Grimm's fairy tales have been interpreted in endless ways since they were written, and probably for good reason: the blood and gore of the tales Original fairy tales don't necessarily make for ideal bedtime stories. . However, Anne Sexton's reimaginings in her poetry collection Transformations are unique: slangy and irreverent, revealing new depths to the stories most people know so well. Often, Sexton accomplishes these "transformations" by contradicting stereotypes, traditional roles, and outdated depictions of femininity presented in Grimm's fairy tales. For example, she points out how ridiculous it is for a princess to choose a husband based on a competition held for strangers, then mocks the inaccurate fairy tale image of princesses always demanding more tasks. and more difficult to accomplish simply to gain their favor. Often these challenges to representations of women in fairy tales result in poems having a feminist slant, particularly when one of the poem's main characters is a young woman. Sexton's versions of the Grimm women have depth, intelligence, and a new sense of strength. For example, in “Hansel and Gretel,” Gretel kills the witch to prevent further abuse against herself and her brother. In “Rumpelstiltskin,” the miller's daughter (later the queen) escapes a seemingly impossible situation by deceiving the men who had previously taken advantage of her and ends the poem in a position of power without losing her son. Similarly, Snow White takes revenge on the Evil Queen who tried to murder her three times, forcing her to dance on red-hot roller skates until she burns to death. Eventually, Briar Rose escapes her father's implicit restrictions and abuse and begins to heal from her past on her own terms. In these four poems, Sexton depicts a young girl demanding power and freedom in the face of violence and abuse, and allows her readers to see that when faced with such a situation, one must do everything in one's power to overcome it. to go out. no to plagiarism. Get Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get Original Essay Sexton begins his “transformation” of “Hansel and Gretel” in the same way as the original fairy tale: their family dies hungry and the mother decides to give priority. Instead of trying to support her entire family with insufficient food, she chooses to allow herself and her husband to eat more comfortably by deliberately leaving her children to die in the middle of the woods. At this point, Gretel is a passive character. Although none of the children have spoken yet in the poem, it is Hansel who tries to save them. It is he who hears the mother's plan, and he initially manages to bring them home by dropping stones to mark their path. But when he drops bread crumbs eaten by the birds, the two children end up getting lost, “blind as worms” (102). When they stumble upon the witch's house and she locks Hansel up to prepare to eat him, he is described as the "smartest, biggest, juiciest" child, although here Sexton uses free indirect speech and makes it ambiguous if this is the case. opinion of the witch or narrator (103). Regardless, Gretel continues to be underestimated. However, as the witch begins to taunt her about her brother's impending death, telling her "how a shiver would run through her to feel him cooking" and other detailshorrific, Sexton quietly recognizes Gretel's potential, writing, "[s]he who dropped neither stones nor bread bided his time" (104). Finally, when the witch decides to eat Gretel as well and tells her to climb into the oven, Gretel speaks for the first time in the poem and says to her, "Ja, Fraulein, show me how this can be done" (104). . Feigning obedience, she tricks the witch into climbing into the oven herself, then locks the door and lets her burn alive. Not only does Sexton allow Gretel to display resourcefulness and strategic thinking, but she also demonstrates a certain courage, a toughness that allows Gretel to endure not only the abuse and dangers she faces. is faced with external sources, but also the horror of what she herself must do to escape and return home. In "Rumpelstiltskin," a miller's daughter is forced to endure imprisonment and the threat of death until she manages to deceive both the king and the dwarf, two men who created her situation impossible. At the beginning of the poem, she is abandoned by her father, who tells the king that she can turn straw into gold. Although she is unable to do so and her father provides no proof, the king locks her in a room full of straw and tells her to "spin into gold or she will [die] like a criminal" (18). She has no opportunity to discredit her father's claims and no means of escape, except for the dwarf who appears as she cries. To save herself, she is forced to first give her necklace then her ring in exchange for him spinning the straw. However, when she finds herself locked in the largest room yet, faced with both the threat of death if she fails and the promise of becoming queen if she succeeds, she has no other choice. moment than to promise the greedy dwarf, who is "on the scent of something greater," her future child, despite the injustice of her situation (19). At this point in the poem, she has managed to deceive the king, and although we can imagine that she does not feel much affection for him (an inference that Sexton does not contradict), at least she has achieved a position of power, from which she can begin to. regain her autonomy. When her son is born, he is “ugly as an artichoke, but the queen considered him a pearl” (20). is finally happy When the dwarf comes to "claim his prize", she tries to offer him something else so that he will leave his son alone, but he refuses (20). However, she shouts "two buckets of sea water" until he begins to pity her, then sends messengers into the kingdom to find unusual names to escape this new deal with the dwarf. When one of them succeeds in discovering Rumpelstiltskin's name, the queen manages to keep her son, and the dwarf tears himself in two in anger. Finally, Sexton shows the success of the miller's daughter: even though men had placed her in a dangerous and unjust position of what was essentially slavery, she was able to endure long enough to no longer depend on her father, share power with the king and counteract the reign of slavery. dwarf once and for all. Sexton demonstrates that because of the Queen's willingness to barter everything and make many sacrifices, she is able to emerge unscathed with a child she loves. Snow White is not portrayed in a particularly flattering way throughout the poem that tells her story. Sexton calls her a "silly rabbit" and she seems to be celebrated by both the dwarves and her prince for her beauty alone. However, even though it is not explicitly celebrated, the poem demonstrates a kind of endurance on his part (8). Byexample, when the Evil Queen's mirror declares that Snow White is now the fairest in the land and she swears to kill her, the thirteen-year-old girl walks for seven weeks in the woods to find safety. Although threatened by wolves and snakes and harassed by obscene birds, she manages to escape through skill, force of will or simple luck, and sleeps for the first time in almost two months in the house dwarves. She no longer demonstrates this kind of survival instinct for most of the poem, surviving strangulation by lacing, poisoning by a comb, and death with a poisoned apple only because of the dwarves and the prince . At no point in the story does Snow White outwit the Queen, but she lives because her beauty, the most obvious tool she possesses, causes others to protect her. However, after the last assassination attempt, it is implied that she has learned from this experience and will not allow herself to be put in danger again. To ensure her own safety, she welcomes her mother-in-law to her wedding feast by forcing her to dance on red-hot roller skates until she "[frys] like a frog", dying horribly in front of the other guests under the cheerful gaze of Snow White. in his mirror (9). In the end, the princess is not saved by intelligence, or even by beauty. Sexton shows that Snow White's true strength lies in her tenacity: the seven-week march and the ability to burn the Queen to death is how she is finally able to guarantee her own safety. Once again, Sexton depicts a young girl forced to escape persecution by any means necessary. “Briar Rose” has a less clear ending than most of the other poems in Transformations and represents an alternative approach to abuse and unhappiness than the other three. young women take. Cursed by a fairy during her baptism, Briar Rose is destined to prick her finger on a spinning wheel at fifteen and sleep for a hundred years. Terrified, her father tries to protect her with a lot of rules and restrictions, but only succeeds in being authoritarian and creating a claustrophobic environment for his daughter. Sexton tells us that “every night the king bit the hem of her dress to ensure her safety” and that the princess “dwelled in his scent, like a honeysuckle” (109). Despite her efforts, the curse still came true and Briar Rose's life was consumed by her father in the meantime. When she finally wakes from her century-old sleep, it is because the prince kisses her while she is unconscious, a violation that makes her scream. After their marriage, she is afraid of sleep, calling it "that brutal place", but tries to manage her fear by being prescribed medication and staying away from the prince while she sleeps (111). Here, Briar Rose begins to construct her own boundaries for her life and regain some semblance of control. Meanwhile, Sexton allows the princess to speak in the first person for much of the poem's ending, a privilege that characters in other poems do not receive. Although Briar Rose does not act against her father and the prince like Gretel or Snow White, she does have the opportunity to express the difficulty of her past. In the penultimate stanza of the poem, she implies a childhood of abuse as well as rigidity, telling the reader: "[t]here was a robbery", and describing the king "drunk, bent over [his ] reads, circling around him.” the abyss like a shark…thick on [her] like a sleeping jellyfish” (112). Following this disturbing revelation, the poem ends without a clear resolution: Briar Rose does not triumph like her counterparts, but her voice has been clearly heard. The king is still alive, she still has..