The Black Bear

Briar Rose" Questions/Comments:

How does Anne use the introduction to make the story her own? How does it feed off of the message from "The Golden Key" discussed on Monday?

What does a daughters' life become when she identifies her father as a perpetrator of her "death" by incest?

Does she experience rebirth as she emerges from silence, or does she enter yet "another kind of prison"?

Do we see evidence of denial and self-blaming in the poem? If so, where specifically?

Bottom of pg. 290- "A penny for your thoughts, Princess. I will hunt them like an emerald."- centuries of patriarchal history- virgin daughters exchanged in the marketplace by their fathers

What does the poem say about the consequences of silencing sexual violence?

How is this a personal, critical, cultural poem?

Briar Rose seems great deal more personal than others in "Transformations." Why does Anne choose Sleeping Beauty to represent herself?

Do you think Briar Rose depicts a father's duty to protect his daughter from adult sexuality or introduce her to it?

3 sections to the poem: Dawn S. says:

Prologue- middle-aged speaker introducing us to contemporary version of Briar Rose

2nd part- speaker-witch rewrites Grimm's tale with BR as father-daughter incest victim

3rd part- epilogue where narrator-which (girl of the prologue and Briar Rose speak as one) describing a stolen childhood, drunken sharklike father, and bedtime rituals including being "nailed into place"

How does this poem relate to the messages of Rumpelstiltskin "many of us have an old man inside us who wants to get out" and Rapunzel "many a girl had an old aunt who locked her in the study to keep the boys away"?

In the Grimm's tale, the king is a protective father who wants to shield his daughter from danger that she brings upon herself, while Sexton shifts the story to a suggestion that father-daughter incest and the silencing of its victims are embedded in patriarchal culture.