View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by OTHES DIPLOMARBEIT Titel der Diplomarbeit „Feminist Fairy-Tale Poetry: Sara Henderson Hay, Anne Sexton and Olga Broumas“ Verfasserin Stephanie Flora Götzl angestrebter akademischer Grad Magistra der Philosophie (Mag.phil.) Wien, im Mai 2012 Studienkennzahl lt. Studienblatt: A 343 Studienrichtung lt. Studienblatt: Anglistik und Amerikanistik (Diplom) Betreuerin: o.Univ.-Prof. Dr. Margarete Rubik Eidesstattliche Erklärung Ich erkläre hiermit an Eides Statt, dass ich die vorliegende Arbeit selbständig angefertigt habe. Die aus fremden Quellen direkt oder indirekt übernommenen Gedanken wurden als solche kenntlich gemacht. Die Arbeit wurde bisher weder in gleicher oder ähnlicher Form einer anderen Prüfungsbehörde vorgelegt und auch noch nicht veröffentlicht. Wien, am 1. Mai 2012 Stephanie Flora Götzl til min mor TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................... 1 1. THEORETICAL INTRODUCTION .................................................................................... 4 1.1. THE FAIRY TALE AS A HISTORICAL PRODUCT .................................................................................. 5 1.2. FEMINIST FAIRY-TALE CRITICISM ....................................................................................................... 16 1.3. REWRITING THE FAIRY-TALE GENRE ................................................................................................ 23 1.4. CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................................... 29 2. SARA HENDERSON HAY – STORY HOUR ................................................................... 32 2.1. SARA HENDERSON HAY: THE NEW WOMAN .................................................................................. 32 2.2. POETIC METHOD: CONSERVATISM UNVEILED .............................................................................. 35 2.3. WOMEN’S ROLES AND RELATIONSHIPS: PERSONAE AS STRATEGY ................................... 47 2.4. CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................................... 58 3. ANNE SEXTON – TRANSFORMATIONS ....................................................................... 60 3.1. ANNE SEXTON: THE HOUSEWIFE ......................................................................................................... 60 3.2. POETIC METHOD: THE WITCH-POET.................................................................................................. 64 3.3. WOMEN'S ROLES AND RELATIONSHIPS: THE FEMININE GROTESQUE ............................ 75 3.4. CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................................... 91 4. OLGA BROUMAS - BEGINNING WITH O ..................................................................... 94 4.1. OLGA BROUMAS: THE POSTMODERN FEMINIST .......................................................................... 94 4.2. POETIC METHOD: ‘A POLITICS OF TRANSLITERATION’ ............................................................ 96 4.3. WOMEN’S ROLES AND RELATIONSHIPS: THE LESBIAN CONTINUUM ............................ 106 4.4. CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................................ 119 5. CONCLUSION: A COMPARATIVE READING OF "RAPUNZEL" .......................... 122 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................. 131 PRIMARY SOURCES ............................................................................................................................................ 131 SECONDARY SOURCES ...................................................................................................................................... 133 INDEX .................................................................................................................................... 138 APPENDIX ............................................................................................................................ 142 DEUTSCHE ZUSAMMENFASSUNG ............................................................................................................... 142 ABSTRACT IN ENGLISH .................................................................................................................................... 143 CURRICULUM VITAE .......................................................................................................................................... 144 1 INTRODUCTION When we think about modern feminist rewritings of fairy tales we tend to recall such prominent writers as Angela Carter, Margaret Atwood or perhaps A.S. Byatt. All three of these authors are widely-read and well-known for their reinterpretations of folklore, fairy tales and mythological material. However, beyond the surface of the most well-known authors in the genre, there is a vast river of feminist fairy-tale rewritings in all shapes and forms. Particularly in poetry, women of the twentieth century have been more than busy in turning fairy-tale material into their own subversive feminist rewritings. Two great anthologies on fairy-tale renditions in poetry were published in 1985 and 2003: Disenchantments: An Anthology of Modern Fairy Tale Poetry and The Poets' Grimm: 20th Century Poems from Grimm Fairy Tales, respectively. Both of these collections contain among other fairy-tale poems a whole host of feminist fairy-tale poetry. This is how I discovered that three female American poets published a collection of fairy-tale poetry each in the short span of 14 years: between 1963 and 1977. These poets are Sara Henderson Hay, Anne Sexton and Olga Broumas. Despite each poet’s remarkably similar project in close temporal proximity, these three poets have never been analyzed side by side in an effort to compare each writer with the other and to discover how and why they differ and what has drawn them to rewriting fairy-tales at this particular time in American literary history. The first poet is Sara Henderson Hay, today a very little known American poet, who wrote a collection entitled Story Hour published in 1963. This collection contains thirty sonnets all inspired by and based on popular fairy tales. Despite Hay’s relative success as a poet in mid-century, her poetry has almost entirely vanished from today’s bookshelves and has virtually received no critical attention since. Except for the occasional acknowledgment of her work in fairy-tale anthologies or reviews of feminist fairy tales, only one article has been written in which Hay’s fairy-tale poetry is seriously considered. This article was written by Ellen McGrath Smith and published in the journal Sagetrieb in 2006 and is an analysis of Hay’s 2 Story Hour as a literary predecessor to the much more famous Transformations by Anne Sexton. Much of Smith’s brilliant analysis on Hay’s poetry and status as a feminist fairy-tale writer informs my own chapter on Sara Henderson Hay. The second poet is Anne Sexton. Sexton is a much more famous and prominent poet than Hay and she, too, has written an entire collection dedicated to rewritings of fairy tales. This collection is called Transformations and was published only eight years later in 1971. Transformations was very well received by feminist critics and Sexton remains a prominent poet to this day. Her fairy-tale poems are included in many anthologies and are widely discussed in secondary studies of her work. The third poet is the only living poet of this triad: the Greek American poet Olga Broumas. Her poetry collection Beginning with O was first published in 1977 and contains poems both based on mythology and fairy tales. I will be focusing on the section of her collection entitled “Innocence”, which contains her seven fairy-tale poems. Broumas’s poetry has been reviewed more frequently than Hay’s but is still not as widely known as Sexton’s. The collections Story Hour, Transformations and Beginning with O share more than just coincidental similarities. In the story of their collections I found the story of three female poets whose poetry has been firmly shaped by the history of female writers in the mid- to late twentieth-century. The way each writer has reacted to fairy tales and reshaped them in their own work is by no means accidental but reveals the literary and cultural influences that went behind them. In order to recover the literary and cultural influences of each poet my thesis contains a short survey on the literary and cultural background in which they were writing, which has great bearings on the style and content of their poetry. Each poet has a unique approach to fairy tales, which I will showcase by analyzing both form and content of the tales. In my chapters entitled “Poetic Method” I will focus on the form and style of their fairy-tale poetry and in “Women’s Roles and Relationships” I will highlight how these poets have re-imagined the female types presented in fairy tales. 3 In order to place each poet in the wider context of feminist reactions and rewritings to fairy tales in the mid- to late twentieth century I have also outlined approaches to the fairy tale and in particular feminist approaches