19 pages • 38 minutes read
Adrienne RichAunt Jennifer's Tigers
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1951A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Tigers
The tigers are characters created by Aunt Jennifer to represent who she may have been if different options were open to her. They are vibrant and fearless, free to roam through the world Aunt Jennifer made for them, totally in control of their agency. Tigers themselves are the world’s biggest and deadliest cats; Aunt Jennifer embraces this power but clarifies and elevates it, removing any element of violence: Neither her tigers nor the nearby men fear one another. Like Aunt Jennifer, tigers would lose some of their power if they were tamed and confined to a zoo—and, in the tapestry, her tigers are free. The speaker hints that Aunt Jennifer never had the option to escape from the world created for her by her husband, so she made a new world for these tigers. The contrast between the poem’s main figures—the mighty beasts Aunt Jennifer crafts versus the frightened woman in the poem—creates pathos for the woman and, on a representational level, for all talented women overshadowed by the sexism of their era.
Tapestry
Tapestry is a textile art form where the weaver works by hand or with a needle at a loom. The finished piece is either hung on a wall or framed to preserve the threadwork. Tapestries are fragile and notoriously challenging to make because of the time and skill required. Because Aunt Jennifer can make lifelike animals and scenery in her tapestry, the speaker implies she is an expert artisan. Her tapestry needle and her wedding band compete for the use of her “terrified” (Line 9) hands, symbolizing the unbalanced choice between domesticity and creative agency. The wedding ring initially appears to win this competition between artistic calling and traditional 20th-century womanhood—but the consolation prize, for the speaker, is that the tapestry will remain after Aunt Jennifer’s death. The tapestry will remain as a testament to the woman’s skill.
Chivalry
The idea of chivalry dates to the medieval chivalric code of European knights. In theory, men perform chivalry to protect and respect women. However, the concept can also give women less agency because it can imply they are less capable than the men who protect them. The chivalry in “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers” imparts agency to the tigers, subverting the modern definition of chivalry; the tigers possess a quality reserved for men and are confident of their position. The tigers have no need to be protected, they have no reason to fear men, and their strength garners respect. Rich thus reclaims chivalry as another word for bravery, surpassing the masculine/feminine binary. If fictional tigers can be chivalrous, so can any person.
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By Adrienne Rich
