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    A Study Guide for Anne Sexton's "Self in 1958"
    A Study Guide for Anne Sexton's "Self in 1958"
    A Study Guide for Anne Sexton's "Self in 1958"
    Ebook33 pages22 minutes

    A Study Guide for Anne Sexton's "Self in 1958"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Anne Sexton's "Self in 1958," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateSep 2, 2016
    ISBN9781535832779
    A Study Guide for Anne Sexton's "Self in 1958"

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      A Study Guide for Anne Sexton's "Self in 1958" - Gale

      information.

      Self in 1958

      Anne Sexton

      1966

      Introduction

      Anne Sexton's poem Self in 1958 was first drafted in 1958 and then revised in 1965. It was published in her Pulitzer Prize-winning collection, Live or Die. The book, which was published in 1966, was Sexton's fourth collection and was written at the height of her poetic prowess. Sexton was one of the foremost poets of the confessional movement, a style of poetry popular in the United States from the 1950s to the 1970s. Poems in the confessional movement were characterized by free verse and deeply personal themes and content. Self in 1958 is no exception, and it stands as a shining example of confessional poetry penned by one of the movement's leading writers. The poem explores the feeling of being a doll, that is, of conforming to the expectations of society rather than to one's individuality. This theme can also be read as remarkably feminist; in it, the speaker feels trapped by her body, one she deems to be made of plaster and not at all under her control. In this way, both the speaker's body and her surroundings (described in the poem as a stereotypical doll-house) become a sort of prison. Although written in free verse, Self in 1958 is composed of four ten-line stanzas. This structure underscores the rigid world that the speaker, the doll, inhabits.

      Author Biography

      Sexton was born Anne Gray Harvey on November 9, 1928, in Newton, Massachusetts. Her mother Mary Gray Staples, was a failed writer, and her father, Ralph Harvey, was a salesman and textile manufacturer. They enjoyed an upper-middle-class lifestyle, but the family was dysfunctional. Sexton's father was an alcoholic, and some biographers have hinted that Sexton may have been sexually abused by one or both of her parents. Sexton was a poor student, though she did enjoy writing poetry and

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