Adrienne Rich’s Ambivalence In Her Early Feminism-a Study Of Snapshots Of A Daughter-in-Law

Adrienne Rich, America’s political poet, essayist and activist, is one of the most influential writers in the second half of the twentieth century, whose works have been widely read and acclaimed. Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law(1963)1, Rich’s third collection of poetry, is a crucial transitional volume in Rich’s poetic career in which she gives up the traditional craft-centered poetry composition represented by her earlier works and turns to a much more informal style. In form she pays less attention to rhyme and rhythm; in content she begins to penetrate into her personal experience as a wife and mother. Besides, in Snapshots Rich starts to date her poems, a move resulted from her changed idea about a poem. Therefore, Snapshots marks the beginning of Rich’s personal and political pilgrimage. Over the past five decades since Snapshots was published, however, literary critics have focused more on its overall value of being one of Rich’s important transitional volume and on its tentativeness in speaking out directly what she desires to say than its peculiarity in presenting vividly and elaborately Rich’s inner conflicts and struggles as a wife and mother who at the same time also regards herself as a poet. Thus, this thesis is trying to undertake the task of analyzing the essence of her conflicts and struggles shown in Snapshots.As a breakthrough volume, Snapshots marks an utter departure from Rich’s first two books. However, for fear of being punished by the patriarchal authority, her voice as a female poet is quite tentative, which is different from that of her following collections of poetry in which her voice is quite mature and confident. Thus, this thesis argues that Rich’s early feminism is ambivalent, and this ambivalence is mainly embodied in three aspects. First, in terms of the images, the images in Snapshots, classified into three groups--nature, angel/demon and character images, manifest the poet’s fear of men during the awakening of her female consciousness. Secondly, in terms of narration, Snapshots widely adopts male discourse and views women as a group who are to some great extent deprived of the rights of expressing themselves. Yet, what underlie this male discourse are a veiled female voice and the poet’s female identity. Thirdly, in terms of male identification, Rich in Snapshots is for the first time emerging from female invisibility into quest for her female identity. However, while doing so, she identifies with men rather than women and feels ambivalent toward female creativity and the patriarchal marriage system. And her description of the New Woman is also based on male criteria. According to the above analyses, it can be summarized that Rich is ambivalent in her early feminism. On the one hand, she desires to show her true herself; on the other hand, she remains uncertain about announcing her female identity. She is caught in a dilemma. However, as what this ambivalence brings is rebirth rather than death, to study it will enhance the readers’ comprehension of Rich’s changing mind at that time. Also, an elaboration of this ambivalence will arouse sound echoes among those who may find themselves in the same situation as Rich was, and who, with the growing importance of their sex, would definitely make better use of their lives, both to themselves and their loved ones, and ultimately to the society as a whole.