Bloom's Literary Themes - ymerleksi - home

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The Poetry of Anne Sexton
himself. . . . In contemplating Sophocles’ Oedipus as Freud did,
one realizes that the entire play is essentially Oedipus’ struggle
to get at the hidden truth. It is a battle for knowledge in which
Oedipus has to overcome tremendous inner resistance against
recognizing the truth about himself, because he fears so much
what he might discover. . . . What forms the essence of our
humanity—and of the play—is not our being victims of fate,
but our struggle to discover the truth about ourselves.
—Bruno Bettelheim, Freud and Man’s Soul 1
Not that it was beautiful,
but that I found some order there.
There ought to be something special
for someone
in this kind of hope.
This is something I would never find
in a lovelier place, my dear,
although your fear is anyone’s fear
like an invisible veil between us all . . .
and sometimes in private,
my kitchen, your kitchen,
my face, your face.
—Anne Sexton, “For John, Who Begs Me Not to
Enquire Further” To Bedlam and Part Way Back 2
BETTELHEIM’S OEDIPUS
Oedipus, Sophocles, Freud: this is preeminently a man’s story, told by
men to and for men, about a tragically fated hero who unknowingly
slays his father and marries his mother. Despite Freud’s attribution
of the Oedipus complex to women as well as to men, the story of
Oedipus has also remained essentially masculine in the popular imagination.
That imagination, sensing perhaps the culturally masculine
tenor not only of the myth but of its symbolic meanings, has even
tried (with a brief assist from psychoanalysis) to provide a womanly
equivalent: The Elektra complex. But Freud stuck stubbornly to his
assertion that the story of Oedipus was that of all humankind, and
a number of revisionist theorists and practitioners have attempted to