“The Double Image” by Anne Sexton: Poem Analysis

“The Double Image” is a rather significant and famous confessional poem written by Anne Sexton. This is an increasingly severe and profound literary work that can have various meanings and interpretations. The poet tells about her most intimate parts of life and her way through post-traumatic stress disorder. It is not always evident when the events of her real past end and the imagination begins to work. In the verses, there is a depicted journey of Sexton – both a daughter and a mother who is going from motherhood to mental illness and then to independence and stable life again. The pictures she is drawing with words, metaphors, and symbols are sometimes mixed and confused. However, from the cold autumn and winter, she moves towards spring and summer, and the images start to clear up. In this poem, Sexton tries to depict the lack of individuality and the inevitability of the human condition’s unoriginality. Daughters are always defined through resemblance to their mothers, there is a double image, which becomes a vicious circle, and this is simultaneously the worst and the only guilt.