The Life of Anne Sexton

Essay by Quikskier9High School, 10th gradeA+, July 2004

download word file, 9 pages 5.0

Downloaded 30 times

On what I imagine would be a dark day, November 9th, 1928, the dark, intelligent, and brilliant mind known as Anne Sexton was born in the small town of Newton, Massachusetts. She was the daughter of Mary Gray Staples Harvey and Ralph Churchill Harvey. Anne was raised in a prosperous middle-class family. Anne was the baby of the family, and was always in the dire need of attention, but was often neglected. As her oldest sister matured, Anne saw her become her father's favorite, and her other sister Blanche, became known as the smart child of the family. When Anne was six years old, her family moved to Wellesley, Mass. where she attended numerous public schools from the time she was 6 until the age of 17.

Though Anne grew up in a nice household with an influential mother, her family was very dysfunctional. Anne Sexton's father was a nice man, but he would frequently go on drinking binges and abuse the children, and even "violate them".

Anne was able to take refuge from this terror, but forming a close relationship with Anna Dingley, or as she was known to Anne, "Nana". Nana was her maiden great-aunt who lived with the Harvey's during Anne's adolescence. Anne had paranoid feelings that her parents may abandon her, but always found encouragement and comfort from her great aunt. When Sexton was still in elementary school she suffered the traumatizing event of her aunt's mental breakdown and hospitalization due to her condition of being bipolar, or being a manic depressant. This event would later foreshadow what would eventually happen to Anne Sexton as an adult and allow Sexton to see the condition that she would suffer from to.

As a student in Wellesley public school, from the age of 6 to 17, Anne...