Adrienne Rich’s poem “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers” dramatizes the conflict between a woman and social conventions that were prevalent in the 1950s when the poem was published. According to the social norms of that time, women were expected to marry and obey their husbands, and marriage was supposed to be a lifelong commitment. In the poem, Rich shows how these social conventions became a form of oppression of women. The speaker depicts a woman, Aunt Jennifer, whose “tigers prance across a screen, /
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green” (1-2). These lines describe a piece of art made by Aunt Jennifer – a panel with tigers, which appears to be a way of escaping from oppression in marriage as the poem unfolds.
The poem is written using a closed form since it contains three stanzas, each consisting of four lines. It also follows the rhyme pattern of AABB CCDD. Although the form itself does not have a specific meaning, it seems to be not the case for this poem. The author’s choice of a closed form and a traditional rhyme pattern adds to the meaning of the poem, in which the woman is trapped in established social norms. In the first stanza, the speaker illustrates how the woman gives vent to her feelings and her desire for liberation. The tigers on her panel symbolize freedom and represent what she will never be: “They do not fear the men beneath the tree; / They pace in sleek chivalric certainty” (3-4). It seems that Aunt Jennifer would also like not to be afraid of men, but she cannot, so she endows her tigers with this quality. The speaker depicts tigers as “chivalric,” which means related to knighthood. The choice of this word is not arbitrary since it represents many traits, such as bravery, self-confidence, and self-assertion – that is, everything that oppressed women wanted but could not possess.
In the second stanza, the speaker portrays Aunt Jennifer. The reader is struck by a sharp contrast between the boldness of Aunt Jennifer’s tigers and the weakness of the woman herself: “Aunt Jennifer’s finger fluttering through her wool / Find even the ivory needle hard to pull” (5-6). The image described by the speaker changes, and so does the rhythm of the poem. The first stanza consists of end-stopped lines, encouraging the reader to make pauses at the end of each line, which creates a measured rhythm. However, beginning with the second stanza, run-on lines often occur, forcing the reader to pause in the middle of the line or read two lines in a row without a pause. The change in the rhythm adds to the entire impression of the poem, implying that the woman’s life was not as steady and peaceful as she would want it to be.
The conflict of the poem is revealed in the second stanza when the speaker mentions that the woman is married. The speaker asserts that the woman’s marriage is a burden to her by using such words as “massive weight” and “heavily” (7-8). At the beginning of the third stanza, the poem reaches its climax: “When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie / Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by” (9-10). These lines appeal to readers’ emotions and evoke fear and compassion for the woman. The epithet “terrified,” referring to the woman’s hands, implies that she has suffered cruelty in her marriage, which causes her to experience terror. Line 9 is a run-on line, which makes the reader pause only after the word “ordeals” and contributes to the rising emotional tension. The metaphor “ringed” evokes the image of a wedding ring in the reader’s mind and implies that the “ordeals,” which will haunt the woman till her death, are related to her marriage. Finally, the speaker uses the word “mastered,” which reminds the reader of slavery and suggests that, in her marriage, Aunt Jennifer is like a slave to her husband.
The last two lines of the poem represent the denouement and repeat the image described in the beginning. Thus, the poem seems to have a circular structure, which may imply a social trap in which Aunt Jennifer finds herself, being a woman in the 1950s. At the end of the poem, the reader understands what tigers are mentioned in the beginning: “The tigers in the panel that she made” (11). The last line reflects the meaning of the first stanza of the poem, saying that the tigers “[w]ill go on prancing, proud and unafraid” (12). The speaker uses the word “prance” once again and compresses the third line into the word “unafraid” and the fourth line into “proud.” By this repetition, the speaker completes the circular structure of the poem. The final lines leave the reader with a feeling of sadness and hope because, on the one hand, Aunt Jennifer is bound to live an unhappy life with her oppressive husband. On the other hand, she has found a way of realizing her unmet desires in her art that will last even after her death.
Work Cited
Rich, Adrienne. “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers.” Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing, edited by X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia, 8th ed., Pearson, 2016, p. 457.