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 thought 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 ‘hundred year-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 self-destructive. Ironically, what is left of their life is the artefact, 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 artefact 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.