Volume 20 Number 1 Article 5 Winter 1-15-1994 Anne Sexton and Anima Transformations: Transformations as a Critique of the Psychology of Love in Grimm’s Fairy Tales John Hruschka Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation Hruschka, John (1994) "Anne Sexton and Anima Transformations: Transformations as a Critique of the Psychology of Love in Grimm’s Fairy Tales," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 20 : No. 1 , Article 5. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol20/iss1/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To join the Mythopoeic Society go to: http://www.mythsoc.org/join.htm Mythcon 51: A VIRTUAL “HALFLING” MYTHCON July 31 - August 1, 2021 (Saturday and Sunday) http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-51.htm Mythcon 52: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico; July 29 - August 1, 2022 http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-52.htm Abstract Uses “Jung’s theories of anima as a critical framework [...] to demonstrate that Sexton’s poems [...] critique the psychology of romantic love that informs the Grimm Brothers’ tales and the impact of that ideology on women.” Additional Keywords Anima figures in literature; Anima in Anne Sexton; Feminist criticism; Grimm Brothers. Fairy Tales; Sexton, Anne. “The Maiden Without Hands”; Sexton, Anne. “Snow White”; Sexton, Anne. Transformations This article is available in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol20/iss1/5 J^Ey t LjLo r g issue 75 W IN T E R 1994 paxje 45 2 3 bdnks P ® stT(5» ii aua®> p k r a a m WR£sm@mmsmm TRAKlSpORCnAXIOMS AS A CRITIQUE op xL>e p s y c I^o Lo q y o p L o v e im QRioocrrs p a ir y t a l e s JOpM JjRUSCfrkA nd they all lived happily ever after" — that is riage driven by anima projection. I therefore use it to represent the formula that stands for the complex rela­ that group, while "The Maiden Without Hands" is important tionship of marriage in what we call fairy to discuss because it is the one exception. Using Jung's theo­ tales, which, like Shakespearean comedies, ries of anima as a critical framework should allow me to deal primarily with courtship and end with a wedding demonstrate that Sexton's poems, consciously or not, critique feast. Marriage, with all of its attendant adjustments and the psychology of romantic love that informs the Grimm difficulties, is rarely addressed by either comedy or the brodiers' tales and the impact of that ideology upon women. folktale. Anne Sexton, in her poetic reinterpretation of the Jung has written extensively on anima, and his successors Grimm's tales, Transformations, exposes the difficulties and commentators have written curious interpretations of women face in the transition from courtship to marriage. this aspect of Jungian theory. To avoid confusion, the concise Her poems recast the "happily ever after" formula in the definition of anima in "M arriage as a Psychological Relation­ stories collected by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, and pres­ ship" will be our bench mark. In this work Jung states: ent Sleeping Beauty as a prisoner in an incestuous mar­ riage; Cinderella and the prince as two dolls on a shelf; Every man carries within him the eternal image of and, at the end of "The White Snake," calling marriage woman, not the image of this or that particular woman, but a definite feminine image. This image is funda­ "living happily ever after — / a kind of coffin, / a kind of mentally unconscious, an hereditary factor of primor­ blue funk."1 In her essay, "That Story: Anne Sexton and dial origin engraved in the living organic system of the Her Transformations," Alicia Ostricker tells us: "What she man, an imprint or "archetype" of all the ancestral does with this material is to seize it, crack it open, and experiences of the female, a deposit, as it were, of all make it personal."2 More than that, Ostricker continues: the impressions ever made by woman — in short, an "Sexton's interpretations discover and release elements inherited system of psychic adaptation. Even if no already implicit in these stories" (O 259). Sexton's breezy women existed, it would still be possible, at any given tone, her confident, modem diction, and the tension she time, to deduce from this unconscious image exactly how a woman would have to be constituted psychi­ creates by playing this modem language against the classic cally. The same is true of the woman: she too has her "fairy tale" diction makes the poems transformations inborn image of man. Actually, we know from experi­ rather than re-tellings. But it is the radical change in point ence that it would be more accurate to describe it as an of view that makes them Sexton's and brings to light the image of men, whereas in the case of the man it is rather "elements already implicit in these stories." Shifting the an image of woman. Since this image is unconscious, point of view from the man's, as it most certainly is in it is always unconsciously projected upon the person Grimm, to the woman's shakes loose a major theme, bur­ of the beloved, and is one of the chief reasons for ied in the original, the role of anima projection in both our passionate attraction or aversion.3 folk tradition and our attitudes toward women. Jung's description of anima has five primary implications; The romantic ideal of love and marriage fostered by our first, men create the definition of womanhood while women, patriarchal society, reified in G rimm, is brought into criti­ it seems, must accept a definition of manhood; second, anima cal focus in Transformations. The foundation of this roman­ is a collectively made portrait of an ideal Woman, yet animus tic ideal, I would argue, is what Jung called the anima and focuses on actual men as a group; third, the object of a man's the resulting confusion men experience between the real, affection must be able to live up to his projected image; fourth, human women they meet in life and the ideal, divine there is, to Jung, something natural and immutable about this W oman of anima. The conflict has little to do with women; situation; and finally, Jung sees women as inferior to men. In it is a man's internal conflict externalized and imposed Aion Jung describes how anima operates in fictional settings upon women. Sexton, like m ost women, is a victim of this such as Grimm's tales or Sexton's poems: "Whenever she conflict and her poems demonstrate her resentment. Tell­ [anima] appears, in dreams, visions, and fantasies, she takes on ing these traditional tales from a woman's perspective personified form, thus demonstrating that the factor she em­ reveals the misogyny inherent in marriage, especially bodies possesses all the outstanding characteristics of a femi­ since the rise of romantic love. Half of the poems in Trans­ nine being."4 This passage refers to dreams and fantasies; but, formations concern marriages that, in all but one poem, are literature is, as Maria Tatar notes, a codification of our collective depicted as cruel, selfish, shallow, or deathlike. Gruesome fantasy5 — folktales may be thought of as collective fantasies, and ironic, "Snow White" typifies Sexton's view of mar­ and poems as public dreams. P A Q 6 46 i s s u e 75 WIK1TGR 1994 JWvxt)LORe In literature, as in Jungian psychology, men impose the sure of power, and it is a major step in the process of ideal Woman of their anima upon real women while self-possession. An adult, a sexually mature being, cannot women are required, by this anima projection, never to be wholly possessed by another, which may be the reason deviate from an archetypal image of divine Woman. They that girls, in the Western folktale tradition are often pre­ are, in short, told not to be human. Robert Johnson ad­ vented from becoming adults— the heroic efforts of Sleep­ dresses this problem in We: Understanding the Psychology of ing Beauty's parents to prevent her from pricking her Romantic Love, in which he draws the distinction between finger, from bleeding, is a case in point. In resisting the romance and love. In romance "the instant a man falls 'in carnal, Snow White preserves her ability to be the carrier love/ he goes beyond love itself and begins the worship of of anima by retaining her own powerlessness; she never his soul-in-woman."6 This he contrasts with love, "the attains self-possession. She is possessed first by her father, power within us that affirms and values another human then by the dwarfs, and then given to the prince as a bride. being as he or she is" ( J 191). Romance is, therefore, falling Snow White has no choices, no autonomy. Her safety is in in love with your own anima, selfish at best and at its worst her innocence; sexuality will lead to her disqualification as a denial of humanity to women.