A Woman Like That, Anne Sexton

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Recommended: Confessional poetry

Throughout Anne Sexton’s “Her Kind” the reader is often wondering who is the voice of the persona. Many people believed that the “I” in the poem was referring to Anne Sexton. Anne was often labeled as a confessional poet. From Sexton’s point of view confessional poetry is poetry of suffering. The suffering is generally unbearable because the poetry is often about a psychological breakdown. The psychological condition of most confessional poets, including Anne Sexton, has been subject to many literary discussions. Sexton would use her own personal experience from life to create her poems. After analyzing “Her Kind”, the poem reflects Sexton’s confessional poetry about her mental illness, revealing that Sexton is the persona behind the poem.

In the course of the poem, the refrain “I have been her kind” is a very prominent line. The refrain suggests that Anne Sexton is the persona of “Her Kind”. This specific passage makes the reader realize that others may also feel excluded and unwelcome by society. At the end of each stanza, “I” is displaced from sufferer onto storyteller with the lines “A woman like that … I have been her kind” (Colburn, 448). Numerous lines throughout the poem include “I”. This shows that this is a confessional poem, and how willing the speaker of “Her Kind” is to discuss her life. Sexton was never shy about writing about her personal life. Many of her poems tell stories about her life. Her honesty throughout her career has brought her great success.

Anne Sexton had gone through many traumas throughout her life; she claimed she was sexually abused as a child, and had a permanent mental illness. Married at age nineteen to a man in the wool business, Sexton had two daughters. Severe depression followed the birth...

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...afraid of something that is real” (Colburn, 145).

To conclude, the poem “Her Kind” has the voice of Anne Sexton as the persona. Sexton has used her own lifetime traumas, and her views on society throughout her life to write an autobiographical, confessional, poem. The poem is a walk down memory lane for Sexton; remembering the hardships she had gone through in her lifetime. Her honesty in the poem creates a very open and heartfelt vibe that compels the reader to want to learn about Sexton’s past, and the contribution mental illness had made to her life.

Works Cited

Colburn, Steven E. Anne Sexton: Telling the Tale. Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 1988.
George, Diana Hume. Sexton: Selected Criticism. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988.

Sexton, Anne. “Her Kind.” In The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton: Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981, pp. 15-16

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