Adrienne Rich

(b. 1929)
“Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers” (1951)
“Diving Into the Wreck” (1972)
“Power” (1974)

Throughout her works, rich uses some amazing images. In “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers,” the speaker is watching her Aunt sow. In the piece she is working on tigers are pacing in ‘sleek chivalric certainty.’ (4). The speaker comments that her Aunt had ‘terrified hands,’ (9) terrified at the subject of her work. Another image connects these two, that of a wedding ring:

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. (7-10).

Rich’s speaker is making a forceful argument for the feminism rising in her day. We will see this come out in her writings, both in its good forms and in its bad forms.

Some more amazing images appear in “Diving into the Wreck.” As the diver moves from the surface into the sea, we look through his mask and watch the air, first blue, turn bluer, then green, then black. (34-36). The reader gets a real sense of shift from the civil to the savage: 1) the diver’s mask fills his blood “with power,” (38) yet the sea offers him no aid, he has to “learn alone” (41)how to move, how to go about his business; 2) later, we see him searching the wreckage with a battery-powered lamp (57) then assuming the persona of an ancient mermaid (72).

With this last image the diver begins to identify with his adventure: becoming a mermaid, becoming a merman, becoming the figurehead of the ship’s prow, and with a dual persona becoming the ship’s water-worn instruments.