Aunt Jennifer's Tiger
-By Adrienne Rich
Memory Card
Introduction - The poem portrays an image of a wife dismayed with her married life.
- Aunt Jennifer is an abused wife unable to escape her husband's brutality.
- The poem focuses on Aunt Jennifer's dreams and the harsh world she calls her reality.
- She escapes her harsh world through her stitching and needlepoint, and the tigers that she creates are everything that she is not.
- Rich uses comparison to convey to us the difference between Aunt Jennifer and her tigers.
- Women who are dominated by their husbands live their lives in a state of mental confinement.
- The poet Adrienne Rich expresses the life Aunt Jennifer wishes to lead through artistic creations as she is trapped in an abusive marriage.
- Her tapestries portray her inner feelings conveying the constant terror she's living in.
- The only way for Aunt Jennifer to escape the expectations of her husband is to live on, after death, through her artwork.
- Rich reveals, through the simple lines of Aunt Jennifer's Tigers,a woman's struggles with expressions, rebellion, and a society where power is defined as masculine.
Stanza 1
The first stanza serves to explain what the tigers represent.
- Rich begins her poem with a beautiful picture, setting the scene for the dream world of Aunt Jennifer.
- We see that Aunt Jennifer has ownership over the tigers in some way.
- They are free to "prance" and run across the screen.
- The tigers are bright like "topaz" and they inhabit a world that is green.
- Aunt Jennifer's tigers do not fear men.
- They conduct themselves in a heroic, manly fashion.
- The tigers that Aunt Jennifer owns are confident and certain of who they are and what they want.
Stanza 2
The second stanza explains who Aunt Jennifer is.
- Aunt Jennifer is described to be working with a piece of wool.
- She is doing needlepoint to a panel that will be placed in a pillow, quilt, or screen of some kind for the home.
- Her fingers are fluttering to create the beautiful image of the tigers.
- Aunt Jennifer is expressing herself through the creation of her tigers.
- She wants to be confident and fearless.
- However, she finds it difficult to create those tigers and express those feelings.
- Those feelings are repressed by the weight of marriage, gender roles, and a dominating society.
- "Uncle's wedding band" represents a particular society in which she lives.
- This weight is not something she enjoys as the band is described to sit "heavily" on her hand and keeps her from the only sense of expression she has, her needlepoint.
