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Feet of clay revealed in the bio "Anne Sexton"...
Sometimes a biography can reveal such painful facts about a famous figure in history you have esteemed but know very little about that it's hard to get over. Such is the case with this biography about the famous poetess, "Anne Sexton," by Diane Wood Middlebrook. I have no doubt that what this biographer writes is true, and I believe that we must accept the fact that many famous figures in history did not live the most noble lives, but still I feel disallusioned.
I have always thought it was important to follow the guidance of a higher power when it comes to fame, because if you believe in this power, you know that the master and the voice within will guide you in the path you need to take. God might take you into the quieter pathways if you are serious about living for the good of all. The creator, understandably, might not think fame is good for some people, especially the fame that is enhanced by out of control behavior.
I came to a chilling disclosure in this book yesterday that almost made me put it down right then. Anne Sexton's daughter, Linda Sexton, said that her mother would often come and get in bed with her in the middle of the night when she had panic attacks, which always made her daughter uneasy and upset. Understandably so since Anne Sexton was a life long alcoholic and also took many drugs to control her mental illness. That is a recipe for disaster. She was mentally ill, but she was also a parent to be feared. After a number of incidents, Linda Sexton said she woke up one night feeling that she could not breathe. Her mother was on top of her in the act of having sex with her, this was when she was in her teens. How do you get over something like that? With great difficulty.
The video I posted below of Anne Sexton reading "Her Kind" I think refers to a woman doing things that made her not quite a woman, or I would have to say not quite a mother either.
Jack Kerouac and Anne Sexton both became world famous writers but they did some reprehensible things, which I have come to expect of alcoholics since it loosens the inhibitions that restrain us from bestial acts.
She was constantly unfaithful to her husband with the writers she met when she went 'on the road' to her poetry readings. When she was home they would drink together and her husband would lose his temper and hit her, so in a sense she was getting herself punished. She had intelligent friends among the writers who tried hard to understand and help her, but to me this was too often a self indulgent world.
Anne's parents were alcoholics who were naturally very detached from her, even though they were regarded as successful in their worlds. A great aunt became a surrogate mother who also violated her sexually, as did her father when he was drinking. You might say she learned from bad teachers, and repeated the pattern, both drinking and violating her daughter. She could never admit that she did violate. She got beyond that ability.
After many years and many affairs, she finally divorced her husband but was too problem ridden and admittedly very suicidal for any other man to take on. From that time on she was doomed. She had not developed the strength to help herself after years of expensive psychoanalysis with several different psychiatrists. She killed herself with carbon dioxide in her car at the age of 46, a suicide finally planned to succeed.
There is no doubt she was a very talented writer, but should we give accolades so generously to a person in so much trouble in every way? She was a contemporary of mine. I could just picture how she charted her very successful career. Reading her striking poems, I know why people loved them from the beginning. She read them very well, too, and she was an unusually glamorous woman among poets.
I took a different path with my writing toward issues and causes. For that reason, I would say, an unusual choice in Mormon Utah, I got incarcerated against my will in a mental hospital and threatened with electric shock while still in college.
I did not regard being molested as sure to cause a mental illness for which I needed electric shock. I said that is the last thing I need. I have been shocked too many times by the depravity of man. Spare me this. I did not drink, smoke, or do drugs, so they did not have an excuse to violate my rights. The psychiatrists did it anyway, even if it was going to kill me, and the only way I could stop them was by nearly dying.
But I wanted no more help for my 'mental illness' from doctors capable of treatment totally against my will. I resolved to stay away from the psychiatrists who would shock women so easily in those days with no qualms, for days if necessary to bring them around. I felt the treatment of mental illness was still in the dark ages. If you are a woman who drinks excessively and is willing to take drugs by the handful you are going to be a good 'patient.' Anyway that is what I thought, but God help those more impaired, really ill and needing help and guidance as I think Anne was. Childhood violations were more extensive in her life than mine. She seemed to have no clear ideas about how to help herself. She was incarcerated any number of times in mental hospitals, until I think the course of her treatment became part of the problem. In spite of it, she did not develop accountability. Nobody even seemed to be insisting that she had to stop drinking, that nothing really good was going to happen if she didn't. Except fame! You can still drink and do reprehensible things and be rewarded with fame. That might even add to your luster and your fascination, as long as it does not out and out destroy you. Suicide even insures fame for many years after, it has such a morbid fascination for people, too, as both Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath talked about before doing it. It might be harder not to do it at some point.
Her story should be studied by many. This is a valuable biography I think, even if a hard one to read.
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I cannot imagine suffering that kind of abuse from my mother....OR father! I'm sure that would be a tough read...but an interesting one.
Pam -
I am torn between reading it and not reading it because of the sensitve material and similar things that happened in my own life with my own family. I do love the book reviews you put in here. When I feel strong enough to handle it, this may be one that I do indeed pick up.
NELISHIA
http://journals.aol.com/nelishianatl/Prayingandbelieving/ -
I think this was a wonderful review and commentary about Anne Sexton. I was also disturbed by the sexual aggression she revealed--perhaps this was part of the demon that she couldn't bear to hold any longer. I agree that addiction, alcholism, sexual abuse, or suicidal tendencies should not be pre-requisites to fame, but I notice that so often I think it makes it easier for those that write about writers to exploit the sensational, although there are certainly those who had the 'gift'. This is a great entry, thank you.
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What a troubled life Anne led...I am having a hard time with the sexual abuse she bestowed on her daughter. What a tragic ending for her, it sounds like a very interesting book.
Lisa
5/15/08 7:26 PM