`Maya Trafton
Comparing Anne Sexton’s Cinderella Poem with the original Grimm version. Assignment Details 2026-05-06
Compare Anne Sexton’s “Cinderella” to the original fairy tale by the Grimm Brothers. Analyze the differences in tone, style, diction, allusions, etc. What comment does Sexton seem to be making about “Cinderella,” or about fairy tale romances in general?
Use the Point By Point Method For your body paragraphs, make a point, then apply/talk about it witb both works
What I have so far:
Ann Sexton’s has a more conversational tone. It does not use the lyrical style of the original. It also feels more blunt? There is a hint of irony
Hers feels more skeptical of marriage and a woman’s place in the world
Ann’s version mentions how they live, they say, happiy ever after but the orginal actually doesn’t mention this. The original instead condemns the sister’s for their wickedness and falsehood
The poems appear to be very similar at first. Anne’s feels very irreverent? The narrator feels cynical. - An example is how the narrator mentions the common tropes of stories ‘rags to riches’ stories. -“You always read about it :… from diapers to Dior. That story.” - The narrator is referring to story conventions and themes. The blunt retelling of Cinderella
Sexton appears to be skeptical of the traditional ideas of virtue
among women that fairy tale romances traditionally portray. >“Be
devout. Be good. Then I will smile
>down from heaven in the seam of a cloud.” (5)
Sexton very explicitly questions the happily ever after idea In the end of the poem. - Sexton specifically says “they say” here. Who is she referring to? I think its probably about the archetypal ideas that fairy tales seem to promote/are embedded into society. She is referring to our conventions. > “Cinderella and the prince > lived, they say, happily ever after, > like two dolls in a museum case”
She acknowledges the reader with “as you all know” - this feels really important. It feels like she hand waving? Signaling something? She assumes a contextual understanding. Like this is something we are all in on. Sometimes you get this kind of feeling in a class. A teacher will kind of refer to contemporary things that we all have an intrinsic understanding of. Everyone who reads this poem is likely very aware about cinderella? She almost has a disdain for these stories. I feel like we treat tropey hollywood classic movies with this kind of ironic ireverance. >“Next came the ball, as you all know. >It was a marriage market.” - Grimm refers to this event as a festival while Anne describes it as a marriage market. Is this alluding to how Anne feels about marriage? I feel a sense of mundanity about marriage in her work where as Grimm’s seems to present it as something that is both grand and a matter of course. The way for Cinderella to escape her suffering is through increasing her perceived ‘woman;y value’ and enter the eyes of the wealthy. There feels like there is this commentary about how her step sisters appear to almost be pitted against Cinderella in this sequence of events that fundamentally revolves around patriarchy. How does the story do it though? It feels very subtle? Tone is one.
According to Diane Hume George, “Anne Sexton’s poetry tells stories that are immensely significant to mid-twentieth-century artistic and psychic life. Sexton understood her culture’s malaise through her own, and her skill enabled her to deploy metaphorical structures at once synthetic and analytic … Sexton explored the myths by and through which our culture lives and dies: the archetypal relationships among mothers and daughters, fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, gods and humans, men and women. She perceived, and consistently patterned in the images of her art, the paradoxes deeply rooted in human behavior and motivation. Her poetry presents multiplicity and simplicity, duality and unity, the sacred and the profane, in ways that insist on their similarities—even, at times, their identity. In less abstract terms, Sexton made explicit the intimacy of forces persistently treated as opposites by the society she lived in.”
Diane makes a very good point here. “sexton understood her culture’s malaise through her own.” feels very accurate/ relevent. The myths and archetypical relationships
What is the Confessional poetry that her biography mentions. This poem does feel rather personal? I think thats part of what I was getting at with how her poetry feels irreverent and blunt. It isnt some grand tale in her words.
The way Sexton tells Cinderella is markedly different in the effect it has on the reader.!!