Rich's Aunt Jennifer's Tigers
Feminist Propaganda
“Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers” consists of three stanzas, each with the rime scheme AABB. Its simplistic theme rests at the heart of radical feminism.
The speaker appears to be making a statement about her poor Aunt Jennifer. The unfortunate aunt engages in embroidery, but her fingers can hardly accomplish the task; they find the “ivory need hard to pull.” And unfortunate Aunt Jenny, when she dies will be a frightened soul with “terrified hands” whose “ordeals” in life have “mastered” her. The tigers on her embroidery contrast pitiable Jenny: they are free to prance and cavort, while underprivileged auntie remains a bloodless victim.
And of what is she a victim? Maybe abject poverty, maybe she suffers from an incurable illness that immobilizes her, maybe she was wrongfully imprisoned for a crime did not commit, maybe she has remained an unhappy, lonely spinsters?
No, Aunt Jennifer is the victim of marriage and patriarchy. Just the simple fact that she married “uncle” has caused her to live the life of a freedom-less drudge. And the audacious, prescient speaker has the vision to know that poor Auntie will remain married until she dies.
First Stanza: “Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen”
In the first stanza, the speaker describes the scene that her pitiful aunt has embroidered. How the aunt has found time out from all the household servitude with its many “ordeals” to engage in this time-consuming and rather bourgeois art is not examined. But the aunt has clearly done an artful job of portraying “prancing tigers across a screen.”
Then the speaker makes a major mistake, by claiming that the tigers “do no fear the men beneath the tree.” The purpose of the juxtaposition is that the happy, prancing, free tigers have no reason to fear “men,” but poor slobs the ilk of Aunt Jennifer do. Yet, quite the opposite is true. Tigers must retain a fear of humans in order to thrive in the wild. The speaker should have acquired some knowledge of the jungle.
Second Stanza: “Aunt Jennifer's fingers fluttering through her wool”
In the second stanza, the reader learns that Aunt Jennifer has created her art with great difficulty, finding the needle “hard to pull” through the wool, an odd fabric to be using to create this type of needlework.
So is Aunt Jennifer burdened by a disease such as arthritis? No, it is the “weight of Uncle’s wedding band” that causes the woman’s hand to struggle. Now, just how heavy can a wedding band be? But no, it is not the literal weight of the actual ring; it is weight of marriage. Just being married makes it difficult for Aunt Jenn to pull a needle through the wool.
If, on the other hand, Aunt Jennifer had to work a forty-plus-hour week, struggling to pay her own bills, she probably would not even find time to craft prancing tigers across a screen. She would have traded one servitude for another, but such thoughts do not impede the feminist on a mission to portray “patriarchy” and “marriage” the enemies of women.
Third Stanza: “When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie”
The speaker then becomes clairvoyant, prognosticating, “When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie / Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.” The speaker has shown absolutely no examples of the “ordeals [the aunt] was mastered by.” She is preaching to the choir of other feminists and their dupes who have bought into the notion that “marriage” is slavery, and all men are patriarchal slave-masters.
Of course, the tigers are still prancing, clear evidence that they are, indeed, still free, unencumbered by “marriage” and “patriarchy.” The analogy is risibly flawed with its perverse inaccuracies. Such is the nature of all propaganda that always relies of flawed rhetoric.
For another Rich article: Rich's 'Lliving in Sin': Romantic Disillusionment
Unike “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers,” "Living in Sin" is one of the world's best free verse poems.
Adrienne Rich
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