Aunt Jennifer's Tiger

Aunt Jennifer's Tiger

Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance 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 prancing, proud and unafraid.

By: Andrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich was born on May 16, 1929 in Baltimore, Maryland. She attended Radcliffe College, graduating in 1951. In 1953, she married Harvard University economist Alfred H. Conrad. Two years later, she published her second volume of poetry, The Diamond Cutters. After having three sons before the age of thirty, Rich gradually changed both her life and her poetry. Throughout the 1960s she wrote several collections, including Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law (1963) and Leaflets (1969). The content of her work became increasingly confrontational—exploring such themes as women’s role in society, racism, and the Vietnam War. The style of these poems also revealed a shift from careful metric patterns to free verse. Adrienne Rich wrote the poem “Aunt Jennifer‘s Tigers, “to explain a woman’s struggle to accept the indignities of her daily life and using sewing as an escape. In the poem, Jennifer has control over her tigers in her sewing, but her husband has control over her in reality. And the reason she creates tigers, because they are fearless and exotic unlike her. Her world is more domestic and she has to be submissive to her husband. I love this poem, because the images are images are strong and express the overall message. Since Aunt Jennifer is being control, she finds freedom in her explosion of fabric with her tigers.