UNFRAMING WOMEN FIGURES IN ANNE SEXTONíS THE FIERCENESS OF FEMALE &CIGARETTES AND WHISKEY AND WILD, WILD WOMEN.

Abstract

Anne Sexton was an American poet widely acknowledged as a challenger of tabooed themes and the adaptor of queer female personas who were considered ‘abnormal’ figures according to the standards of her patriarchal society. A great number of studies elaborated on Sexton’s delineation of unacceptable women characters and the reversal of women stereotyping in her poetry. However, approaching those characters in light of the Foucauldian Butlerian perspective has never been conducted before. The current study aims at investigating Sexton’s ‘abnormal’ personas, utilizing Foucault’s concept of Transgression (1980) to re-define those women. Likewise, Butler’s Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990) is also utilized to examine transgressive women who refused to be gendered. Two poems are investigated, The Fierceness of Female and Cigarettes and Whiskey and Wild, Wild Women to liberate the personas from the frames. Most likely, re-examining Sexton’s constructing of anomalous women and idealizing them is noteworthy for its contribution to expanding our understanding of women’s strategies and their efforts to redefine the female identity. The study concludes that Sexton’s adaptation of these figures helped in demolishing Patriarchal definitions of womanhood; those women are iconic in constructing the new discourse of woman identity.