Institutionalized: (In)sanity and the institution of motherhood in the poetry of Anne Sexton

The subject of this study is the duplicitous "institution" with regard to Anne Sexton's work and its application, first, to the psychiatric institutions she "inhabited" and, second, to the institution of motherhood. Sexton uses the term "father-doctor," which suggests a parallel between two male authority figures, though she retreats to one, the doctor, as a liberator, to evade the pressures of the other, her husband, the father of her two daughters. Sexton's postpartum depression, subsequent suicide attempts, and eventual use of the psychiatric ward as a retreat from the traditional family structure supports the argument that her poetry juxtaposes the typical, negative views of asylums with her own home and replaces the ideological "happy home" with the creative space and identity she finds in psychiatric institutions.