ERKEKLERİN DÜNYASINDA KADIN OLMAK: ANNE SEXTON’IN İKON KIRICILIĞA DAİR MANİFESTOSU

Abstract

World history is the history of rebellions and revolts experienced since the devil’s rebellion against God, described in holy books. Among the most striking examples of this turbulent and dynamic process are man’s revolt against the church with Renaissance, people’s against the king with French Revolution, and women’s against patriarchal order and men with Modernism. The rights not given to the rebels by their rulers are indeed behind all these rebellions. In fact, the last one is referred to as a women’s rights struggle that started in the 19th century and spread to the 20th century in western culture. Anne Sexton, with her poem titled “Her Kind” and analysed in our study, presents her works as one of the cornerstones of American women’s poetry in the last century. In this poem in which she challenges the roles of obedient housewife, chaste mother and faithful wife imposed on women for thousands of years due to Eve archetype, Sexton also opposes the social exclusion, accusation and stigmatization of women who get rid of these roles shaped by traditional male perspective. She writes the manifesto of the free and independent woman by stating firmly on the last line of each stanza “I am her kind”. In our study, the manifesto that Sexton produces in this poem is examined with a focus on its precursors, and it is concluded that this rebellion actually stemmed from long years of obedience. Writing with the belief that God imposes this obedience on women with His holy books, the state with its laws, society with its traditions and men with their physical and economic power, Sexton rejects all these traditional and stereotyped female identities, secondary to men. Thus she proves to be one of the iconoclast female figures of the 20th century, thereby writing her name in the history of women’s struggle.