Chapters 1-5 Summary

In "The Gold Key," the poet addresses her contemporaries, announcing that she has a story to tell. Sexton asks where these people are and what things do they remember from their childhoods. What stories were read to them as children? Are the memories forgotten now that more important things have taken hold?

The poet refers to a sixteen-year-old boy who is in possession of a gold key. The boy found the gold key but does not know what it opens. The boy begins to search for the key hole. The gold key turns out to be the item needed to unlock the book of transformed fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm.

"Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" revisits the classic fairy tale of a porcelain-like maiden who is the subject of jealousy from her stepmother, a queen who is facing the...