Complete solutions to every question in the NCERT Flamingo textbook, Poetry Chapter 5 “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers” by Adrienne Rich: Before You Read, Think It Out, and Notice. Try answering each one yourself first, then check.
1 Before You Read
Q. What does the title of the poem suggest to you? Are you reminded of other poems on tigers?
Answer: The title suggests a woman, Aunt Jennifer, who has in some way made tigers her own, through her embroidery rather than in real life. Many readers are reminded of William Blake’s poem “The Tyger,” which asks in awe “what immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry.” Adrienne Rich’s tigers are different from Blake’s fearsome creature: they are calm, confident and “unafraid” rather than terrifying, which is exactly the quality Aunt Jennifer herself lacks, and exactly the point the poem goes on to make.
2 Think It Out
Q. How do ‘denizens’ and ‘chivalric’ add to our understanding of the tiger’s attitudes?
Answer: “Denizens” is a word normally used for the natural, permanent inhabitants of a place, so calling the tigers “denizens… of a world of green” shows they fully and naturally belong to their world, with nothing of an intruder or a hunted animal about them. “Chivalric” describes the noble, brave, honourable manner of a medieval knight, so pairing it with “certainty” gives the tigers a bold, self-assured, fearless bearing. Together, the two words build the tigers into confident, unthreatened creatures, the exact opposite of the timid Aunt Jennifer introduced in the very next stanza.
Q. Why do you think Aunt Jennifer’s hands are ‘fluttering through her wool’ in the second stanza? Why is she finding the needle so hard to pull?
Answer: “Fluttering” suggests nervous, weak, unsteady movement, like a frightened bird. One reading is that it comes from fear and strain under an oppressive marriage (the poem gives no time span), the exact opposite of the tigers’ steady, confident “pace.” The poem places the needle that is hard to pull beside “the massive weight of Uncle’s wedding band / Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer’s hand”, which suggests that the ring’s symbolic burden of marriage restricts even this small, ordinary movement of her hand.
Q. What is suggested by the image ‘massive weight of Uncle’s wedding band’?
Answer: A plain wedding ring is physically light, so calling it a “massive weight” that “sits heavily” is a deliberate exaggeration, a hyperbole. It suggests that marriage, and Uncle’s authority within it, is a crushing burden rather than a partnership, and that this burden weighs on Aunt Jennifer at every moment, even during a private, ordinary activity like embroidery.
Q. Of what or of whom is Aunt Jennifer terrified with in the third stanza?
Answer: The text does not name what she fears. Her hands are “terrified” and she is “mastered by” “ordeals”. The one source the poem names is Uncle’s “wedding band”, so the fear is best read as fear of her married life and of Uncle’s control, an inference from the lines. This fear is so deep that it persists even in the image of her hands after her own death.
Q. What are the ‘ordeals’ Aunt Jennifer is surrounded by, why is it significant that the poet uses the word ‘ringed’? What are the meanings of the word ‘ringed’ in the poem?
Answer: The “ordeals” are the sufferings and trials of an oppressive, unequal marriage: fear, subjugation and the loss of her own will. The word “ringed” is significant because it carries two meanings at once: literally, encircled by the wedding ring on her finger, and figuratively, encircled, trapped or besieged by her marital ordeals. The pun joins the physical ring and her lifelong imprisonment in a single word.
Q. Why do you think Aunt Jennifer created animals that are so different from her own character? What might the poet be suggesting, through this difference?
Answer: She creates bold, fearless tigers as the direct opposite of her own timid, dominated self, an act of imaginative escape or wish-fulfilment. Through this difference, the poet suggests that art and imagination let an oppressed person express and inhabit, even if only on cloth, the very freedom and courage denied to them in real life.
Q. Interpret the symbols found in this poem.
Answer: The tigers can be read as symbols of freedom, fearlessness and the imaginative life Aunt Jennifer cannot live in reality. The wedding band can be read as Uncle’s control and marriage as a burden rather than a partnership. The act of embroidery itself, the screen or panel she works on, symbolises art as the one space in which a suppressed person can create and control a world entirely on her own terms.
Q. Do you sympathise with Aunt Jennifer. What is the attitude of the speaker towards Aunt Jennifer?
Answer: Yes, the poem invites sympathy for a woman trapped in an oppressive marriage. The speaker’s attitude can be read as quiet compassion and sorrow, shown by calling her hands “terrified” and naming her “mastered” by “ordeals,” with an implied respect for what she creates, though the speaker does not say so directly.
3 Notice
Q. Notice the colours suggested in the poem.
Answer: “Topaz” (a bright golden-yellow gem colour) and “green” (the tigers’ imagined “world of green”) give the embroidered scene vivid, glowing colour. By contrast, the poem gives Aunt Jennifer’s own real world almost no colour, only the pale “ivory” needle (line 6). This muted real world set against the vividly coloured imagined one mirrors the poem’s whole contrast between her oppressed life and her free creation.
Q. Notice the repetitive use of certain sounds in the poem.
Answer: The clearest examples of repeated sound (alliteration) are “fingers fluttering” (line 5), “weight… wedding” (line 7) and “prancing, proud” (line 12). The poem also repeats the name “Aunt Jennifer” at the start of the first two stanzas, and repeats “prance/prancing” at its very start (line 1) and very end (line 12), framing the whole poem between the tigers’ unbroken, fearless movement.