Cinderella (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Anne Gray Harvey
- First Published: 1971
- Type of Work: Narrative
- Genres: Poetry, Narrative poetry
The Poem
“Cinderella” by Anne Sexton retells the traditional version of this fairy tale but gives it a sardonic twist. The poem appears in Transformations, a collection of poems in which the speaker, introduced in the first poem, “The Gold Key,” is a “middle-aged witch” and author of “tales/ which transform the Brothers Grimm.”
As befits oral storytelling, the speaker opens the poem with a direct address to the reader and undercuts Cinderella’s rags-to-riches story in four short stanzas that give examples of contemporary success stories: the...
[The entire page is 1519 words long]
