The Brothers Grimm fairy tales have been interpreted in countless ways since they were first written, and probably for good reason: the blood and gore of the original fairy tales are not necessarily ideal bedtime stories. However, Anne Sexton's retellings in her poetry collection Transformations are unique: slangy and irreverent, revealing new depths to the stories most people are so familiar with. Sexton often achieves these "transformations" by contradicting stereotypes, traditional roles and obsolete representations of femininity present in the Brothers Grimm fairy tales. For example, he points out how ridiculous it is for a princess to choose a husband based on a contest held for strangers, and then goes on to mock the fairy tales' inaccurate image of princesses always asking for increasingly difficult tasks to be performed simply to win their favor. Often, these challenges to fairy tale representations of women result in giving the poems a feminist edge, especially 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 of herself and her brother. In “Rumpelstiltskin,” the miller's daughter (later 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. Snow White, similarly, exacts revenge on the evil queen who tried to kill her three times, forcing her to dance on hot roller skates until she burns to death. Ultimately, Briar Rose escapes her father's implied restrictions and abuse and begins to heal from her past on her own terms. In all four of these poems, Sexton describes a young girl reclaiming power and agency 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 her power. own power to get out of it. no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essaySexton begins his "transformation" of "Hansel and Gretel" in the same way as the original fairy tale: their family is starving, and the mother decides to prioritize. Instead of trying to support her entire family with insufficient food, she chooses to allow herself and her husband to eat more comfortably by purposely leaving her children in the middle of the woods to die. 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 his mother's plan and at first manages to bring them home by dropping pebbles to mark their path. However, when he drops the bread crumbs that are eaten by the birds, the two children are finally lost, “blind as worms” (102). When they come across the witch's cottage, and she locks Hansel up to prepare to eat him, he is described as the child "the smartest, the biggest, the juiciest", although here Sexton uses free indirect discourse and makes it ambiguous whether this be it the opinion of the witch or the narrator (103). In any case, Gretel continues to be underrated. However, as the witch begins to tease her about her brother's impending death, telling her "how a shiver would run through her as she smelled him cooking" and other gruesome details, Sexton quietly recognizes Gretel's potential, writing , "[s]he one who let neither fallstones nor bread was waiting for its moment” (104). Finally, when the witch decides to eat Gretel too and tells her to put herself in the oven, Gretel speaks for the first time in the poem and tells her, “Ja, Fraulein, show me how it can be done” (104). . Feigning obedience, she tricks the witch into entering the oven herself, then locks the door and lets her burn alive. Sexton not only allows Gretel to exhibit ingenuity and strategic thinking, but also demonstrates the need for a certain kind of courage, a toughness that allows Gretel to endure not only the abuse and danger she faces from outside 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 prison and the threat of death until she deceives both the king and the dwarf, two men who have created an impossible situation for her. At the beginning of the poem she is abandoned by her father, who tells the king that he 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 filled with straw and tells her to "spin gold or [she] will die as a criminal" (18). She is given no chance to discredit her father's claims and no escape, except for the dwarf who appears as she cries. To save herself she is forced to give away first her necklace and then her ring in exchange for him turning the straw. However, when she finds herself locked in the largest room, facing both the threat of death if she fails and the promise of becoming queen if she succeeds, in that moment she has no choice but to promise the greedy dwarf, that she is "on the scent of something greater,” her future child, despite how unfair his situation is (19). At this point in the poem, she has successfully deceived the king, and although one might imagine that she does not feel much affection for him (an inference which Sexton does not contradict), she has at least achieved a position of power. , from which he will be able to begin to regain autonomy. When her son is born, he is “ugly as an artichoke, but the queen thought him a pearl” (20). With a son he loves and the threat of death no longer hanging over his head, he is finally happy. When the dwarf comes to "claim his prize," she tries to offer him something else so that he will leave her son alone, but he refuses (20). But she shouts “two buckets of sea water” until he begins to pity her, so he sends messengers into the kingdom to find unusual names to escape this new deal with the dwarf. When one of them manages to find out Rumpelstiltskin's name, the queen manages to restrain her son and the dwarf tears himself in half in anger. Finally, Sexton shows the success of the miller's daughter: although the men had placed her in a dangerous and unfair position of what was essentially slavery, she was able to hold on long enough to no longer depend on her father, share power with the king and counter success. dwarf once and for all. Sexton demonstrates that, thanks to the queen's willingness to trade everything and sacrifice herself extensively, she is able to emerge unscathed with a child she loves. Snow White is not portrayed particularly flatteringly throughout the poem that tells her story. Sexton calls her a "silly bunny" and seems to be celebrated by both the dwarves and her prince for her beauty alone. However, although not explicitly celebrated, the poem demonstrates a kind of resistance on its part (8). For example, when the evil queen's mirror declares that Snow White is now the fairest in the land, and she vows to kill her, the thirteen-year-old girl walks through the woods for seven weeks to save herself. Although threatened by wolves and snakes and harassed by lecherous birds, she manages to escape through skill, willpower or simpleluck, and sleeps for the first time in almost two months in the dwarfs' house. She no longer demonstrates this type of survival instinct for most of the poem, surviving being strangled with strings, poisoned by a comb, and killed with a poisoned apple only because of the dwarves and the prince. At no point in the story does Snow White outsmart the queen, but she lives because her beauty, the most obvious tool she possesses, causes others to protect her. However, after the latest attempt on her life, it is implied that she has learned from the experience and will not allow herself to be put in danger again. To ensure her own safety, she welcomes her stepmother to the wedding feast by forcing her to dance on hot roller skates until she "[fries] upwards like a frog", dying horribly in front of the other guests while Snow White watches gleefully. in his mirror (9). In the end, the princess is not saved by intelligence or even beauty. Sexton shows that Snow White's true strength lies in her tenacity: the seven-week walk and ability to burn the queen to death are how she finally ensures her own safety. Once again, Sexton depicts a young girl forced to escape persecution by any means necessary. “Briar Rose” has a less clear-cut ending than many of the other poems in Transformations and represents an alternative approach to abuse and misfortune than the other three poems. young women take. Cursed by a fairy at 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 an infinite number of rules and restrictions, but only succeeds in being overbearing and creating a claustrophobic environment for his daughter. Sexton tells us that "every night the king bit the hem of her robe to keep her safe" and that the princess "dwelt in her scent, rank as honeysuckle" (109). Despite her efforts, the curse still comes true and in the meantime Briar Rose's life has been consumed by her father. When she finally awakens from her century-long sleep, it is because the prince kisses her as she lies unconscious, a violation that makes her cry. After the wedding, she fears sleep, calling it "that brutal place," but tries to deal with her fear by getting prescribed medicine and staying away from the prince while he sleeps (111). Here, Briar Rose begins to build 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 end of the poem, a privilege not afforded to characters in other poems. Although Briar Rose does not act out against her father and the prince like Gretel or Snow White, she is given a chance to express the difficulties of her past. In the penultimate stanza of the poem, he implies a childhood of abuse and rigidity, telling the reader, "[t]here has happened a theft" and describing the king "drunk bent over [his] bed, circling 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 heard clearly. The king is still alive, she is still afraid to sleep, and the prince who kissed her as she lay unconscious is still her husband. The last lines of the poem are questions, expressing her confusion about where she intends to go from here. Asking “What journey is this, little girl? May God help me… this life after death?” she shows a clear desire to move forward and move forward, but is unsure how to proceed and achieve true freedom from her past (112)..