An Aunt's Hidden Life
The mid twentieth century American poet Adrienne Rich was a product of a conservative Southern family. Rich's poem, "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" clearly reflects this gender struggle, for it is evident that it is a feminist poem in which the poet criticizes the male-dominated world for frightening and oppressing Aunt Jennifer, leaving her no alternative but to create an alternate world of freedom for herself with her sewing. The main theme of "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" is to reveal the hidden, vibrant inner life of Aunt Jennifer, as expressed in the content and theme of her tapestry, in sharp contrast to the outer image of the terrified, trapped woman she seems to be due to the social and cultural expectations and demands of her time. With the use of similes, symbols, meter, structure, rhyme, connotation Rich created her poem: "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers". Adrienne Rich uses a number of similes and symbols in the poem to convey her theme. The tigers of course symbolize the freedom of spirit which she dreams of attaining but never achieves except in her dreams and her art. Aunt Jennifer is symbolic of women as a whole rather than one individual. However, Adrienne Rich seems to distance herself from the image of Aunt Jennifer
Adrienne Rich's connotation involves the use of carefully selected words and phrases to develop the theme of "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers." The idea of death is explored at the beginning of the third stanza in showing that even Aunt Jennifer's death will not bring closure nor change to her role in a patriarchal society. Death is eternal and the idea of her terrified hands lying still ringed with the marriage she was burdened with in life reveals to the reader that she is timid, frightened by her inferiority, and condemned forever by the experiences in the marriage that ruled her. This is reflected in the line, "Find even the ivory needle hard to pull," in which Rich is presenting the reader with the consequences of living as a subordinate in a marriage that is a burden-ultimately the woman will be unhappy, and will remain so until death, which is not a release (|.6). Another example is when Rich uses the tapestry as a way of expressing Aunt Jennifer's inner self. Aunt Jennifer can't escape in her real life because of "the massive weight of Uncle's wedding band." (|.7). Although the tigers are above the men, Aunt Jennifer is pinned down, as is evident by the fact that, "the band sits heavily on her hand." (|.8). http://marshasmusings.tvheaven.com/kat/eng112/arich.htm http://www.radcliffe.edu/quarterly/199803/page36.html by placing Aunt Jennifer in a separate generation from herself. In addition, the verb 'prance' is also used symbolically in the poem, both in the first stanza of the poem to describe the tigers in Aunt Jennifer's screen, and in the final line of the poem to create a proud,
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Approximate Word count = 1087
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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