sisters would go as far as cutting off parts of their own feet just to marry the prince is the worst idea possible to have in this situation. That sort of thing is something else Sexton tried to touch on in her poem. Her message in that part of the poem was possibly: women will do anything to marry a rich man, even cause bodily harm to themselves. An example of this in real life today would be the women in China. Women in China believe that small feet are attractive to men, so they bind their feet to make their feet smaller. That in turn causes harm to their feet and can cripple them. For this, an opinion that many have probably heard comes to mind, “if he does not like you for you, then he is not good enough for you.” If a woman tries to change her appearance or personality just to get a husband, there is a strong possibility that things will not work out in the end for the
couple.
The last example would be Cinderella marrying the prince in the end. Sexton gives a tone at the end that sounds like she is disgusted with the outcome of the actual story, as well as how “expected” the ending is. “Cinderella and the prince lived / they say, happily ever after.” (100 – 101) There is one thing that some people might wonder about after reading the story of Cinderella: What happens after? There is nothing actually saying that they lived happily ever after and had a happy life together until the day they died. That is probably why Sexton said, “they say” in line 101.
Anne Sexton’s, “Cinderella”, the poem can be analyzed using Feminist Criticism based on the way that Sexton thinks that the “perfect ending” scenario says in a way that women need to depend on a man for support when they do not need a rich man to be successful. From looking at the poem, a few examples of how women can sometimes become desperate to marry a rich man, even going as far as causing harm to themselves. It seems almost degrading in a way that women think that they need to marry a rich man to be happy. Women can fend for themselves and make their own living. Women do not need to marry a rich man for money and a good life, which is essentially the theme Sexton is attempting to convey.

Sexton, “Cinderella”; Portable Legacies; Ed. Jan Zlotnik and Lynne Crockett: Boston
Wadsworth; Cengage Learning 2009; 157-9