Miss O’ Connell
ADRIENNE RICH: Revision notes.
(b. 1929)
 Aunt Jennifer's Tigers
 The Uncle Speaks in the Drawing Room
 Trying to talk with a Man
 Power
 From a Survivor
1) Aunt Jennifer's Tigers
Analysis
Stanza One
The poet describes the imaginary world created by Aunt Jennifer as she embroiders
tigers on a fire screen. The tigers ''prance'' across the screen, implying that they are
full of energy, strong, proud, carefree and unafraid. They are bright and golden –
standing out against the green background. They are not full afraid and their
brightness is not hidden. This is in contrast to the men ''beneath the tree''. This is the
tigers' world and they ''pace'' through it in a confident, powerful manner. They are
linked to the old system of knighthood by the word ''chivalric'', thus reminding us
again of their power and strength. Yet there is a gallantry and dignity associated with
the word ''chivalric'' which makes us wonder if the tigers are symbols of a positive
sort of male power, compared to the men who are lurking in the shadows ''beneath the
tree''.
Stanza Two
The poem now shifts away from the tigers and towards Aunt Jennifer. The power and
energy of the first stanza vanishes as Aunt Jennifer is described. She is nothing like
the strong, bright, confident creatures she has created. She does not move with
strength and confidence. As she embroiders, her fingers are ''fluttering through her
wool''. This suggests that she is weak and nervous. Even the act of creating this
tapestry is difficult for her. She finds the ''ivory needle hard to pull.'' The whiteness
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of the needle is in contrast to the bright golds and greens in the world she is creating
on the screen. The colours associated with Aunt Jennifer are pale, almost lifeless.
We imagine bloodless, white fingers and a white, ivory needle. It is worth noting that
ivory is taken from the tusks of elephants – linking this stanza back to the jungle
where the tigers live. Men hunted elephants for their ivory – dominating the natural
world and taking what they wanted. They also rode elephants when hunting tigers,
again conjuring up the image of men as destructive and dominant. This idea of male
dominance is picked up in the next lines when we read that Aunt Jennifer is weighed
down by the her wedding ring. The hyperbole in the description of the ring as being a
''massive weight'' emphasises how powerless and weak Aunt Jennifer is and how
oppressed and controlled she is in her marriage. The wedding ring is more like a
shackle than a piece of jewellery.
Stanza Three
In the final stanza, Rich imagines how Aunt Jennifer will be after death. She will,
even in death, be ''terrified'' and the painful ''ordeals'' of her life will have marked her
forever. She was ''mastered'' or conquered by these trials and will never be truly free.
She is a victim, whether dead or alive. This is a negative view of marriage and there
is no hint of love or equality in it. Instead, it has utterly crushed and defeated Aunt
Jennifer. Life, for her, was something to be endured. The tigers, on the other hand,
will carry on ''prancing, proud and unafraid'' in the screen that she created. The
tragedy is that Aunt Jennifer never got to live life to the full and could only hint at her
unhappiness by depicting the strength and freedom of the tigers in her tapestry. But
of course they are not alive and are only symbols of her longing.
Note
This poem was written when Rich was still a young student. The formal structure of
the poem and the distance she keeps from its subject are marks of her early work.
She deals with the issue of female subjugation, but at a remove. Instead of
commenting directly on marriage and the male/female divide, Rich uses symbolism
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to get her message across. The tigers represent all that Aunt Jennifer is not. They are
strong, free and in control of their own destiny, while she is a victim of an unhappy
marriage – her only small act of rebellion being the creation of this image of power.
2) The Uncle Speaks in the Drawing Room
Analysis
Stanza One
Rich adopts the persona of a man watching a mob which has gathered in the square.
The words ''of late'' suggest that this disorderly crowd has been assembling more than
once in recent times. A gathering mob may seem threatening, especially since they
are ''sullen'' and carrying stones, but the uncle does not seem unduly disturbed. He
does not shout or rant: he simply speaks. By calling the crowd a mob, he seems to
imply that he feels contemptuous towards them. There is no mention of the reason
for the crowd's discontent, and the uncle does not seem to care why they are
gathering in the square. He stands in the drawing room, which indicates that he is
wealthy and removed from these ''sullen'' people. Their concerns do not concern him,
except insofar as they affect his possessions. The mob stare resentfully at the
''window, balcony, and gate'' of the uncle's house. The distance between the gathering
crowd and the uncle is not just a physical one, of course. They are also separated by
class. The uncle represents a bygone era and a genteel, epper-class lifestyle. We get
the impression that his house is a large one, and that this may be fuelling the mob's
discontent and anger. They play with the stones they carry, but they do not go so far
as to throw them. They talk in ''bitter tones'' but again, they do nothing.
Stanza Two
The uncle talks about the mob's behaviour as ''follies that subside''. It appears that he
has seen this sort of thing before and he dismisses it as the type of foolish behaviour
which will soon die down. He is not worried. However, he is concerned for his
valuables. Glass is delicate, so he fears that his ''crystal vase and chandelier'' –
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obvious symbols of wealth - will be damaged if the mob should act.
Stanza Three
In the opening line of this stanza, the uncle repeats his assurances that nothing will
damaged and that the mob will not throw stones. None of them dare to lift an arm, he
says. The words ''as yet'' lend a slightly more threatening note to this stanza,
however. There is a suggestion that, while the mob has not acted to date, they may
do so at some point in the future. They are like a storm brewing. This idea of the
storm is picked up again in the third line, when the speaker recalls how his
grandfather's ruby bowl was shaken in a storm, much to its owner's horror. The word
''But'' at the beginning of this line adds to the slight sense of doubt in this stanza.
What if the mob should throw their stones, after all? What if they should translate
their ''bitter'' words into action? There is a rather ominous tone, here.
The language in this stanza reinforces the notion that the uncle is from a different
class to the mob in the square below. His choice of words sets him apart as much as
his wealth. He talks of his ''grandsire'': a formal and rather archaic way of saying
''grandfather''.
Stanza Four
In the last stanza, the speaker tells us how he and his type of people have a
responsibility to protect the valuables that they have inherited. Those items were
made in a ''calmer age'' – presumably when people knew their place and would not
dare to rise up against the ruling classes – but now they are threatened. The uncle
states firmly that he and his kind will stand their ground and will guard these
treasures agains the mob. Note the use of the words ''we'' and ''us'' in this stanza and
''our'' in the last. The uncle sees himself as a representative of the upper class, and he
is determined to preserve the class divisions. This poem is a metaphor for a political
idea: that class distinctions exist and that there are those who want to maintain the
status quo. They view their way of life as more important and valuable than that of
the lower orders. Like the crystal vase, the chandelier and the ruby bowl, their social
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is both frail and precious in their eyes. If their class is threatened, they will defend it.
This is a political poem, written in the 1950s. The story itself is a metaphor for the
deeper political ideas. We are reminded of ''Aunt Jennifer's Tigers'' and the fictional
uncle in that poem. Both men are domineering, confident and in control. They are
the rulers; they are in charge. But their attitude fosters resentment and disquiet
among those who do not share their privileged lifestyle. There is a deep undercurrent
of unhappiness and discontent in both poems.
3) Trying to talk with a Man
1971
Note
Rich and her husband have travelled out into the desert to observe the army's testing
of nuclear weapons. Their marriage is falling apart, and in this poem, Rich uses
many unusual comparisons to link her husband and their failing relationship to the
nuclear bombs and the desert.
As this is quite a complex poem, I have divided the poem into sections and followed
each of the sections with a brief analysis.
Analysis
Out in this desert we are testing bombs,
that's why we came here.
The desert is a harsh, baren landscape at the best of times, but now it is even more
dangerous because of the nuclear bombs that are being tested. The lifeless desert is
a metaphor for Rich's marriage. The marriage is also linked to the bombs, and there
is a feeling that they have reached a stage where their relationship is a negative
force. If they stay together, they are likely to cause one another great suffering. The
idea of ''testing'' is also important. Perhaps, by travelling together to this place, they
are also testing their relationship.
Sometimes I feel an underground river
forcing its way between deformed cliffs
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an acute angle of understanding
moving itself like a locus of the sun *locus – centre or source. Used in maths.
into this condemned scenery,
Rich senses that in this dry and lifeless desert, there may be an underground river.
The desert is weird and ugly with its ''deformed cliffs'', and it may represent their
relationship, which has become an ugly, barren, lifeless thing. The landscape is
''condemned scenery'' because the bombs will soon explode. Is their marriage also
condemned?
There are a number of different ways of looking at the underground river. Is it a
symbol of hope, that at some level there is life in their relationship, even if it is buried
deeply? Or is the river a knowledge buried within her? Does she know the
relationship is doomed, and does she realise now that this knowledge can no longer
be hidden but must be brought to the surface? The knowledge that this metaphorical
river runs beneath the surface of their marriage and is ''forcing'' its way through
their relationship is a painful one for Rich. She calls it an ''acute angle of
understanding''. The word ''acute'' has two meanings: it can be used in mathematics
(linked to the word ''locus'', here) and it can also mean a pain that is sharp and
severe.
What we've had to give up to get here whole LP collections, films we starred in
playing in the neighborhoods, bakery windows
full of dry, chocolate-filled Jewish cookies,
the language of love-letters, of suicide notes,
afternoons on the riverbank
pretending to be children
Rich lists out the things she and her husband did when they were happy. These are
things they will have to ''give up'' if this is to be the end of their marriage. The list is
a poignant one and contains details such as the description of the ''dry, chocolatefilled
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Jewish cookies'' which suggest that there is a part of Rich which remembers
these times fondly. However, there is also the rather jarring note in line twelve, when
Rich mentions ''suicide notes''. Towards the end of their marriage, both Rich and her
husband did harbour suicidal thoughts. However, the inclusion of such a negative
note in this list of typically sweet and loving elements of a relationship may also
serve to prove that Rich and her husband stayed together through the good times and
the bad. They suffered together and this cannot be ignored. Now, though, the
marriage is ending and none of these things matter any more. Their marriage is
empty and lifeless, like the desert.
Coming out to this desert
we meant to change the face of
driving among dull green succulents *cactuses and other plants that hold water
walking at noon in the ghost town
surrounded by a silence
Here Rich describes the journey she and her husband made to get to this observation
point in the desert. The face of the desert will be changed by the bombs. Note that
Rich says 'we' when she talks of the people who will test the nuclear weapons. She
shares the army's responsibility for what will happen. Is this like her marriage?
Does she acknowledge that it was destroyed by both her husband and herself?
They stopped off in a ghost town, which again reflects the silence and emptiness of
their marriage.
that sounds like the silence of the place
except that it came with us
and is familiar
and everything we were saying until now
was an effort to blot it out coming out here we are up against it
There are two silences here: one is the silence of the empty town and the other is the
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silence between Rich and her husband. They have tried, until now, not to face up to
the collapse of their marriage and have made an effort to ignore the signs, but they
can't, any more. By coming out to the desert together, they have forced themselves to
face up to the reality. The silence has been growing and it is ''familiar''. It has
become a feature of their marriage and they are acutely aware of it in this quiet
place. Small talk and chit chat is not enough, any more, and it does not hide the fact
that they have nothing left to say to one another.
Out here I feel more helpless
with you than without you
You mention the danger
and list the equipment
we talk of people caring for each other
in emergencies – laceration, thirst but you look at me like an emergency
The couple are in the observation post together, and are meant to be safe there. But,
of course, there is always the danger that the test could go wrong. Her husband
mentions this and they talk of how they and others would cope if something did go
wrong. Ironically, they talk of how they would deal with people's injuries, but of
course they have hurt one another and cannot heal those wounds. Rich is not
comforted by her husband's presence. In fact, she feels in more danger with him
there. There is no sense that he is going to physically harm her in any way, but she
feels that she would be better off alone. He does not comfort her and she feels that
their relationship has reached the point where it is actually damaging her.
Your dry heat feels like power
your eyes are stars of a different magnitude
they reflect lights that spell out: EXIT
when you get up and pace the floor
Rich compares her husband to the nuclear weapons and says that he may be as
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harmful to her as a nuclear explosion. She compares his eyes to stars, but not in a
romantic way. Stars have, after all, a nuclear reaction deep within their cores. Rich
has reached the point where she feels that their marriage is at an end and can bring
nothing but hurt at this stage.
Her husband's eyes reflect the EXIT sign on the door. To Rich, this is probably yet
another sign that their marriage is over and that she needs to get out.
talking of the danger
as if it were not ourselves
as if we were testing anything else.
The final lines of the poem suggest that this trip into the desert was a last ditch
attempt to spend time together and to test if their marriage could be saved. Her
husband talks of the danger of the bombs and the nuclear test, but to Rich it is
obvious that what was really being tested was their marriage. They cannot ignore
the failure of their relationship, and there is no point in pretending that it is not over.
Theme
The end of a marriage
The poem deals with the pain associated with the end of a relationship. Rich and her
husband have been trying to ignore the fact that their relationship is failing, but now
that they are alone together in the desert, they realise that they have nothing important
left to say to one another. They must face the fact that the marriage is over.
Male power
Like ''Aunt Jennifer's Tigers'', this poem looks at the danger inherent in a relationship
with a man. The husband is likened to a dangerous weapon; he has the power to
destroy Rich. Marriage is not portrayed here as a meeting of equals, but rather as the
mastery of the woman by the man. If she is to survive emotionally, she must escape.
4. Power
Miss O’ Connell
Power
The first line, isolated from the rest of the poem, contains no object which would allow us to
make easy sense of it. We might presume that the word ‘Living’ refers to such objects as the
‘bottle’ mentioned in the third line. But whose ‘history’ is the poet talking about? Joanne Feit
Diehl says that ‘Rich… combs through the ‘earth-deposits’ of ‘our’ (female) experience of
history’. According to this interpretation, then, Rich is doing something similar to what she
did in ‘Diving into the Wreck’. She is going back through history in order to discover objects
that will shed light upon the nature of power within the world, specifically with regard to the
female. If we sift through, or mine, the ‘earth-deposits’ of history we might be able to better
understand ourselves and our world. As one critic has said, ‘Rich’s poetry demands a
scrupulous “re-vision” of history with a woman’s eye to what can be salvaged’.
‘Power’ concerns itself with two events that occurred ‘Today’: the first being the discovery of an
‘amber’ bottle by a digger on a construction site, and the second being the poet’s reading and
thinking about the life of the famous physicist Marie Curie. The relation between these two
events is not clearly stated.
Lines 2 to 5 – The ‘bottle’
The poet tells us that ‘Today’ a mechanical digger (‘a blackhoe’) unearthed some ‘hundred-yearold’ ‘amber’ bottle in perfect condition. The word ‘divulged’ is interesting. It is usually used
with regard to the revelation of information. Used here it suggests that the discovery of the
bottle discloses some secret of the past. The bottle used to contain an old ‘cure for fever or
melancholy a tonic/ for living on this earth in the winters of this climate’.
This sounds like a hoax remedy, some alchemical potion that could cure anything and
everything. Such medicines would probably have been sold by quack doctors, people of
dubious learning who convinced the gullible and the infirm to part with their money for what
they promised was a miracle cure. Of course the whole thing was a sham, someone using their
learning and reputation to prey upon the weak. Its intended purpose was to be ‘a tonic/ for
living on this earth’. It was used to help people deal with the hardships of life, a ‘cure for fever
or melancholy’. However, we might imagine that it had little or no real medicinal power.
Lines 6 to 17 – Marie Curie
Through her discovery of radium, Marie Curie paved the way for nuclear physics and cancer
therapy. Born of Polish parents, she was a woman of science and courage, compassionate yet
stubbornly determined. Her research work was to cost her her life.
The fact that the sixth line of the poem begins with the same word as the second suggests that
the description of Marie Curie that Rich gives ought to be compared in some manner with the
‘bottle’. On this very day that the bottle was discovered the poet was ‘reading about Marie
Curie’. Having read about this woman the poet divulges a few thoughts on the matter. Curie
‘must have known’, the poet states, that the radiation she was working with was making her
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sick. Rich exposes the irony of the fact that the element Curie was purifying was simultaneously
destroying her. Whilst she worked to perfect this material it ‘bombarded’ her body ‘for years’.
Yet she ‘denied to the end’ that it was her beloved radium that was slowly destroying her. She
could not bring herself to admit that the ‘cataracts on her eyes’ or the ‘cracked’ and pusdischarging skin of her ‘finger-ends’ was a result of her work.
Her fingers eventually became so bad that she ‘could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil’.
Marie Curie was ‘a famous woman’ who came to live in denial. And she died this way, she died
‘denying/ her wounds/ denying/ her wounds came from the same source as her power’.
{A Closer Reading
According to Christopher T. Hamilton ‘Adrienne Rich's poem "Power," which provides a
moving and sympathetic account of Marie Curie, is significant not only for its overt portrait of
a famous female scientist, but also for its implicit criticism of male power misused. The poem
contrasts two lives - one, a dedicated scientist who sacrifices self for the world; the other, an
implicit, nondescript male "doctor" who exploits others for personal gain’. On the one hand
then you have the purveyor of the cure-all who uses chemistry for dishonourable purposes. He
uses his power to make financial gain for himself and has no honour. On the other hand you
have Marie Curie who sacrificed her life for pure science and never thought a whit about
profiting from her work.
Hamilton goes on to say that the opening lines ‘are significant in that they help Rich contrast
the nature of male and female power, something that she had been (re)considering in several
works from the 1970s. The portrait of Marie Curie, as idealized or as incomplete as it might be,
is offered as a point of comparison. Males, who see the world as a place to gain power through
capitalistic aggressiveness, competition, and financial exploitation, are ultimately selfdestructive. Ironically, what is left of their life is the artifact, the bottle - a curiosity and
potential museum piece; and what is buried and forgotten is the man who peddled his product
for immediate and selfish financial gain’.
In order for ‘Power’ to be so understood much has to be presumed. After all the only person
mentioned in the poem is Marie Curie. Rich does not mention or describe anybody in lines 2
to 5, let alone a man. There is no ‘purveyor of [a] cure-all’ spoken of in this section of the
poem, as Hamilton suggests, only a ‘bottle’. The poem does not ‘contrast two lives’. The only
life spoken of is that of Marie Curie. And as Claire Keyes remarks, "no explicit connection is
made between the artefact and Marie Curie, except to suggest that neither the tonic in the
bottle nor Curie's radium has especially cured humanity's ills." She goes on to say that the
"poem's abstractions make it less effective than it could be".
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Hamilton states that the poem is ‘significant…for its implicit criticism of male power misused’.
But where might we ask does this criticism arise in the poem, implicitly or otherwise? And
where is there any mention of ‘male power’? Does the poem have anything at all to say about
‘power’? Certainly there is nothing explicit said in the first five lines of the poem. And what
‘power’ did Marie Curie possess? The description of her in the poem exposes a devotion to her
work, an obvious love of science and research that ultimately blinded her to its negative
possibilities. But how are we to characterize her ‘power’? Rich says that Curie’s ‘power’ came
from ‘the element’ she was working with. Curie was powerful to the extent that her research
ultimately influenced other people’s lives and the course of events in a very significant way. A
New York Times reporter wrote of Curie, "Few persons have contributed more to the general
welfare of mankind and to the advancement of Science than that modest, self-effacing woman
whom the world has come to know as Marie Curie."
But her research into these elements also gave her the personal power to advance in life, to
move in circles that were formally the exclusive locales of men. For example, after her
husband’s death she took up his professorial position at the university, becoming the first
woman to hold such a position. So Curie serves as an example of someone rising above the
prejudices and restrictions of her time, involving herself in an activity that was then seen as the
proper work of men and not women. (The spacing between the words in the poem calls to
mind the style used by the American poet Emily Dickinson, another example of a woman who
disrupted the established patriarchal order through her work.) Does the final line of the poem,
the only line that explicitly deals with ‘power’ suggest that Curie, who made extraordinary
advancements and progress in science, was blind to the inherent dangers of working in an
almost exclusively male field? The will to succeed, the desire to control elements at all cost,
these are underlying features of science and industry. Is the poem ultimately a critique of the
negative implications of such values? Rich can have enormous respect for what Curie achieved
against the odds but she may lament the fact that this woman ultimately became a victim of
something much greater and sinister. Perhaps the life of Curie can be held up as a cautionary
tale.}
5. From A Survivor
Background
In 1953 Rich married Alfred Conrad, an economist and social campaigner. Seventeen years
later Conrad tragically took his own life.Their marriage was in many respects a difficult one.
Much of this difficulty stemmed from Rich’s dissatisfaction with the whole notion of marriage
as it was understand in 1950’s America. She was not content simply to play the role of
obedient wife and adoring mother. To make matters worse as the relationship wore on Rich
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gradually realised she was in fact a lesbian. In this poem, which was written three years after her
husband’s death, Rich mourns his passing and reflects on the difficulties of their life together.
Section One: (Lines 1-9)
In these lines Rich thinks back to the early days of her marriage. She focuses especially on the
marriage vows between her husband and herself, the ‘pact’ or promise they made to be faithful
to one another: ‘The pact we made’. According to the poet, she and her husband believed they
were ‘special’: ‘we thought of ourselves as special’. They felt they had the ability to avoid or
overcome the difficulties that effect every long-term relationship, which Rich refers to as ‘the
failures of the race’: ‘I don’t know who we thought we were / that our personalities / could
resist the failures of the race’.
In reality Rich and her husband weren’t special at all.The pact or pledge between them was ‘an
ordinary pact’.Their marriage was no different to all the ‘men and women in those days’, to the
thousands of marriages that took place in America each year throughout the 1950’s. Like every
other couple they thought they were special enough to be immune to the difficulties of
marriage, and like every other couple they were wrong.They were extremely mistaken, it turns
out, to believe they could avoid or overcome these ‘failures of the race’: ‘We didn’t know / the
race had failures…and that we were going to share them’. Like any other married couple they
would have to deal with tensions and difficulties. Ultimately, therefore, Rich and her husband
were ‘Like everybody else’. It was arrogant or stupid of them to think that they were special and
that they alone could avoid the tensions and difficulties that effect every marriage: ‘I don’t
know who we though we were’.
Section Two: (Lines 10-17)
These lines highlight some of the difficulties that affected the seventeen years of Rich’s
marriage. Rich found marriage troublesome because in the fifties and sixties a woman was
expected to respect and obey her husband and be guided by him in all things.To Rich, as a
feminist, this was extremely difficult to take. Society, she felt, regarded her husband as a kind
of ‘god…with power over my life’.
In the years since her husband’s death, however, Rich’s confidence and independence have
developed to such an extent that she is no longer worried about being dominated by her
husband or any other man. Society, too, has changed over that period which was a time of
great political upheaval in America.Women are no longer expected to worship and obey the
men they marry.These changes allow Rich to think more clearly about her husband and their
marriage: ‘my feeling for it is clearer’. She no longer thinks of him as a tyrant with the ‘power’
to control her life. His body ‘is no longer / the body of a god’. She can now set aside the
resentment she felt toward the unequal institution of marriage and focus on the love she had
for this gifted man. Her affection for him is suggested by the fact that she can still remember
his body perfectly, despite the fact that he is three years dead: ‘Your body is as vivid to me / as
it ever was’
Miss O’ Connell
Section Three: (Lines 18-24)
In this section Rich mourns her husband’s tragic passing. Towards the end of their marriage, it
seems, the couple discussed the possibility of divorcing and going on to lead separate lives.
Rich claims they would discuss the possibility bility of making this ‘leap’ into the unknown:‘the
leap / we talked, too late, of making’. Yet talk of this leap came ‘too late’ for Rich’s husband.
Before they could fully explore this possibility he tragically took his own life.
In the years since her husband’s death Rich has gone on to lead an extremely happy existence:
‘I live now…as a succession of brief, amazing moments’. In her new life, according to Rich,
each moment is filled with joy and wonder. If her husband had lived, she believes; they could
have left their troubled marriage behind and he would have been free to pursue a rich and
independent life, as filled with amazing moments as her own. This, then, is the true tragedy of
her husband’s death. His passing was an enormous waste because it denied him the
opportunity of making ‘the leap’ from a life dominated by an unhappy marriage into a joyous
and independent existence: ‘you are wastefully dead / who might have made the leap’.
Themes
Survival and Suicide
Like many of Rich’s poems ‘From a Survivor’ deals with notions of depression and despair.
Like the speakers in ‘The Roofwalker’, ‘Living In Sin’ and ‘Our Whole Life’ the speaker in this
poem has suffered incredible mental torment. The poem, however, is ultimately optimistic,
emphasising how important it is to struggle against depression and declaring that a depressed
person can recover to live a life filled with ‘amazing moments’. It is a powerful statement
against suicide, which is presented as a terrible waste. Rich rejoices that she survived and
overcame her own suicidal tendencies while her husband’s death is presented as a tragic and
pointless loss.
Marriage and Male Dominance
‘From a Survivor’, like many of Rich’s poems presents men has having the ability to dominate
and constrain women, especially within the context of a marriage or a long-term relationship.
(This is especially evident when she refers to her husband’s body as the body of god that has
power over her).This notion of women being harassed and dominated by marriage and
relationships is one that occurs again and again in Rich’s poetry and we also see it in ‘Aunt
Jennifer's Tigers’, ‘Living In Sin’ and 'Trying To Talk With A Man’. It is only by breaking free
of marriage, Rich seems to suggest, that a woman truly can be free and realise her own
potential. (This is evident also in ‘The Roofwalker’).Marriage, she maintains, has the potential
to entrap and enslave a woman submerging her beneath her husband’s shadow.
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Yet the poem, it is important to note, is not entirely negative toward men. It provides a moving
lament for the passing of Rich’s husband and regrets that he, too, could not be a survivor. Like
‘Trying To Talk With A Man’ it mourns the end of their relationship while acknowledging that
the relationship had many positive features. The poem leaves us with little doubt, then, that
Rich truly loved her husband. ‘From a Survivor’, therefore, not only is a powerful political
poem attacking the institute of marriage, but is also a haunting memorial to a relationship that
was doomed to failure