23 pages • 46 minutes read
Adrienne RichSnapshots of a Daughter-in-Law
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1963A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Marriage as an Oppressive and Patriarchal Social Institution
The poem presents the idea that marriage is an oppressive and patriarchal social institution; further, its oppressive nature is seen as directly influenced by its patriarchal roots.
Thusly, the poem opens with a snapshot of a woman many years into marriage, which is highlighted by how Rich likens the dimming of her mind to the “moldering” (Line 7) of a wedding cake. The choice of analogy is not accidental: Rich draws attention to the event marking the beginning of the mind's decay—the wedding. By entering into marriage, a woman ensures that her intellectual faculties and other talents will never again be used. Rich even labels the experiences garnered over the years of marriage as “useless” (Line 8) and leading to negative behavior stereotypically seen as female: gossip, jealousy, and a loss of touch with reality. Similar to how consuming “rich” (Line 8) and “heavy” (Line 8) wedding cake makes one feel lethargic, a woman’s mind becomes similarly slow and dull, unable to further comprehend reason and rationale.
Rich’s opinion of marriage and how it adversely affects women is again presented in Section Eight. In a subversion of Diderot’s idea that women die at 15 because they lose their purity though experiences with men, Rich suggests that the death is, in fact, owing to how marriage puts an end to their dreams and aspirations. She lists the things of which women were capable before becoming wives—fierceness, passion, intelligence, discernment, and ambition—highlighting how these tendencies and abilities are quashed when a woman marries. In sharp contrast to the kind of passion and drive of which women, pre-marriage, are capable, they become numb and unfeeling, depicted by the woman in Section Two, who is impervious to all manner of physical pain. The only thing that truly hurts is the monotony of domestic life: the daily “morning’s grit” (Line 25) in her eyes.
Thus, by frequently depicting the kind of drudgery to which women are subjected once they are married as a function of the restrictive domestic expectations and responsibilities placed upon them in their role as "wife," Rich posits that marriage is oppressive and aimed at keeping women within the confines of mediocrity and monotony to serve the patriarchy.
The Secondary Societal Position of Women
The choice of title indicates a key theme Rich explores in the poem: The position occupied by women in society is secondary. The titular "daughter-in-law" is a persona applicable to all women. Rich presents this by suggesting that Nature is the universal mother-in-law to women, welcoming men as her sons. This analogy serves to highlight the fact that a woman’s position in the world, akin to her place in her husband’s family, is slightly removed and lesser in importance than a man’s.
However, Rich does not see this position as natural or unchangeable; indeed, her conception of Nature is not as natural or biological within the context of the poem. Instead, she presents it as something construed by man: a “commodious / steamer-trunk of tempora and mores” (Lines 28-29). Nature, as Rich envisions it, is an amalgamation of historical (“tempora”) and social (“mores”) constructs; this has othered woman in relation to man. Nature achieves this othering, in turn, by burying and ignoring women’s potential for admirable things—bravery and ferocity, symbolized by the “terrible breasts / of Boadicae” (Lines 31-32)—underneath trivial things, such as flowers and “female pills” (Line 31), that call to women's perceivably weaker qualities.
That Rich disagrees with this is evident not just by how she bemoans it, but also by her presenting Wollstonecraft’s ideas that demand respect for women in society. It is of “utmost consequence” (Line 71) for a woman, or any individual, to have a place in this world which “cannot be undermined” (Line 70): a place worthy of a daughter, not a daughter-in-law. Rich further questions the arbitrary assignment of domestic and household tasks as the exclusive domain of women by asking whether Nature has shown her “household books” (Line 67) only to her daughters-in-law and not her sons.
Rich was influenced by the writings of Simone de Beauvoir, who, in The Second Sex, discusses the idea of sex-gender distinction. Possibly building on Beauvoir’s ideas, Rich repeatedly questions the secondary position occupied by women in society by dismantling the idea that only certain traits, attributes, attitudes, and capabilities, should be associated with women.
Limitations Upon a Woman’s Potential
By presenting various "snapshots" of women in an attempt to offer glimpses into their life, Rich seeks to identify specific restrictions placed upon women, and suggests how to overthrow them. As the poem progresses, Rich presents an argument concerning the expectation placed on women to solely manage the domestic sphere and to do little else well—if at all.
This idea is exemplified in the snapshot in Section Four of a woman finding time to read and write only in between her numerous domestic tasks. The woman in question is poet Emily Dickinson, and though she was unmarried, Rich nevertheless imagines that Dickinson had to contend with various household chores that never gave her enough space to freely write. Indeed, Rich bases this snapshot upon her own experience of having to pen this poem in fragments over the course of two long years and during time she found amidst caring for her children and home.
In addition to a woman being expected to manage the household—which, in itself, leads to monotony and drudgery—she is kept chained to mediocrity by the officious praise heaped on her for the basest of tasks. Rich describes how Corinna, who plays the lute, is nevertheless singing a melody not of her own composition, and even as she plays, there is still attention upon her appearance, rather than her music. Rich vehemently calls this “sinecure” (Line 92)—the fact that women are not expected or encouraged to aspire to anything better—a “blight” (Line 92) upon her kind, urging her sisters to throw off the low bar with which society has presented them.
The hope of this happening leads Rich to present the final snapshot of a woman who will be “more merciless to herself than history” (Line 110), forging forward ruthlessly and unquestionably realizing her full potential.
Related Titles
By Adrienne Rich
