Critical Analysis of Anne Sexton’s Cinderella Essay Example

dance. She goes to her mother’s grave and weeps of her misfortune, the magical dove hears her cries and gives her royal attire and everything she needs.

For the first two days of the ball, Cinderella and the prince fell in love, each night however Cinderella would run into the pigeon house to escape and hurry home to avoid getting caught by her stepmother. On the third and final night the prince coated the steps with wax to prevent Cinderella from getting away so quickly; to his dismay the wax only caught her slipper, allowing the search for the prince’s bride to commence. The prince has every girl in the kingdom try on the slipper.

Once the prince arrived at Cinderella’s house her two stepsisters immediately did whatever they needed to do to get their feet to fit in the slipper. The first one cut off her toe, and the second cut off her heel. When Cinderella came out, because it was her slipper, her foot slipped right in. On the day of the wedding the two stepsisters came and tried to benefit from Cinderella’s good fortune, but pigeons came and pecked their eyes out, punishing them to be blind for the rest of their lives for the malicious way they treated Cinderella.

We assume that Cinderella and the prince marry, and of course, lived happily ever after. From the start of the poem Sexton sets a sardonic or caustic tone saying, “You always read about it,” implying that as an audience we always assume this is how it happens. She then continues by listing off rags to riches stories. She mentions the plumber, nursemaid, milkman, and charwomen,

all of whom, in some unlikely circumstance go from poor to wealthy. Though we know the chances that these occurrences will actually happen are one-in-a-million, everyone is still searching for the happy ending.

Sexton continues to convey her cynical ideas when she says “Next came the ball, as you all know” and “That’s the way with stepmothers. ” In both examples she narrows the gap between the fictional nature of fairy tales and the unfortunate truth of reality. She also utilizes metaphors and hyperboles to show the extremes to which these people traveled when she writes, “From toilets to riches/ From diapers to Dior/ From homogenized to martinis at lunch and From mops to Bonwit Teller. ” This forces the reader to begin questioning the reality of a fairy tale illusion.

We are reinforced that it is close to impossible that each of these situations will occur. As the reader continues, the author’s views towards Cinderella become more pronounced. Sexton ridicules the story of Cinderella through her word choice. As a replacement for saying that everyone except Cinderella were getting ready for the ball, she says they were “gussying up for the big event. ” She also debunks the idea of the white dove bringing all of his friends to help pick up the spilt lentils by saying that they picked them up in a “jiffy. By using words such as “gussying” and “jiffy” Sexton mocks the ideas she knows so many of us believe.

The author also pokes fun at the prince when she says, “he began to feel like a shoe salesman. ” Sexton manipulates our idea of the usual handsome prince charming, riding in on

a horse to save Cinderella by comparing him to a shoe salesman, a rather unsavory character. Cinderella is also portrayed as being small minded and naive, when the author writes “she slept on a sooty hearth each night and walked around looking like Al Jolson. This makes the reader question, if her life was so terrible, why did she do nothing to improve it? The actual story of Cinderella living a terrible life waiting for prince charming to come in and save her just seems silly. Sexton also writes, “jewels and gowns for the other women but a twig of a tree for Cinderella,” this portrays Cinderella as being a little superficial. The stepsisters received gowns, however Cinderella received the most wonderful gift of all.

After she planted the twig, it grew into a tree, and brought her a gift-bearing dove. Sexton utilizes imagery when she describes the gruesome way the two stepsisters force their feet into the slipper. She says, “the eldest went into a room to try the slipper on but her big toe got in the way so she simply sliced it off” and “the other sister cut off her heel, but blood told as blood will, ” this imagery is used to convey disgust from the reader, as well as portraying the unrealistic nature of the event.

It would be unlikely that one would cut off their own toe, just to fit it into a slipper, as she states later “that is the way with amputations, they don’t just heal up like a wish. ” The idea of a happy ending all together is also turned into a preposterous idea when the author

writes the last stanza, “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 timing of an egg, never telling the same story twice, never getting a middle-aged spread, their darling smiles pasted on for eternity. The use of hyperbole and irony in this last stanza evokes an emotion of sadness.

The actuality of a life with no conflicts or inconveniences that real life brings seems a little boring and sad. It shows the reader that it could be possible that everyone is searching for a happy ending that doesn’t bring much happiness. This leads to the possibility that maybe we create our own happiness. As Cinderella sits around and predictably waits for her prince charming, the rest of us must go out and find our own happy endings.