Aunt Jennifer's Tigers

The tigers are characters created by Aunt Jennifer to represent who she may have been if different options were open to her. They are vibrant and fearless, free to roam through the world Aunt Jennifer made for them, totally in control of their agency. Tigers themselves are the world’s biggest and deadliest cats; Aunt Jennifer embraces this power but clarifies and elevates it, removing any element of violence: Neither her tigers nor the nearby men fear one another. Like Aunt Jennifer, tigers would lose some of their power if they were tamed and confined to a zoo—and, in the tapestry, her tigers are free. The speaker hints that Aunt Jennifer never had the option to escape from the world created for her by her husband, so she made a new world for these tigers. The contrast between the poem’s main figures—the mighty beasts Aunt Jennifer crafts versus the frightened woman in the poem—creates pathos for the woman and, on a representational level, for all talented women overshadowed by the sexism of their era.

Tapestry is a textile art form where the weaver works by hand or with a needle at a loom. The finished piece is either hung on a wall or framed to preserve the threadwork.