What is critical appreciation? for cbse class 12,please provide an example of critical appreciation for either aunt jennifer's tigers stanza 1 and 2 or memories of childhood.
Answers
Aunt Jennifer's Tigers is a poem about an oppressed woman who escapes into an alternative world of embroidery and sewing, despite a heavy marriage to a terrifying man.
It's a formal rhyming poem, an early example of Adrienne Rich's work.
In three verses the reader is left in no doubt that Aunt Jennifer has suffered over the years and is looking for a positive way to express her artistic talents, before it's too late.
The tigers she creates will outlast her and become a symbol of freedom and independence.
Poet, teacher, critic, political activist and women's rights advocate, Adrienne Rich, who died in 2012, once said that 'poems are like dreams: in them you put what you don't know you know'.
Could it be that Aunt Jennifer's Tigers are likewise dream elements?
The role of women in society and the language used by men for social and political gain go hand in hand. For poet Adrienne Rich the personal becomes the political and this short poem, whilst not overtly political, hints at more radical work to come.
Aunt Jennifer's Tigers
Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen,
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.
Aunt Jennifer's fingers fluttering through her wool
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand.
When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.
The tigers in the panel that she made
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.