Here is your short summary of “45 Mercy Street” by Anne Sexton:
The autobiographical poems of Anne Sexton revolve around her personal context and usually describe her feelings of distress. It uncovers the inner feelings of the poet and is a confessional kind of poetry where the poet brings out her innermost self.
The experiences that the poet has portrayed in this poem are about her psychiatric struggle and the feelings of madness and near madness where she is depicted in a pathetic state of mind.
The descriptions are well meaning and are a dangerous attempt to cure. The poem presents the slow coming back of the psychiatrically ill narrator to human associations and responsibilities. It is a response to the demands of the old self which was mentally well and loved life normally like everyone.
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The struggle with mental illness is present throughout the poem as she wrote these poems when she came out of her sessions. The psychoanalysis of the patient was done to cure her in mental hospitals. She is undergoing the feelings of connecting back to the old self in this poem as she talks about the address of the place she lived in her youth.
Remembrance of how his house looked and who all belonged to it brings a sense of connectivity in the poet who is struggling to be with her true happy and sound self. She wants to feel and become a part of the same old place where she lived with her family.
The search for the house where she lived begins with the looking up for the house in her street. The desperation to see her house in the Beacon Hill shows that she has remembered her place all theses years and has been willing to go back to the reminiscent surroundings of the house where she belonged.
The day to day activities of the members are still alive in her memories as she draws a picture of her great grandmother taking out her corset in the basin, the grandfather taking a nap in the pantry, the grandmother calling the maid by ringing a bell. She remembers everything so well as it was just a recent thing. The fond memories mesmerize her and she feels the urge to get back to normal. The vivid description of her father impressing her mother by putting a big flower in her hair gives her memories of childhood when her mother was in her blooming youthful years.
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Now that she has turned into a youth, her mother may have wished to see her daughter blooming too, but unfortunately it didn’t happen so as the poet was sent for a psychiatric treatment.
She also connects to her own children who she could not nourish well as she was mentally troubled herself. Also her husband has also become tough and has failed to look inside her.
It may be that she wants to connect to her place and her own people but there is something sad and sorrowful about the past that does not let her find her way through the dreams of her house.
She still sways between good feelings and the remorse which has sent her mind into a horrible state and insists on not trying to look back and be a part of the dead past.