“Cinderella” – Anne Sexton
You always read about it:
the plumber with twelve children
who wins the Irish Sweepstakes.
From toilets to riches.
That story.
Or the nursemaid,
some luscious sweet from Denmark
who captures the oldest son’s heart.
From diapers to Dior.1
That story.
5
10
Or a milkman who serves the wealthy,
eggs, cream, butter, yogurt, milk,
the white truck like an ambulance
who goes into real estate
and makes a pile.
15
From homogenized to martinis at lunch.
Or the charwoman
who is on the bus when it cracks up
and collects enough from the insurance.
From mops to Bonwit Tellar.2
20
That story.
Once
the wife of a rich man was on her deathbed
and she said to her daughter Cinderella:
Be devout. Be good. Then I will smile 25
down from heaven in the seam of a cloud.
The man took another wife who had
two daughters, pretty enough
but with hearts like blackjacks.
Cinderella was their maid
30
She slept on the sooty hearth each night
and walked around looking like Al Jolson.3
Her father brought presents home from town,
jewels and gowns for the other women
but the twig of a tree for Cinderella
35
She planted that twig on her mother’s grave
and it grew to a tree where a white dove sat.
Whenever she wished for anything the dove
would drop it like an egg upon the ground.
The bird is important, my dears, so heed him. 40
Next came the ball, as you all know,
It was a marriage market.
The prince was looking for a wife.
All but Cinderella were preparing
and gussying up for the big event.
Cinderella begged to go too.
Her stepmother threw a dish of lentils
into the cinders and said: Pick them
up in an hour and you shall go.
The white dove brought all his friends:
all the warm wings of the fatherland came,
and picked up the lentils in a jiffy.
No, Cinderella, said the stepmother,
you have no clothes and cannot dance.
That’s the way with stepmothers.
45
50
60
65
As nightfall came she thought she’d better
get home. The prince walked her home
and she disappeared into the pigeon house
70
and although the prince took an axe and broke
it open she was gone. Back to her cinders.
These events repeated themselves for three days.
However on the third day the prince
covered the palace steps with cobbler’s wax
75
and Cinderella’s gold shoe stuck upon it.
Now he would find whom the shoe fit
and find his strange dancing girl for keeps.
He went to their house and the two sisters
were delighted because they had lovely feet.
80
The eldest went into a room to try the slipper on
but her big toe got in the way so she simply
sliced it off and put on the slipper.
The prince rode away with her until the white dove
told him to look at the blood pouring forth.
85
1
That is the way with amputations.
From Diapers to Dior: an allusion to a true story : A Cinderella went to the tree at the grave
Danish maid married one of the Rockefeller sons. (She and cried forth like a gospel singer:
They don’t just heal up like a wish.
went from washing diapers to wearing Christian Dior
The other sister cut off her heel
dresses.)
3
but the blood told as blood will.
Al
Jolson:
American
jazz
singer
who
often
performed
2
Bonwit Teller: an expensive department store.
in black face.
55
Mama! Mama! My turtledove,
send me to the prince’s ball!
The bird dropped down a golden dress
and delicate little gold slippers.
Rather a large package for a simple bird.
So she went. Which is no surprise.
Her stepmother and sisters didn’t
Recognize her without her cinder face
and the prince took her hand on the spot
and danced with no other the whole day.
“Cinderella” – Anne Sexton
The prince was getting tired.
He began to feel like a shoe salesman.
But he gave it one last try.
This time Cinderella fit into the shoe
like a love letter into its envelope.
At the wedding ceremony
the two sisters came to curry favor4
4
90
95
Curry favor: win approval by flattering someone
and the white dove pecked their eyes out.
Two hollow spots were left
like soup spoons.
Cinderella and the prince
lived, they say, happily ever after,
like two dolls in a museum case
never bothered by diapers or dust,
never arguing over the timing of an egg,
never telling the same story twice,
never getting a middle- aged spread,
their darling smiles pasted on for eternity.
Regular Bobbsey Twins.5
That story.
100
5
Bobbsey Twins: characters from a popular series of
children’s books about two sets of twins who were
always good and always happy. (Nan and Bert and
Flossie and Freddie are the Bobbsey Twins.)
105
1. At the beginning of the poem, the speaker gives four examples of the kind of story she claims “you always read about.” Explain what these four
stories have in common.
2. The old label for such stories is “from rags to riches.” How does the poet update this old label for each story? What refrain does she use after three
of these examples?
3. Identify at least six similes the speaker uses in telling her updated version of the Cinderella story.
4. To understand this new version of an old fairy tale, we have to catch the poet’s tone, or her attitude toward the Cinderella story. A clue to this tone
can be found in her use of slang and references to modern life. List as many examples as you can find of each. Why are they ironic – that is, how
does this use of language confound out expectation?
5. Locate the moments where the speaker addresses the reader of on comments on the story’s plot in a way that is uncharacteristic of fairy tales. [What
are these examples of?] How does this running commentary affect you? What kind of tone does it suggest?
6. How would you read the last stanza aloud? (What tone of voice would you use and what unspoken meaning would you try and communicate?)
7. We all like happy endings. Traditional storytelling usually supplied them by saying, “And they lived happily ever after.” In this version of the
Cinderella story, however, the poet refuses to use that convention. In the last stanza, she shows us that “happily ever after” might not apply to real
life. What do you think this poet is saying actually does happen after even the most romantic storybook wedding, no matter what “they” say?
8. Describe how this poet feels about fairy tales. (Do you think that she is just trying to be funny, or do you think she has a serious objection to such
stories?) Do you agree with her, or would you argue for another point of view?
9. If the Cinderella story and other fairy tales can be so easily mocked, why do you think they have been so popular for so long? Explain what such
stories might reveal about our deepest desires.
10. What allusions do you find in the story?
The poem and questions 1-9 above come from The Elements of Literature: Fourth Course. Austin: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1993.