Adrienne Rich Notes
Living In Sin
This poem describes an unmarried couple living together in an American city in the 1950’s.
The couple live in a little ‘studio’ flat, which combines fairly basic living quarters and an artist’s
workspace. As with many of Rich’s poems ‘Living in Sin’ is related to us from the woman’s
perspective. It seems that her partner, who is some kind of composer or musician, has
persuaded her to move in with him. Prior to moving in with her boyfriend the woman had a
somewhat idealized view of what their life together would be like. The reality, however, has
proved very disappointing.
Line by line
Lines 1-14
When persuading her to join him in the studio the musician had described what living together
would be like. An ideal image of their life together had ‘risen at his urging’ in the woman’s
mind. As an artist her boyfriend didn’t make much money. He claimed, however, that they
would be poor but happy, living a free and easy lifestyle among the city’s artistic community.
She imagined an attractive and comfortable apartment featuring ‘A plate of pears / a piano
with a Persian shawl, a cat / stalking the picturesque amusing mouse’.
When the woman imagined living with her partner she never thought of housework, of dusting
or cleaning or other such boring activities. Somewhat naively she imagined that their apartment
‘would keep itself’, that it would always be clean and tidy. Their life together would be idyllic,
filled with love and romance, not mundane things such as scrubbing and dusting: ‘no dust
upon the furniture of love’. As is so often the case, however, the reality of the situation is very
different to what she had imagined.
The studio, it turns out, isn’t the least bit clean, comfortable or attractive. In fact it seems
downright filthy. The windows are covered with a thick layer of dirt and the woman finds
herself wishing that the windowpanes could somehow be ‘relieved of grime’. Scraps of food
and empty bottles lie around the place: ‘the scraps / of last night’s cheese and three sepulchral
bottles’. Worst of all, the apartment seems to be infested with beetles, which have their nest
among the apartment’s ‘moldings’ or skirting boards. Every so often one of these creatures
wanders out on to the kitchen shelf: ‘on the kitchen shelf among the saucers / a pair of beetleeyes would fix her own’.
Rich uses a clever metaphor to describe this beetle infestation, comparing the insects’ nest to a
‘village’ and stating that the lone beetle on the shelf is an ‘envoy’ or messenger from this
beetle community. The apartment is also noisy. The taps leak noisily (they are ‘vocal’ as Rich
wittily puts it) and the stairs outside squeak annoyingly each morning when the milkman
arrives: ‘at five each separate stair would writhe under the milkman’s tramp’. Despite these
issues, however, the woman feels that it would be somehow wrong to complain about life in
the apartment. In fact it would be almost crazy or sinful (‘Half heresy’) to wish that things were
different. After all hasn’t she got the kind of existence she always dreamed of, an apartment of
her own and a free and easy artistic lifestyle with the man she loves?
Lines 15-22
These lines give us a sense of what life is like in the studio apartment. The woman, it seems,
ends up doing most of the housework: ‘she…pulled back the sheets and made the bed and
found / a towel to dust the tabletop’. The man she lives with seems to do little to help out
around the apartment. In fact he is presented as lazy, uncaring and self-absorbed. He seems to
just drift around the apartment, yawning and looking at himself in the mirror before heading
out for a packet of cigarettes.
This young man doesn’t have a job, so he can devote his life to music, but he seems to spend
little time actually playing or composing. Instead he plays just ‘a dozen notes’ on the piano
before declaring that it is too ‘out of tune’ for him to do any artistic work. (We get a sense,
however, that this may be just an excuse he uses to avoid knuckling down to the business of
playing and composing). Instead of getting on with this creative work the young man wanders
‘out for cigarettes’.We get the impression, however, that he could easily spend the day
wandering in and out of bars and coffee shops, chatting with his artistic friends.
It is little wonder, then, that the woman is miserable and disappointed. The reality of life in the
studio apartment has not lived up to her expectations and her boyfriend seems to be feckless
and uncaring. Rich describes her depression as ‘minor demons’ that torment her, jeering at the
miserable state in which she has landed herself. Though the woman is clearly unhappy with her
life she seems unable to change it. She is too in love to leave behind the filthy apartment and
her uncaring boyfriend: ‘By evening she was back in love again’. Sleep, it seems, gives her
some release from the depression that haunts her. Yet there are moments throughout the
night when she wakes and realises that another day of misery is only around the corner: ‘she
woke sometimes to feel the daylight coming’. Rich uses another intriguing metaphor to
describe the approach of morning, saying that the light comes up the stairs ‘like a relentless
milkman’.
Themes
Reality and Fantasy
One of the most important themes in ‘Living in Sin’ is the sharp contrast between fantasy and
reality. The woman imagined her life in the studio would be perfect, an exciting life lived with a
sensitive young artist in a beautiful apartment. As we have seen, however, the reality has
turned out to be very disappointing. The apartment is a dump and her partner deserves to be
dumped. The poem, then, emphasises just how often reality can betray our deepest hopes and
expectations.
The inequality between the sexes
The poem also highlights the inequality that often still persists between the sexes. It is the
woman, unsurprisingly; who attempts to keep the apartment in some kind of decent condition
while the man spends his time playing the piano and wandering the streets in search of
cigarettes. The poem highlights how even supposedly sensitive and enlightened men such as
the woman’s artistic boyfriend can reinforce this traditional inequality and demonstrates how,
even today, women can be victims in a ‘man’s world’. The inequality that dominates their
relationship is the real ‘sin’ with which the young couple are living. (This theme is also evident
in ‘From A Survivor’ and ‘Aunt Jennifer's Tigers’).
Depression and despair
Like many of Rich’s poems ‘Living in Sin’ touches on the area of depression and loneliness. The
woman in the poem is depicted as suffering from the ‘minor demons’ of loneliness and
depression. In other poems by Rich, however, we learn how rapidly these minor demons can
become the greater problems of all-out despair and suicidal tendencies.
Aunt Jennifer's Tigers
In this poem the speaker describes her aunt knitting a decorative screen. The screen is
adorned by an image of tigers moving through a jungle. The poem focuses on the contrast
between the tigers who seem powerful, fearless and full of energy and the speaker’s aunt who
is presented as old and weary.
Stanza One
The first stanza describes the screen the aunt has knitted: ‘Aunt Jennifer’s tigers prance across
the screen / Bright topaz denizens of a world of green’. The tigers are depicted as ‘bright’ and
shining, their fur a glowing shade of ‘topaz’. The fact that they ‘prance’ through their jungle
environment emphasises not only their youthful energy but also their confidence that they are
masters of this green domain. Their ‘sleek’ powerful bodies move with ‘certainty’, with an
arrogance that is reminiscent of a mediaeval lord on horseback. (This comparison is suggested
by Rich’s use of the word ‘chivalric’ to describe the tigers’ pacing).They have no fear of the
human beings the aunt has also included in the screen: ‘They do not fear the men beneath the
tree’.
Stanza Two
There is a marked contrast between these powerful, confident beasts and the weak and wasted
woman who has knitted them. Aunt Jennifer’s fingers ‘flutter’ as she knits, indicating that she
has the shaking hands of an old woman: ‘Aunt Jennifer’s fingers fluttering through her wool /
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull’. She is so weak that even the act of knitting is a strain
to her. The hand she knits with seems weighed down by her wedding ring: ‘The massive weight
of Uncle’s wedding band / Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer’s hand’. This suggests that much of
Aunt Jennifer’s weariness stems from the fact that she is married. (Marriage, it is important to
note, is often portrayed in an extremely negative light in Rich’s work). It is years of being
married to her husband as much as old age itself that has left her weak and weary.
Stanza Three
This stanza imagines the situation after Aunt Jennifer’s death. The Aunt, of course, will be lying
dead in her grave. The tigers she knitted, however, will still exist. Their grandeur will still be
visible to all who see the panel she so artfully constructed: ‘The tigers in the panel that she
made / Will go on prancing’. Aunt Jennifer, according to the speaker, has been terrified and
mastered by her marriage, by the ‘ordeals’ of marriage. These ordeals are represented by her
wedding ring: ‘her terrified hands will lie / Still ringed by ordeals she was mastered by’. In
contrast the tigers she knitted will be neither afraid of nor ‘mastered’ by anything. Instead they
will live on, ‘proud and unafraid’, just as Aunt Jennifer knitted them.
THEMES:
Marriage
As with so many of Rich’s poems ‘Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers’ presents an extremely negative view
of marriage. Marriage is presented as an ‘ordeal’ through which women are controlled and
‘mastered’ by their husbands. Aunt Jennifer, it seems, has been kept down and oppressed by
marriage, a fact symbolised by the ‘wedding band’ that weighs so heavily on her finger. A
similar view of marriage as an institution that oppresses and enslaves women can be seen in
‘From a Survivor’ and ‘Trying to Talk with a Man’. It is also hinted at in ‘Living in Sin’, though
the couple in that poem are not actually married but are simply living together.
Art and Life
‘Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers’ also makes a powerful comparison between art and life. Though Aunt
Jennifer is presented as a timid and oppressed individual the screen she so skilfully creates is
brimming with colour, confidence and energy. The tigers she has knitted stalk powerfully and
arrogantly through their jungle scene. The contrast with poor put upon Aunt Jennifer could not
be clearer. The poem celebrates the ability of the artist or craftsman to create something
powerful and glorious out of even the most dismal of circumstances. It also celebrates the
ability of a work of art to outlive the person who created it. Though Aunt Jennifer will soon be
dead, the screen she created will continue to exist. As long as these tigers continue to prance
across their screen then a part of Aunt Jennifer will always be alive.
‘Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers’ was written when Rich was barely out of her teens. Yet her skill and
expertise as a poet is very much in evidence. The poem is written in a perfect metrical form
known as ‘iambic tetrameter’, which gives the poem its lilting regular rhythm. The poem has a
perfectly regular rhyme scheme, rhyming AABB throughout. Rich’s skilful use of alliteration
also contributes to the poem’s music.We see this in line 4 with its repeated ‘c’ sound (‘chivalric
certainty’), in line 5 with its repeated ‘f’ sound (‘fingers fluttering’) and in line 8 with its
repeated ‘h’ sound: ‘heavily…hand’).
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
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’.
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 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.
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.
The Uncle Speaks In The Drawing Room
Line by Line
The poem is written from the point of view of ‘The Uncle’ and consists entirely of his speech.
He stands in the ‘Drawing Room’ of a house and addresses an unspecified person or group of
people, possibly some members of his family. That he is in a drawing room is significant. It
suggests a certain prestige and privilege. He speaks of ‘the mob’ that he has seen lately
standing ‘sullen in the square’. The fact that the uncle has seen them ‘of late’ suggests that the
mob has been around for a while.
The word ‘sullen’ means resentful and ill humoured, and it tells of the dissatisfaction of this
crowd of people. The recurrence of this word in the third line emphasises the demeanour of
the mob. However, we must remember that these lines are spoken by the uncle and that what
he says is influenced by his own interests and prejudices. The uncle has no time and little
respect for this mob. The word ‘sullen’ would often be used to describe a teenager or child
who is upset. Used by the speaker in relation to the mob it appears a conscious effort on his
part to belittle this group and what they stand for.
The fact that the mob is said to be ‘Gazing’ at ‘window, balcony, and gate’ suggests that it
might have some issue with the uncle himself. We must presume that the ‘window, balcony,
and gate’ of line four are those of the uncle’s house. Perhaps the uncle is just one member of a
social group with whom the mob has taken issue. The final two lines of stanza one illustrate
the uncle’s awareness of the mob’s mood. This understanding of their mood seems to have
been derived from the uncle passing close by the mob. He says that some ‘have talked in bitter
tones’ and some ‘have held and fingered stones’. This is a group of people who are on the
verge of violence.
However, the uncle immediately dismisses the mob and their anger in the second stanza.
‘These are’, he tells his audience, ‘follies that subside’. Once again the uncle seeks to belittle
the mob and their concerns, terming them ‘follies’. They will pass with time, he says. The uncle
speaks as though from experience, as though he has observed such mobs before.
Having once again belittled the significance of the mob, the uncle goes on to acknowledge that
they are not completely harmless. Though he assures those present that this mob will go away,
he tells them that ‘none the less’ they ought to ‘consider’...‘Certain frailties of glass’.
According to the uncle’s appraisal of the situation the greatest threat that this mob poses is to
fragile glass, to windows and valuable ornaments.
The use of the phrase ‘in times like these’ suggests that the mob is part of a broader state of
social unrest and not just an isolated group of people. Once again the uncle speaks as though
from experience, or perhaps from a certain understanding of the past, stating that it is ‘in
times like these’ that one ought to ‘fear/ For crystal vase and chandelier’. The uncle is not
concerned for human life or for the wellbeing of those to whom he speaks, only for ‘Certain
frailties of glass’.
Having raised fears about the breaking of glass the uncle quickly seeks to assure those present
that even this is unlikely to happen. In fact he dismisses the likelihood altogether – ‘Not that
missiles will be cast;/ None as yet dare lift an arm’. Yet the uncle’s statements are not
absolutely reassuring. Just because no ‘missiles’ have yet been thrown, it does not mean that
no missiles will be thrown. Line fourteen suggests that the mob is afraid of the consequences
of engaging in violence. And yet, having dismissed the possibility of violence the uncle quickly
calls to mind a similar moment from the past when glass was damaged. This present ‘scene’,
according to the uncle, ‘recalls a storm/ When our grandsire stood aghast/ To see his antique
ruby bowl/ Shivered in a thunder-roll’. It seems that the grandfather (‘grandsire’) once lived in
similar circumstances, perhaps even in the same drawing room, and fretted over the breaking
of glass as violence erupted.
The uncle continues to focus his audience’s attention on the valuable glass in the final stanza.
The word ‘only’ in the first line of the stanza suggests that this is all they should worry about
at this moment in time. Other considerations regarding the mob are apparently unnecessary.
The family should think about how these valuable pieces are ‘in the keeping of our kind’. These
‘treasures’ were crafted in ‘a calmer age’ and ‘handed down’ to the family that now gathers in
the drawing room for safekeeping. It is their ‘kind’ who must protect these ‘treasures’. The
mob has no interest in them. In fact, the mob has only spite for such possessions, and remains
all too ready to shatter them if the opportunity arises.
The phrase ‘our kind’ deliberately works to distinguish those gathered in the drawing room
from those who gather outside in the square. The uncle presumes to know that he and his
family are more noble and cultured than the foolish mob. Their possessions render them more
worthy. The final two lines align the family with a tradition that the mob now threatens. The
uncle evokes the memory of the ‘glass-blowers’ who made these bowls, vases and chandeliers.
Such men are now dead but their pieces continue to exist and give value to the family. The
uncle suggests that the ‘glass-blowers’ were part of a more civilised age that is now under
threat from a mindless mob. It is essential that the glass and the family status be preserved.
The uncle presumes the family’s absolute right to the privileges they possess.
A CLOSER READING:
Social Unrest
The poem describes an unspecified tension that has arisen. Through the words of ‘The Uncle’
we are told of an angry ‘mob’ that has gathered near to the house in which he speaks. This
mob is very unhappy about something and is close to violence. We are told in the first stanza
that some ‘have held and fingered stones’. However, the uncle speaks confidently against the
possibility of anything serious happening. He dismisses the mob’s concerns and behaviour as
mere ‘follies’ and suggests that pose no threat to those present in the ‘Drawing Room’.
Because of the setting of the poem we might suppose that the uncle is part of a privileged and
wealthy family. He speaks of valuable glass ornaments, of ‘crystal vase and chandelier’,
furthering the notion that this is a rich family. The language that he uses also indicates social
privilege. He refers to the family’s grandfather as ‘our grandsire’ and says that the fancy glass
ornaments are ‘in the keeping of our kind’ – ‘our kind’, in particular, suggests a superior
attitude. In turn we might suppose that the mob are representative of those less privileged. It is
easy to read the poem as an illustration of class conflict. And ultimately the poem exposes the
arrogance of the rich. The uncle has no sympathy for the mob, terming them ‘sullen’ and
foolish. He literally and metaphorically looks down upon them and treats them with contempt.
He suggests that his family are of better stock. However, his speech ultimately exposes the
despicable character of one who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. In the end none of
the tension described at the start of the poem has been resolved. We are left with the feeling
that the uncle is too presumptuous when it comes to assessing the mob’s potential.
The poem bears a similarity to ‘Storm Warnings’ in terms of its portrayal of external forces that
threaten the security of those shut within their homes. However, whereas in ‘Storm Warnings’
the poet spoke of the uncontrollable forces of the weather, darkness, and time, in ‘The Uncle
Speaks’ she considers the potential unpredictability and violence of a group of angry people.
Both poems are similar, though, in terms of the tension that arises between the external and
the internal.
Trying To Talk With A Man
In this poem the speaker and her husband have travelled to a site in the desert where the
American army are testing nuclear weapons: ‘Out in this desert we are testing bombs / that’s
why we came here’. The poem’s central concern is the collapse of the speaker’s marriage. Two
powerful metaphors are used to capture the decline of this relationship. The first is that of the
desert itself. The speaker presents this deathly wilderness as a metaphor for her relationship
with her husband. Over the years the life and energy has disappeared from their marriage.Their
relationship has become as stale and barren as the desert they’ve driven through to witness
the explosion. The second metaphor is that of the nuclear bombs with which the American
military are experimenting. Their failed marriage, the speaker suggests, has become a negative
and destructive force, as dangerous in its own way as the lethal weapons being tested in the
desert.
Line by Line
Lines 3-7
This desert is depicted as a weird, alien landscape dominated by ‘deformed cliffs’.Yet the
scenery in this environment is ‘condemned scenery’, for soon it will be demolished by the
terrible fury of a nuclear explosion. The desert is a dry and arid place.Yet the speaker claims
that she somehow senses a river flowing beneath its surface: ‘Sometimes I feel an underground
river’.This underground river, according to several critics, represents the speaker’s knowledge
that her relationship with her husband is damaged beyond repair. For the moment this
realisation, this ‘acute angle of understanding’, is buried deep within her, just as the river is
deep beneath the desert floor. (It has been suggested that this understanding is ‘acute’
because it represents knowledge that is sharp or painful). Soon, however, the knowledge that
she is no longer happy in her relationship must be brought to the surface of her mind and
directly confronted.
Lines 8-14
In these lines the speaker regards the desert bombsite as a metaphor for her marriage. She
gives a list of things that used to matter a great deal to them, the personal moments that filled
their relationship with meaning. She mentions the records they purchased together and the
times the two of them appeared as extras in art-house movies: ‘whole LP collections, films we
starred in / playing in the neighbourhoods’. She lists things we typically associate with
relationships, such as chocolates, love-letters and romantic evenings by the riverbank:‘bakery
windows / full of dry, chocolate-filled Jewish cookies, / the language of love
letters...afternoons on the riverbank / pretending to be children’.
Somewhat surprisingly, however, the speaker also mentions ‘suicide notes’ in this list. (Both
Rich and her husband, it is important to note, experienced suicidal tendencies toward the end
of their relationship). Yet while this reference to depression and suicide attempts might seem
negative, it acknowledges that shared suffering was an essential part of their relationship. They
had endured these difficulties together and they bound them to one another as much as any
pleasant memory of walks by a riverbank. Now, however, their relationship has declined so
much that these things don’t seem to matter any more. Their marriage is collapsing and every
joy they shared, and every difficulty they overcame together, seems to have lost its value. Their
marriage has become as bleak and empty as the wilderness in which the bombs are to be
tested.
Lines 15-20
These lines describe the journey the couple had to make in order to reach the desert test–
site.This site will soon be altered by the force of the nuclear explosion, its ‘face’ or appearance
will be changed forever: ‘Coming out to this desert / we meant to change the face of’. As they
drove into the wilderness they passed groves of dull green desert plants known as ‘succulents’
and stopped off in a ghost town: ‘walking at noon in the ghost town / surrounded by a
silence’.
Lines 20-25
In these lines the speaker refers to two different types of silence. One is the eerie silence of the
deserted town in which they are walking: ‘the silence of the place’. The other is the silence that
has appeared in the centre of their marriage. It seems that as the couple’s relationship has
fallen on hard times a terrible silence has grown between them. They simply have nothing to
say to one another any more. This is the dreadful emotional silence they have brought with
them into the desert:‘it came with us / and is familiar’.
Up until now the couple were able to ignore this silence at the heart of their relationship.They
would conceal the fact that they had nothing meaningful to say to one another by engaging in
pointless, insignificant chat: ‘and everything we were saying until now / was an effort to blot it
out’. In the emptiness of the desert, however, they are no longer able to ‘blot out’ this
emotional silence. Alone in this strange and haunting landscape they are forced to encounter
full-on the difficulties that have brought their relationship to the point of collapse:‘coming out
here we are up against it’.
Lines 26-36
This section describes the couple in a military installation far out in the desert, waiting for the
testing of the bomb to commence.There is an atmosphere of tension as they wait for the
explosion: ‘You mention the danger / and list the equipment’. There is always the possibility
that the test could go horribly wrong and that those in the observation post, including the
speaker and her husband,would be killed: ‘we talk of people caring for each other / in
emergencies - laceration, thirst -’. The presence of the speaker’s husband, however, does little
to reassure her. Their relationship, it seems, has finally unravelled and she acknowledges that
she might in fact be better off without him. ‘Out here I feel more helpless / with you than
without you’.
The speaker feels her marriage has become something dangerous and potentially harmful. In
the poem’s final lines she compares her failing relationship to the nuclear tests taking place in
the desert beyond their observation post.
In an extremely unusual comparison she likens her husband to some kind of nuclear
catastrophe:‘you look at me like an emergency’. It might actually damage her, she feels, to be
around this man. He is filled with power that might be as harmful to her as nuclear radiation:
‘your dry heat feels like power / your eyes are stars of a different magnitude’. (Stars, it is
important to note, are sustained by the nuclear reactions that take place deep within their
cores). The danger of the explosions outside the test-centre, then, is no different to the danger
of their collapsing marriage inside it:‘talking of the danger / as if it were not ourselves’.
The speaker claims that as her husband paces the floor the exit signs of the observation post
are reflected in his eyes: ‘they reflect signs that spell out EXIT’. According to most critics this
suggests that the speaker has finally realised her marriage is over, that there is nothing that
can be done to rescue her relationship. The only available option is to ‘exit’ the emotional
mess her marriage has become.The drive into the desert was a final ‘test’ of their relationship:
‘as if we were testing anything else’. It was possible, the speaker seems to have believed, that
in the space and silence of the desert they might have found a way to discuss their difficulties
and overcome them. At the poem’s conclusion, however,we get the sense that this has not
happened and that their marriage is doomed to failure.
Themes
The failure of a marriage
Like many of Rich’s poems ‘Trying to Talk with a Man’ deals with the pain and complications
that arise from the collapse of a relationship. As the title suggests, it focuses on the
breakdown in communication that often accompanies the end of an affair.The speaker
describes a terrible silence eating away at the heart of her marriage- her husband and herself,
it seems, find it increasingly difficult to find anything real or important to say to one another.
They have attempted to block out this silence with small talk. That strategy, however, can only
work for so long. Soon they will be forced to confront the silent emptiness at the centre of their
marriage. Their marriage, they will discover has become every bit as bleak and desolate as the
desert they have travelled through.
The Personal and the Political
An interesting feature of ‘Trying to Talk with a Man’ is that it mixes the personal and the
political - the personal anguish of the speaker’s failed relationship is compared to the greater
political catastrophe of nuclear-testing. (A similar blurring of the divide between public and
private is also evident in ‘Our Whole Life’). There is a sense in which the poet is suggesting
that the failure of a relationship can hurt a person every bit as much as the effects of nuclear
radiation. Disappointment in love can drive a person to despair or even suicide, a theme
covered by Rich in ‘Living In Sin’ and ‘The Roofwalker’.
Marriage and Power
As in so many of Rich’s poems, marriage in ‘Trying to Talk with a Man’ is associated with
power, in particular with male domination of women.We get a sense of this from the speaker’s
description of her husband as someone with the power to hurt or even destroy her: ‘you look
at me like an emergency / Your dry heat feels like power’. (There is a marked similarity here to
Rich’s depiction of her husband’s power in ‘From A Survivor’). This notion of male dominance
is also prevalent in ‘Living In Sin’, where the young woman is trapped in an extremely unequal
relationship with her young lover and in ‘Aunt Jennifer's Tigers’, where the aunt has been
‘mastered’ by her husband and by the institutions of marriage itself.
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 ‘hundredyear-old’ ‘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
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 pus-discharging 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 artifact 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".
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.