Gender Roles and Identity Crisis in the Poetry of Anne Sexton, a Modern American Poet
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The story of identity crisis and gender roles continues as the world is still governed by the binary system of division. The world of today is still divided into two contradictory domains and territories. Some of these binary oppositions are passivity versus activity, day versus night, and father versus mother. It seems all the dichotomies emanate from the primary opposition of man versus woman. Such a division is mainly based on gender where man is taken to be the reference point. The split between male and female is not nature-bound. It is rather culture-oriented in which man manipulates and maintains such a hierarchical and oppositional relationship to perpetuate the subordination of the female. In this binary gender system, it is the female that should carry the negative attributes while the male is established as her constant caliber. Man has the right sole to name culture and define everything including women. Thus, this piece of research attempts to explore gender roles and identity politics in the poetry of Anne Sexton, an American woman-poet whose poetry reveals women’s constant search for more meaningful gender roles and a new identity outside the prescriptions of the patriarchal society. This study finds that gender roles and identity of women are molded long before they are conceived in the wombs of their mothers. Patriarchy has already designated roles for them. It has carved out a fixed identity and the rigid roles of wife, mother, housewife, nurturer, and others. However, these man-made roles are not their predestined fate or the free choice of their own. They are, rather, forced on them and dictated by a patriarchal society that does not allow the activities of women to move beyond home. Sexton’s poetry underscores the fact that gender roles and female identity are a social construction rather than a biological determination.
Author: Alwaqaa, Mujahid Ahmed Mohammed
Institution: University of Ha'il
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7109637768
FWCI:
Cites:
Cited by:
Related to: