The Anne Sexton or Mrs. Maisel Quiz

Breaking social rules about what women could say in public, American confessional poets and standup comediennes sassed up the 1960s with their candid revelations. Spouses, children, and even parents were fair game for drawing nods and laughter from the audience. Offering peeks behind closed doors, such poets and comediennes worked family intimacies into their acts in ways that could provoke outrage. Anne Sexton and the fictional Mrs. Maisel drew fire from male critics who doubled down on the double standard. And they upstaged their male counterparts by dishing out grit while looking utterly fabulous. Both performers could rock a frock, each appeared on television, and each toured with a band. Can you match the correct woman with with her words, actions, or incidents below?

 

1. Described herself as having nylon legs, luminous arms and some advertised clothes
2. Declared It’s the bras. And the girdles and the corsets. All designed to cut off the circulation to your brain. 
3. Quipped that My mother never goes to the bathroom.  
4. Confessed: Mother, last night I slept in your Bonwit Teller nightgown.
5. Another performer recommended that she see Sylvia Plath’s psychiatrist in New York.
6. Had an affair with her psychiatrist
7. A male critic faulted her for ‘dwell[ing] insistently on the pathetic and disgusting aspects of bodily experience.’
8. Described the birth canal as an escape route the size of a change purse
9. Declared that You’re downtown. If you have underwear on, you’re overdressed.
10. Described a woman rolling down her girdle, that pink snapper and hoarder
    -MB

SOURCES:
Anne Sexton, The Complete Poems. Mariner Books, 1999.
Anne Sexton performing with her band, Her Kind
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Amy Sherman-Palladino et al. Amazon Original, 2017- .
This Business of Words: Reassessing Anne Sexton, ed. Amanda Golden. U. Press of Florida, 1916.
‘Read Anne Sexton’s Response to Her Worst-Ever Review.’ Nov 9, 2017. Lithub.com.
Houston Chronicle, Oct. 16, 2018. (Former UH graduate students discover ‘forgotten’ Anne Sexton poetry)
College Fashion, Feb. 16, 2020. (Mrs. Maisel Fashion)

Answer Key:
1. AS, ‘Self in 1958‘; 2. MM Season 1.2; 3. MM Season 2.8; 4. AS, ‘The Division of Parts‘; 5. MM Season 2.1; 6. AS; 7. AS; 8. MM Season 2.10; 9. MM Season 1.pilot; 10. AS, “Woman with Girdle”