A Child Trapped

Anne Sexton doesn’t glamorize the story of Sleeping Beauty’s heroine, Briar Rose. In fact, she tells the reader about the horrific life of a girl who’s idolized and traumatized by her father. Briar Rose reveals her past through series of hypnosis sessions.  

I believe Sexton’s interpretation of Briar Rose’s character makes this poem an anti-fairytale. She turns the tender plot of Sleeping Beauty into one that’s disconcerting because Briar Rose’s story starts and ends with tragedy. She can’t escape her past, no matter what she does. In this tale, Sexton also commented on the practice of psychology and drug addiction in the 1970’s. The tragic storyline, the portrayal of a woman’s choices in the 1970’s, the events in her horrible life, and her internal struggles are all elements that emphasizes the anti-fairytale genre.  

 Nothing is positive in Briar Rose’s life. She’s addicted to sleeping medicines because she is terrified to sleep. When she did sleep, she dreamt of when she was raped by her alcoholic father. Briar Rose is afraid to defend herself. She wanted to tell her father how much she loathed him as he said, “Come be my snooky/and I will give you a root” (Sexton, 21-22), but she can’t.  And even when she is whisked away by her own prince, Briar Rose is raped until she is old, lying catatonic in her deathbed, and hooked up to tubes. The poem ends with her wondering if her life after death will be any better than the life of living.

I think that there is more to this young woman than just being a rape victim. I believe she also has two different mental disorders. Because of the rape, Briar Rose suffers from post traumatic stress disorder. Looking on the National Institute of Mental Health’s website I found she has several of the markers of the disorder – insomnia, detachment from her husband (Briar Rose doesn’t want to fall asleep with him), and persistent thoughts of the rape (par 2).  She seems to also have Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). Briar Rose has multiple personalities – a toddler, a princess, a newlywed, and a 90-year-old woman. At each hypnosis session another personalities is revealed.  She has many of the symptoms of this disorder - insomnia, night terrors, anxiety, flashbacks, and drug abuse. She even talks about voyages, which could be a reference to out of body experiences. People who suffer from DID often report this happening to them. Perhaps this is a poem about a young woman in a mental institution, who is being treated for her personality and mental disorders. To escape remembering the disturbing events in her life, Briar Rose’s mind crafted stories about fairies, princes, and other fantastical things to protect herself from a complete mental breakdown.

To conclude, Anne Sexton has crafted the quintessential anti-fairytale. There is no happy ending. Everything about Briar Rose’s life is tragic. Sexton’s observations of the 1970’s gave insight on how the addicted and mentally unstable received medical treatment and how they lived.

Works Cited

Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality Disorder). 2009. 4 January 2011

<http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/dissociative-identity-disorder-multiple-

personality-disorder>.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). 4 January 2011

<http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-

ptsd/index.shtml>.

Sexton, Anne. "Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty) ." Zipes, Jack. Don't Bet on the Prince. New York:

Routledge, 1989. 114-118.

Note: This was originally written for a MFA class.