Manic and Depressive States on Anne Sexton’s Poetic Depictions of Food

This research explores poet Anne Sexton’s use of food imagery in To Bedlam and Part Way Back, focusing on the way food is presented in contextual relation to the manic-depressive cycles Sexton was experiencing. This is placed within the socio-political climate of the 1950s-1960s which influences Sexton’s relationship with food.

Since her death in 1974, Anne Sexton has been subjected to pathologisation in analysis of her work. From scholars to biographers, the predominant focus has been on her suicide. and which is often discussed as if it were the only self present in Sexton's poetry" (176). Sexton is defined by her mental illness, leading to an oversight of the structural and linguistic merits of her poetry. Kathleen Ossip, for example, argues that Sexton is mythologised, becoming a package: pretty, housewife, stupid, classy, and dead (12). Critical discourse plays into this myth; Diana Hume George's Oedipus Anne sets up a picture of Sexton as a case study through the mythological evocations in the title, reading her life through psychoanalysis. When Danny Wedding attributes symptoms of cognitive distortion to Sexton, she is positioned as a case study, her work unexplored within the cultural context. Wedding presents a discourse that reads backwards; he understands her work through the hindsight of her death, rather than exploring her development throughout her life.
One of the tensions in Sexton scholarship is the assumption she had Bipolar Affective Disorder. Officially, this diagnosis was not attributed during her lifetime. While one must be careful with posthumous diagnosis, Sexton's daughter Linda has bipolar, and suggests her mother lived with the same condition, which the medication she took is now prescribed for (Mercy Street 94). Bipolar " [. . .] appears to be the most genetic of the major psychiatric illnesses", making it plausible, Kay Redfield Jamison going as far to say "almost certain", that Sexton had a mood disorder (Touched with Fire 235,234). Despite this likelihood, to avoid posthumous diagnosis, this essay shall explore manic and depressive states-which Sexton's friends and psychiatrists refer to-rather than explicitly labelling her with bipolar. Instead of pathologising Sexton, I intend to explore her poetry in relation to female relationships with food, and how manic and depressive states, intersected with the influence of comorbid disorders, impact Sexton's poetic and personal relationship with food.

Sexton's Relationship with Food, Domesticity, and Her Manic-Depressive States
Sexton scholars look at the socio-political importance of representations of domesticity in Sexton's poetry, but do not explicitly focus on the way food is presented, a crucial lapse, as cooking was a domestic task that Sexton struggled with  she gives to others but must deprive herself of", as Orbach succinctly asserts (21). When food is situated as a means of control, disordered relationships with food manifest. An argumentative nature surrounding food reflects the control paradox of food production; trying to control food creates a difficult and disordered relationship with food, despite expectations being that women control food production.
Symbolically, purging food can be read as a comment on women's role in society.
Sexton's therapy tapes showed her distaste towards domesticity. She told Doctor Orne that she did not want to be "some little housewife" and discussed her distaste for housewifery in interviews (Skorczewski 31; A. Sexton, 'With Barbara Kelves' 84). Taking the stance that "bulimic vomiting imitates the act of speech, regurgitating food as a substitute for words", it is significant that Sexton purged in front of her family but was able to use words with Doctor Orne and journalists (Ellmann 48). She told Doctor Orne it felt like Kayo loved her most when she helped around the house, and that she hated this pressure, feeling housework was "beneath me […] a woman's place is not in the home" (Skorczewski 103). This testament depicts the dilemma of control within Sexton's relationship with food, as to prepare the meals is to conform to the domestic ideal. It follows that her bouts of purging removed food and stands as a metaphor for the removal of domestic control over her. Sexton openly told others that she struggled with domesticity, but could not admit this within her family setting, thus I propose that it arose symbolically through purging. Purging is related to nurture; when one purges, they seem to play into the norms of providing nurturance but in private they remove this, posing a challenge to the role of woman as nurturer. Given that Sexton struggled with domestic chores during depressive episodes, it is significant that on a downward turn she resorts to purging.
Manic-depressive states influenced Sexton's relationship with food. When severely depressed Sexton was unable to complete basic tasks, and when manic it is common to lose hunger cues and forget to eat. Sexton lost weight during a period of severe depression and reached 110 pounds (Middlebrook 378 Biography suggests Sexton was less domestic than she claimed, with depression influencing this behaviour. Kayo recalled an incident where he asked Sexton to prepare baked potatoes for dinner. Upon returning from work, "she hadn't even put the baked potatoes inshe 'didn't know how'" (Middlebrook 36). Linda recalls episodes in her childhood where her mother did not feed her, even when she asked for food (Mercy Street 40). Further, there were points when Sexton was too unwell to look after the children and the responsibility fell to Kayo's mother, Billie Sexton, causing tension as Sexton wanted to look after her children, a domestic role she, somewhat contradictorily, felt confined by and yet wanted to conform to (Middlebrook 35 substance abuse is an illness which has symptoms of weight-loss and poor nutrition, it is important to consider the way Sexton's experience of manic-depressive states influences her relationship with food.
Agoraphobia is important to consider on Sexton's personal and a socio-political level.
Agoraphobia is often tied to fear around food dominated locations. When considering Sexton's agoraphobia, it is important to note that "[t]he majority of individuals with agoraphobia also have other mental disorders" (DSM-V 221). One comorbid disorder is depression, and Sexton's depressive states impacted her ability to leave the house. Further, Sexton's agoraphobia influenced her relationship with food and domesticity, as she "feared grocery shopping […]; she felt conspicuous at the market, as if people could see that there was something wrong with her" (Skorczewski 196). Agoraphobia with specific anxiety surrounding food shopping is indicative of a difficult relationship with food. The element behind Sexton's agoraphobia related to food could be connected to her ambivalent feelings as a housewife and mother; if food signified a domestic life she was unsatisfied with, then being surrounded by women in her position and food would be anxiety provoking. This fear can be tied to her personal relationship with food; on occasions Sexton would throw up her meal during dinner, or get drunk instead of cooking, hence food at home represented a failing at housewife duties which created an anxiety in seeing others successfully conform during food shopping (Middlebrook 334,333).

To Bedlam and Part Way Back
To Bedlam and Part Way Back primarily features poems set in a psychiatric hospital.
In its historical context, the collection is important given the conditions of psychiatric hospitals in America during a time when medical practice for mental health was changing. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, there was an increased use of medication to treat mental illnesses without a full understanding of potential side effects. Sexton was first institutionalised in 1956, arriving in care on the cusp of these changes, but prior to the deinstitutionalised approach which emerged in the mid-60s. Treatments such as lobotomies, electroshock therapy, and insulin shock therapy were given more value than talking therapy. Even in private institutions, Doctor Martin, who is directly addressed and positioned as a "god" (l.1, l.9, l.24). The pronoun "they" becomes a tool of dissociation; the reader does not know who "they" are, only that they are in charge as they unlock the door, thus they are always watching. To get their food, the patients "move to gravy in our smock / of smiles. We chew in rows" (l.12-13). The rigid nature of eating in rows is a means of control, each patient is literally and metaphorically kept in line, reflecting the feeling of being watched. The reader is not given the names of the people watching, yet they are given descriptors of the food, thus giving the food greater power in their mind. There is a sense that the food, too, is watching them. The imagery of smiles and chewing reflects the uniformity of teeth. In stereotypes of American dental hygiene, straight teeth and a pearly white smile are valued, reflecting conformity and homogeneity. Like perfect teeth, the patients are all uniform and do not have any distinctive differences, thus removing their identity. Rather than "we eat in rows", Sexton uses "chew" which detaches from the pleasurable aspect of eating through its functionality. This aesthetic reflects the influence of depression on food consumption. Eating is not pleasurable for the speaker. She is only eating as she has no choice; the process of eating has become monotonous.
In psychiatric hospitals, 1:1 feeding observation is often used to ensure patients eat.
There becomes a chain of signification where food means being observed, and to observe someone is to hold the position of control. Food controls the speaker of the poem due to rigidity around mealtimes in a mental health institution, and structure arises from the presence of food at certain times of day. This hold is further conveyed in the structure of the poem through a regular rhyme scheme; the first, fourth, and seventh line of each stanza rhyme. Visually, the poem is centred, making each stanza look similar. Jeanne Kammer posits the "[. . .] symmetry of the stanza is opposed, however, by the run-on lines and the failure of the whole to be, in the end, self-contained. The form is both an ironic extension and a contradiction of the content" (126). Kammer goes on to suggest Sexton's poetry has a sense of "inner control" (128). The rhyme scheme indicates a control over the body of the poem, but this control is lost through the enjambment. The form mirrors the way the speaker attempts to take control, but the institutional setting of the poem prevents her from having real control. There is an attempt to control the poem's discourse through the structured body, visually there appears to be control The idea that knives are absent to avoid self-harm or suicide is implicit of a distorted relationship with food signifiers. The speaker's suicidal ideation, which implicitly is her reason for being in hospital, is the lens she sees the world through. Suicidal thoughts are consuming, almost everything around oneself is tainted by this ideation.
Jamison posits a powerful image which encapsulates this distorted signification; "In the mirror I see a creature I don't know but must live and share my mind with" (Unquiet Mind 114). Jamison's self-dissociation mirrors the speaker's dissociation from social signifiers. The social implication of knives at the dinner table is to cut one's food and maintain etiquette.
However, for the depressed speaker, the world is coloured by suicide, thus the knife at mealtime is taken to signify violence; by extension food signifies danger. The poem's structure further reflects the disjointed signification of the knife. The enjambment of the lines: "There are no knives / for cutting your throat" shocks the reader, perhaps unfamiliar with reading such objects through the lens of disordered eating (l.15-16). In the context of a mental hospital, it is understandable that there are no knives to alleviate the risks of self-harm. However, this chain of signification still shocks, as one who has not been suicidal may not instinctively associate cutlery with self-mutilation or suicide, reflecting the way depressive states impact perception.
Eating becomes a source of distress as a feeling of unease is created by the knife signifying harm could take place.
Other poems in To Bedlam and Part Way Back explore the process of food preparation through the lens of oppressiveness. 'Her Kind', one of Sexton's most famous poems in the twenty-first century, features a speaker who "fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves", conveying a feeling of displacement, with the speaker later stating she feels 'misunderstood' (l.11, l.13). The link between domesticity, food, and manic-depressive states is potent in 'What's That', where a woman in a kitchen ominously waits for something to happen, which, by the end of the poem, is calling her. For Sexton, the domestic setting of the kitchen has both manic and depressive associations. The looming "it" of the poem can be viewed as depression or mania. Sexton's daughter Linda recalls that one of her mother's manic habits was baking; on one occasion Linda "worried about how 'up' [Sexton] was" when in a flurry of intense baking she loudly sang, cleaned, and urgently asked her to borrow ginger from their neighbours This sense of division represents the two sides to the speaker: the manic and the depressive.
She does not feel entirely whole, but two halves of a person, waiting to see which half will consume her. The repetition of 'I know' becomes a metaphor for the only two states the speaker feels she knows, manic and depressive, not experiencing the unified and neutral middle ground.
To have this image occur in the kitchen reflects female relationships with domesticity, the speaker feeling stifled by this domestic sphere where she passively waits to be consumed by mania or depression. This is further apparent in the use of feminine signifiers of the broken pear and halves of the moon. Pears are a body type attributed to women, and the moon has feminine associations to the menstrual cycle. The image being of "two halves of the moon" rather than the singular 'half-moon' reflects the speaker's feeling of not being a whole self, [. . .] some degree of hands-on labor was an essential part of the enterprise and justified much of the sense of achievement that constituted one of the chief rewards of cooking.
Packaged-food cuisine, by contrast, was painless. That was its main selling point, but it was a drawback as well. One approach to this challenge was to try to make packagedfood cooking look like work, albeit very simple work. (60) In the poem, it is not mentioned whether this is canned or homemade soup, which conveys the doubling present. The soup could be either homemade, signifying the housewife, or convenience, signifying the poet/working woman. From a mental health perspective, homemade soup could signify mania, and canned soup could signify depression. The food, like the speaker, exists in a limbo where it is not attributed defining features. Instead, the attribution of the speaker's looming mental state would define the soup, reflecting the consuming nature manic-depressive states have on relationships with food and one's world view more generally.

Concluding Thoughts
Regardless of whether we attribute the label of bipolar to Anne Sexton, the manic and The prominence of these images reflects the consuming nature of eating disorders, and their personal tonality would make an interesting comparison to Sexton's poetry which is labelled as 'confessional'. Sexton's discomfort in her relationship to domesticity is impacted by her manic and depressive states, with these symptoms standing as a comment on the 1950s-70s society in which she lived and worked. As a whole collection, To Bedlam and Part Way Back is ground-breaking by exploring female breakdown and institutionalisation. However, this innovation resulted in small yet significant motifs being overlooked. An exploration of Sexton's poetic and personal relationship with food enlightens the way manic and depressive states influence one's life on minor, almost obscure, levels, thus reflecting the consuming nature of these states which will necessarily impact the poetic process and poetry Sexton produced.