ENGL347 Women Writers
is left within the position of accuser to pass judgment on who we feel the witch-suspect is . In doing so however , we reveal our own stereotyped assumptions of the term witch as an inherent metonym for female , accompanied by the gendered dogma that surrounds this . As we cannot legitimately allocate complete passivity or power to either voice , the figure of the witch and thus the poetic characters remain elusive and resistant to essentialist confinement .
Anne Sexton ’ s ‘ Her Kind ’ is similar to Coleridge ’ s poem in its concentration on inextricable relationships . The witch-figure , split between three different states across ‘ Her Kind ’, acts as the centre around which Sexton , the speaker and the reader revolve . The first state displayed is that of a culturally recognisable witch , who is seen ‘ haunting the black air ’ and ‘ dreaming evil ’, conveyed in deliberately heightened gothic language . This characterisation begins to expand further through an emphasis on ostracisation , with the witch being described as a ‘ lonely thing , twelve-fingered , out of mind .’ ( HK , l . 5 ). Her physical and psychological abnormalities work alongside her dehumanisation through the noun ‘ thing ’ ( Ibid ), maintaining the poem ’ s fantastical motif while also building the reader ’ s sympathies towards the figure ,
37 as Coleridge does within her own characterisation . These sympathies are then intensified as the relationship between the speaker and the witch is explicitly expressed within the lines ‘ A woman like that is not a woman , quite . / I have been her kind .’ ( HK , ll . 6-7 ). With the witch , the speaker occupies a shared space of womanhood that rejects established beliefs as to what does and does not constitute a woman . The absurdity of these beliefs is exposed in the contradictory syntax of the sixth line , wherein the label of woman is given but then instantly rescinded , before the argument is left irresolute with the adverb ‘ quite ’ ( Ibid ). The speaker unites herself with the experiences of the witch regardless , further echoing Coleridge ’ s combination of female voices . Their relationship is encapsulated in the paralleled pronouns ‘ her ’ and ‘ I ’ that regularly run throughout , acting as the foundation for the poem ’ s emphasis on connection through female difference .
The second stanza is where Sexton ’ s authorial relationship to the figure of the witch becomes most pertinent . The witch is shown to be a productive influence on the primitivist natural setting of a cave in the woods , which she fills with ‘ skillets , carvings ,