Jennifer as Female Artists (Allegory)
“Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers” can be read as an allegory for Rich’s views on the position of female artists more broadly. The work Jennifer makes features characters far freer than she herself is. As an artist, she is interested in creating work that is beautiful, work that features nobility, bravery, and certainty. However, as a woman, she is also subjugated within patriarchy. The freedom and power of creating artistic work are thus placed in sharp contrast with her day-to-day reality. For female artists generally, the freedom of creativity is compromised by misogyny, which confines women’s artwork to a lesser position within the canon, and also demands that women place their husbands and families over their artistic production. In this way, the system of patriarchy is like a demanding marriage: women give more than they get.
Prancing (Motif)
In both the first and last stanzas, Rich describes the tigers as “prancing.” Usually, tigers are represented as fierce, graceful, and stealthy. Prancing calls up images of a young pony more readily than a dangerous carnivore. However, Rich is not interested in the typical tiger. Rather than emphasizing their bloodthirst and vicious teeth, the most important aspect of Aunt Jennifer’s tigers is their nobility. Rich explicitly compares the tigers to knights with her use of the adjective “chivalric,” a form of the word “chivalrous.” This comparison emphasizes that Aunt Jennifer is creating a window into an imaginary world, rather than reproducing reality. These tigers are like characters out of a folktale, or a medieval romance about the knights of the round table. They are combinations of the best bits of a tiger, a knight, and a pony: noble and brave, fierce enough to be fearless, but also joyful, lighthearted, and free.
