Aunt Jennifer's Tigers Poem Analysis

The poems Living in Sin and Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers, both written by Adrienne Rich surround women before the civil rights movement when gender equality was inexistent. In Living and Sin and Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers, gender inequality and the traditional marriage system are portrayed as discriminatory towards women. However, the differences in these poems show that their involvement and motivation to obtain gender equality play important roles in determining their happiness and freedom. To portray similarities and differences in her poems, Rich uses many extended metaphors and symbols, which make the reader feel what it was like to live as a woman during these times.
In Living in Sin, the first line introduces the couple’s studio, which is the
The first stanza of the poem introduces the tigers that Aunt Jennifer creates on her pin-needle screen. These tigers are a metaphor for her dreams of being free from wedlock, and become a way for her to create the person she wants to be. The speaker introduces the poem by saying that “Aunt Jennifer’s tigers prance across a [pin-needle] screen” (1), which symbolizes joyful liberty. The majestic tigers she needles occupy a world with nothing but freedom, which is the opposite of her situation. In the third and fourth lines, the speaker mentions that “[the tigers] do not fear the men beneath the tree; / They pace in sleek chivalric certainty” (3/4), which shows that her tigers are brave and unafraid of taking risks, which is the contrary of who she really is. The first two lines of the second stanza show the extent to which Jennifer is weak. The speaker mentions that “[she finds] even the ivory needle hard to pull” (6), which goes to show that she is extremely cowardly due to the fact that she is trapped in marriage. Furthermore, the speaker says that “[the] massive weight of Uncle’s wedding band / Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer’s hand” (7/8), giving the image of a wedding band that resembles shackles, which is a metaphor for marriage oppression. Her bulky wedding band symbolizes the fact that she is downtrodden by her husband to the point that