Jennifer’s hand.’ A wedding ring is not heavy, it is so light that you do not notice that you are wearing it, but the weight of this ring is immense, with the adjective ‘massive’ and the adverb ‘heavily’ emphasising how crushed Aunt Jennifer feels. As the wedding band cannot be what is causing her this kind of pain, it leads us to believe that it is the marriage itself that is unhappy. The uncle is not given a name, almost making it seem as if his name is irrelevant, and the only significant thing is his male gender. Rich is critical of marriage, both as a patriarchal institution and as an instrument of oppression.
The last stanza makes an abrupt departure. Having hinted about Aunt Jennifer’s unhappiness, Rich now tells us outright that this was a miserable, oppressive and perhaps even violent relationship: ‘When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie/ Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.’ The image of Aunt Jennifer’s ‘terrified hands’ is disturbing. The noun ‘ordeals’ makes us think of difficult experiences, while the verb ‘mastered’, which in this context means controlled, makes us think of ‘master’ and male oppression of women. There was no escape for Aunt Jennifer in life, and there is none even in death, where she continues to wear the wedding band as a symbol of the oppression she suffered. However, the art that she has made will live on after her: ‘The tigers in the panel that she made/ Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.’ People who look at the panel will probably presume the artist was as happy, confident and colourful as the tigers she portrayed. This adds another level to this poem. Rich is also exploring the relationship between an artist and their art, and showing that art is not necessarily representative of the artist. Art can mislead us into thinking we know the person who created it, when we seldom really do.
