Adrienne Rich's poem, Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law from her book, The Fact of a Doorframe, was written between 1958 and 1960 and was published in 1963. It is a poem about a woman's dawning self-awareness. Its fragmental style has been compared to T.S. Eliot's, "The Waste Land" and in her book, What is Found There, Rich explains how she was affected by the poet's high profile in the student community. She says, "Christianity aside, there was for me a repulsive quality to Eliot's poetry; an aversion to ordinary life and people." This is certainly not a criticism that could ever be applied to Adrienne Rich. Nevertheless there are parallels between the two poems.
In her essay, "When we Dead Awaken," which appears in Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose, Rich describes the relief she felt when she wrote the poem, a relief that she had at last trusted herself to write something that was not universal, or, in other words, non-female. At the time of writing, she was a mother and a wife, with all the traditional duties these roles represent, and her writing took place during brief moments of respite which may partly account for its fragmentary style.
A Need for Authority
In "When We Dead Awaken," Rich admits she had not found the courage at that time to deny patriarchal authority and needed the support of the old masculine traditions. "It strikes me now as too literary, too dependent on allusion; I hadn't found the courage yet to do without authorities, or even to use the pronoun "I"." On reflection, it seems that this unswerving honesty is typical of this poet and it is a further energising message for women that it is acceptable to admit inadequacies, helping to make it simpler to address them. This, in itself, could be seen as a political issue.
Allusions
Rich's reluctance to dispense with authority is one of the ways in which the poem resembles the highly-allusive "The Waste Land." There are three musical allusions (male) in parts one and two. Rich also quotes Diderot: "You all die at fifteen, said Diderot, / and turn part legend, part convention." However, there are also strong female allusions, for example, Boadicea, Mary Wollstonecroft and Simone de Beauvoir.
Albert Gelpi, in his essay, "The Poetics of Change," says, "The thinking woman paraphrases Baudelaire, parodies Horace, to register the pressures that make the mind moulder." An example is, "The argument ad feminam, all the old knives that have rusted in my back, / I drive in yours, / ma semblable, ma soeur!" This alludes to the last line of a poem by Baudelaire, which translates as: "Hypocrite reader, like me, my brother."
Poems that are Snapshots
In the poem, Rich has addressed the issues of female-negation and of woman poet negation and their "usual connotations of uncreative passivity," as described in these lines: "... neither words nor music are her own... only the song / of silk against her knees / and these / adjusted in reflections of an eye." The woman is named as Corinna, a "daughter-in-law" behaving dutifully and deferring to rules enforced by a male culture. Gelpi explains Rich's resistance to the woman as victim and the woman's victimisation, caused by acquiescence to rules defined by men. The Corinna of the poem does not create; her reason for being is her beauty and how it reflects back to man his own image. Rich achieves this in highly-visual language.
Gelpi says this of her poetry: "It is the camera with lens and focus and poems are snapshots."
A Search for Female Identity
Gradually, the poem proceeds with goading encouragement: "Have no patience," and "Save yourself; others you cannot save." Accordingly, the daughter-in-law's self-awareness grows as she reaches out for a sense of her own identity. She moves from the "useless experience" of woman as victim to another state, "as beautiful as any boy / or helicopter / poised, still coming / her fine blades making the air wince."
This inspiring vision has contributed to the common consciousness of women being recognised and named; it was the gift of Adrienne Rich's dream, a dream that could be transformed into reality.
Sources:
- Rich, Adrienne, What is Found There, W.W. Norton & Co., USA 1993.
- Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose, Selected and Edited by Gelpi and Gelpi, New York, Lond, 1975.
- Rich, Adrienne, "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law", The Fact of a Doorframe, Adrienne Rich, New York, London, 1975.
Janet Cameron - MA. Cert.Ed. is a retired university lecturer and author of twelve books, women's short fiction and a magazine column.
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