The American poet Anne Sexton first published "Her Kind" in her 1960 collection To Bedlam and Part Way Back (and always began her public readings with a performance of this poem). In it, a speaker inhabits a series of witchy personas who live outside restrictive patriarchal gender roles. Women whom society ostracizes for rejecting traditional femininity, the poem suggests, can nevertheless feel solidarity with each other.
I have gone out into the world, a witch controlled by an evil spirit, lurking in the dark, more courageous at night; plotting some wickedness, I have flown wildly over the ordinary houses, from lit building to lit building: a solitary creature, with twelve fingers, not in my right mind. Such a woman is somehow not quite a woman. I have been that type of woman.
I have discovered the cozy caves in the woods, stocked them with frying pans, statues, shelves, closets, luxurious fabrics, countless wares; I have cooked dinners for the little dragons and fairies: complaining, re-ordering the disordered. Such a woman gets misinterpreted. I have been that type of woman.
I have been carried in your wagon, driver; I have waved my naked arms at villages as we passed them, committing to memory the last sunlit paths I'd ever see. I've been a survivor who still feels the place where your fires burned my leg and where my ribs split as your execution wheels rolled. Such a woman is unrepentant and unembarrassed to die. I have been that type of woman.
The speaker of “Her Kind” inhabits a variety of personas that fly in the face of stereotypical femininity, and in doing so rejects societal expectations that women be beautiful, nurturing, and obedient. For the speaker, being a woman who chooses independence over dependence, self-reliance over family ties, and death over capitulation means being seen as a dangerous outlier—a “witch” who must be ostracized. But far from isolating the speaker, her independence offers her an empowering solidarity with other non-traditional women: as an outlier, she’s not alone, but “one of her kind.”
In each stanza of the poem, the speaker explores the different ways that patriarchy stuffs women into little boxes—boxes that the speaker refuses to be confined in:
In all of these instances, the speaker notes, women who step out of their prescribed roles end up isolated and ostracized:
Yet even after being judged and punished, all of these women remain “unashamed.” These “kind[s]” of women are united by the way they reject patriarchal ideas about what a woman should be. Repeating the words “I have been her kind,” the speaker proclaims her solidarity with other women who have refused to accept roles that were only ever meant to diminish them.
In this way, the poem might suggest that being an outcast paradoxically means being part of a whole community of other outcasts. These women are bonded both by their rejection of certain beliefs and by the way they’ve been treated. The poem’s skilled, self-sufficient witches (and the final stanza's possible allusion to Joan of Arc, who famously stood her ground despite knowing she’d be burned for her beliefs) suggest that, while women might be cast out and mistreated for rejecting patriarchal restrictions, they’ll also find themselves in excellent (and powerful) company.
I have gone ...
... braver at night;
"Her Kind" leaps right into action: its speaker describes having "gone out, a possessed witch," hovering in the "black air" of the night. The witch, in this poem, is a symbol of untraditional womanhood. By describing herself as a "possessed witch," the speaker paints a picture of a world in which only a woman "possessed" by an evil spirit would think to leave her house alone at night. The image of the witch instantly suggests both the outsider status of the speaker and the empowerment this speaker finds in stepping outside of what's expected of her.
The poem uses consonance to evoke the sharpened awareness this "possessed witch" might feel being out at night alone:
I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
The /t/ sounds are crisp and clear, suggesting that the speaker feels more vitally alive (and "braver") out here on her own than she did staying at home.
While in many cases women might be cautious about going outside alone at night, in this case, it is the speaker who is "haunting the black air." She isn't the one being haunted; she isn't scared. She is moving through the world with confidence and a sense of power. That this makes her a "witch" suggests that she's living in a pretty repressive society.
dreaming evil, I ...
... out of mind.
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Get LitCharts A+A woman like ...
... been her kind.
I have found ...
... rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like ...
... been her kind.
I have ridden ...
... bright routes, survivor
where your flames ...
... been her kind.
The poem's witches symbolize untraditional femininity. Witches were historically imagined as an archetype of the dark side of womanhood, the opposite of everything women were supposed to be: ugly instead of beautiful, solitary instead of family-oriented, malicious instead of sweet. In more recent years, women have claimed the witch for their own: witches are now often imagined more as independent, powerful women, not sinister hags.
While this poem's witches are skillful and strong, they're also "lonely," "misunderstood," and subjected to violence from society at large. But even if the wider world rejects the kind of femininity that witches symbolize, adopting a witchy way of being allows the speaker to find strong bonds of sisterhood and solidarity among other unconventional women.
The poem's repetitions help to give the speaker's voice its stirring, emphatic tone.
Perhaps the most noticeable repetition in the poem is its refrain: "I have been her kind." The use of a refrain in this poem is particularly fitting because it was a device commonly used in the Middle Ages, when poems were often sung and accompanied by music. The refrain thus fits right in with this poem's medieval allusions, from witch-burnings to "elves" to torture wheels.
The refrain also draws attention to the poem's theme of solidarity among unconventional women. Each stanza details the outsider status of a particular "kind" of woman and ends by returning to the same proclamation of sisterhood. Rather than allowing themselves to be cast out and forgotten, this refrain suggests, women who don't fit into patriarchy's exacting expectations can instead form a bond with each other and find strength in their refusal to play along.
The refrain thus makes this poem into an anthem of sorts: it suggests that at least part of the poem's purpose is to uplift and inspire other atypical women.
But other kinds of repetition play a role here, too. One is diacope, which appears in line 4:
over the plain houses, light by light:
The repetition of "light" here evokes the countless, identical illuminated windows of the "plain houses" the speaker flies over—a sameness from which the speaker wishes to be free.
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Controlled by an evil spirit or demon.
This poem about wild, rebellious women is appropriately untraditional: it doesn't use a standard form like the sonnet or the villanelle. Instead, it uses a form of the poet's own invention: three seven-line stanzas (also known as septets).
And perhaps those numbers are meaningful: both the number three and the number seven have magical associations in folklore, and three in particular calls to mind the three "weird sisters" from Macbeth, some of the most famous witches in all of English literature. Since the speaker imagines herself as three different witchy figures in this poem, that subtle numerical allusion doesn't seem totally accidental!
This is a poem about being untraditional and free, so it makes sense that the poem doesn't tie itself down to any particular meter. The poem's metrical freedom echoes the freedom this speaker desires for herself and women like her: the freedom to be a complex, sometimes contradictory human being, rather than fitting into a fixed idea of what a woman should be.
And the poem does have its own strong rhythms, even if they don't fit into a regular pattern. For instance, every stanza ends with the same refrain, and almost every word of it is stressed:
I have been her kind.
Those strong stresses make the refrain sound powerful, bold, and insistent.
The poem's rhyme scheme runs like this:
ABABCBC
Notice that while the A and B rhymes change with each stanza, the C rhyme remains consistent throughout the poem, in part because the last line of each stanza is a repeated refrain: "I have been her kind." That consistency draws special attention to the speaker's sense of solidarity with other strange women like her.
This rhyme scheme makes the poem feel regular and structured even as it defies conventions of form and meter. Like the homemaker in the second stanza who "rearrang[es] the disaligned," this poem abides by its own sense of order. The rhyme scheme suggests that the speaker here has a meticulous method of her own, guided by her own sense of what is important.
The speaker of "Her Kind" is, first and foremost, a woman. More importantly, she is a woman who identifies with the independence of witches, and who keenly feels their suffering. She knows that women who live according to their own rules tend to be "misunderstood" and even punished.
The voice in this poem is rather slippery: it's as if the speaker passes in and out of the personas she describes. All of the poem's different characters share a desire for freedom, and live outside the domestic realm women have traditionally been forced to inhabit. The "possessed witch" "go[es] out [...] over the plain houses" rather than staying within them; the homemaker arranges her goods in "the warm caves in the woods" rather than in a more conventional setting; and the medieval "survivor" gets burned at the stake outside the "villages" rather than living compliantly within them.
The speaker relates to being all these "kind[s]" of women—unafraid to exist outside the bounds society creates for her, no matter what freedom will cost.
This poem's setting seems, at first, to be a medieval world of strange "woods," close-knit "villages," and bloody violence. But in many ways, it could also be the contemporary world.
In the first stanza, for instance, the speaker describes being a witch flying "over the plain houses." Those "plain houses" could be the cottages of a medieval village—but they might also suggest the identical box houses of a conventional suburban neighborhood.
Similarly, the second stanza's woodland "caves," where a strange woman makes dinner for "the worms and the elves" (that is, dragons and fairies) sound like something right out of an old tapestry. But this setting could also be read metaphorically as an image of leaving suburban expectations behind to live an unconventional life far from others.
And in the final stanza, in which villagers burn a woman at the stake and break her bones on a wheel, certainly suggests a medieval execution. But it also hints at the way that modern women are punished for defying patriarchal expectations.
The poem's setting thus makes some sharp points about contemporary society—which, in this speaker's eyes, is just as close-minded and clannish as any superstitious medieval village.
Anne Sexton (1928-1974) wrote “Her Kind” early on in her career; it appeared in her first collection, To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960). The title of the collection alludes to an infamous psychiatric hospital in London, and many of the poems in the collection detail Sexton's experience of being institutionalized.
Though Sexton didn’t consider herself a Confessional poet, her intimate, transgressive work often gets categorized with the work of other poets linked to that movement—like W.D. Snodgrass, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, and John Berryman. These poets tried to reveal the hidden, imperfect, and even taboo parts of their lives and psyches that had been previously swept under the rug. Sexton, for instance, wrote plainly and unapologetically about mental illness, menstruation, masturbation, abortion, extramarital affairs, sexual abuse, and drug addiction.
Contemporary critics often found fault with Sexton for the so-called self-indulgence of her work. Yet the very qualities that critics scorned made her immensely popular among a general readership increasingly drawn to poetry that railed against the compulsory politeness, fake happiness, and rigid social norms of the post-war 1950s.
Sexton was first encouraged to write poetry by her psychiatrist, Dr. Martin Orne. In writing, she discovered a sense of purpose that being a suburban Boston housewife and mother hadn’t afforded her—and found almost immediate success. It was only ten years after she began writing poetry that she won the 1967 Pulitzer Prize for her book Live or Die.
“Her Kind” was clearly an important poem for Sexton: she was known for always reading it first whenever she gave readings in public. The poem’s themes foreshadow the second wave of feminism in the United States, in which women began to push back against traditional sexist boundaries. "Her Kind" is one of Sexton's most enduring works, speaking to the concerns of her time as well as expressing solidarity with women throughout history who have rejected restrictive gender roles. The poem also underlines what a complicated figure Sexton herself was. While she wrote rebellious poems that criticized patriarchal oppression, she herself continued to live as a wealthy suburban housewife until her death in 1974.
Witches and Feminism — Read a New York times article on the resurgence of witches in the public consciousness, and the witch as a feminist symbol.
A Short Biography — Read a biography of Sexton from the Poetry Foundation, and find links to more of her work.
The Poem Aloud — Listen to a 1966 recording of Anne Sexton reading "Her Kind."
An Introduction to Anne Sexton — Watch a USA Poetry documentary on Anne Sexton, in which she talks about getting started as a poet and reads from her work.
Sexton's Life — Read an article by Linda Sexton, Anne Sexton's daughter, that paints a complex and intimate portrait of the poet.