aunt jennifer tigers

Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers

By Adrienne Rich

Aunt Jennifer’s tigers stride across a screen

Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.

They do not fear the men beneath the tree;

They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.

Aunt Jennifer’s fingers fluttering through her wool

Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.

The massive weight of uncle’s wedding band

Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer’s hand.

When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie

Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by

The tigers in the panel that she made

Will go on striding, proud and unafraid.

• The first stanza sets the setting for Aunt Jennifer’s dream world for her and her tigers (Aunt Jennifer represents all women who are caught under the oppressive hand of a patriarchal society). Aunt Jennifer’s tigers represent what women desired to be like during that time period. The tigers are do not fear men and as depicted on line four are heroic and conduct themselves in a manly fashion. These confidents tigers represent everything women desire to be.

• The second stanza represents the reality of Aunt Jennifer’s life. She is depicted doing needlepoint, which happens to be a very traditional activity for a woman. However, she is having trouble with this activity as expressed in line 7. Her inability to do this needlepoint represents her inability to express herself in a male dominated society. This weight that rests “heavily” on her hand is not something she enjoys and is oppressing her from doing what she really wants to.

• The third stanza gives us a truthful look at the reality and end of Aunt Jennifer. It re-emphasizes the impact living in this patriarchal society had had on her. Despite the tragic end of Aunt Jennifer’s life these tigers and the ideas of an oppressed free life for women carry on.

What does Rich say about this poem?

•“I’m startled because beneath the conscious craft are glimpses of the split I even then experienced between the girl who wrote poems, who defined herself in writing poems, and the girl who was to define herself by her relationships with men” (632).

• Rich says this poem is an example of a split that took place in her earlier writing. She has written in the oppressors (male) style however, has expressed feelings of a woman not writing for a purely male audience. Rich has gotten away with expressing these ideas because she wrote using the strategy of f...

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...beginning years as a writer. It gives the reader a starting point for her to show how drastically her writing changed throughout her career.

• She realizes years later when she is re-visioning that “in those years formalism was part of a strategy – like asbestos gloves, it allowed [her] to handle material I couldn’t pick up barehanded” (633).

• This means she was able to touch on subjects that weren’t directed solely for a male audience because she was able to make them sound the same by using formalism. Formalism was the male rule or known way to write poetry.

• It is also worthy to not the irony in this poem. Since it was written when Rich was still a student and wanting to rebel against the traditional female roles, you would never expect Rich to take on the role of Aunt Jennifer in real life. However, she then decides that she, ?was also determined to prove that as a woman poet [she] could also have what as then defined as a full woman’s life. She eventually found herself overweighed by her obligations as a wife and mother to not be able to put ample time into her writing. She was taking on the role of Aunt Jennifer and that is when she had her whole

awakening.