Proud tigers, a frightened aunt

In 'Aunt Jennifer's Tigers', Adrienne Rich describes an aunt who embroiders a picture of tigers on a screen (a panel of cloth).

Her tigers are bright, proud and fearless. They prance across the screen, like brilliant topaz creatures in a world of green. They are not afraid of the men beneath the tree: they pace in sleek, chivalric certainty, sure of themselves.

Aunt Jennifer herself is very different. Her fingers flutter nervously through the wool; she finds even the light ivory needle hard to pull.

Why is she so afraid? The massive weight of her husband's wedding band sits heavily on her hand. The ring is a symbol of her marriage, which has become a burden: it has crushed her spirit.

Even when she is dead, the poet says, her hands will lie terrified, still ringed with the ordeals she was mastered by.

But the tigers she made will go on prancing, proud and unafraid, long after she is gone. Through her art she created the freedom and courage she could never have in her own life.