Young

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1962

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Background

Authorial Context

Diane Middlebrook mentions in her biography that Sexton’s childhood included feelings of loneliness, feelings echoed in “Young.” The biography also details Sexton’s emotional distance from her two older sisters and her parents, who had strict rules, such as her father, who had alcoholism, requiring a certain type of dress for dinner. This distance from her parents appears in “Young” when the speaker observes her parents’ separate windows. Because Sexton was a bit messy and loud, she often ate dinner in a separate room with the housekeeper. Sexton found companionship with and parental love from her great aunt, who came to live with them, but her “Nana’s” deteriorating mental health forced her into a hospital, leaving Sexton with emotional scars.

Sexton developed a group of girlfriends in junior high and high school, becoming quite sociable, interested in fashion, and boy crazy, which led to her parents taking her out of public school and placing her in an all-female school. As the speaker in “Young” suggests she is not quite a woman, Sexton enjoyed her female development, stuffing her bra and putting on lipstick, for example, to appeal to the boys.

“Young” also depicts an adolescent questioning the stars and wondering whether God really sees and knows all. These subtle yet heavy themes appear as blips of thought in “Young,” but they foreshadow Sexton’s own posthumously published collection The Awful Rowing Toward God, a weighty collection concerned with the search for God and meaning amid personal anguish. Many critics agree that the collection is not for the faint of heart, a sentiment that contrasts this later work with the simple, childlike, accessible inquisitiveness toward God that Sexton underlines in “Young.”

Literary Context

Sexton is part of the Confessional poetry genre, which has its origin in the late 1950s and the early 1960s. This type of poetry involves the use of “I,” conflating speaker with poet, and incorporates autobiographical events, often from childhood, intense psychological experiences, and/or moments related to mental health. Poet Robert Lowell is associated with the origins, and Sexton studied under his tutelage, becoming one of the genre’s major representatives alongside friend, classmate, and fellow Confessional poet Sylvia Plath. Confessional poetry’s notoriety stems from the erasure of the line between public and private. Lowell, for instance, caused a scandal when he published portions of his ex-wife’s letters in his own poems. Plath queried many of the same thematic concerns as Sexton, including adulthood, womanhood, motherhood, God, the search for meaning, and mental health conditions.

Sexton’s poems often push the envelope both in title and content. Many of her poem titles, such as “In Celebration of My Uterus,” “The Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator,” “Menstruation at Forty,” and “Wanting to Die,” for instance, underscore arguments by critics of Confessional poetry who say the genre is too personal, too intimate. Poems such as “Sylvia’s Death” show Sexton’s sadness that Plath died by suicide without Sexton, whereas famous poems like “The Starry Night” turn idyllic images like Van Gogh’s masterpiece of the same name on their head to describe death and dying as an artform. For Confessional poets like Sexton, the personal was also impersonal, and private matters informed public matters.

In “Young,” Sexton recalls details that relate to autobiographical experiences, including her childhood loneliness and isolation on the lawn away from her family inside the home. The uncertain or awkward tone of the poem in the way the speaker is not quite a child but not quite an adult suggests the mental health and substance use challenges Sexton faced later in her life. Becoming a woman did not actually give her the certainty and sense of belonging the speaker of “Young” desires.