“Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law” Introduction

• Read the full text of “Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law”

“Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law” Summary

“Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law” Themes

• 

  Feminist Liberation and Patriarchal Oppression

  Where this theme appears in the poem:

  • Lines 1-13
  • Lines 14-25
  • Lines 26-39
  • Lines 40-49
  • Lines 50-52
  • Lines 53-68
  • Lines 69-76
  • Lines 77-85
  • Lines 86-107
  • Lines 108-122
• 

  Historical and Internalized Misogyny

  Where this theme appears in the poem:

  • Lines 20-25
  • Lines 26-27
  • Lines 33-39
  • Lines 40-42
  • Lines 69-76
  • Line 77
  • Lines 86-88
  • Lines 95-107
  • Lines 108-110
• 

  Aging, Beauty Standards, and Discontent

  Where this theme appears in the poem:

  • Lines 1-13
  • Lines 27-32
  • Lines 50-52
  • Lines 53-68
  • Lines 77-85
• 

  Nature, Art, and Female Experience

  Where this theme appears in the poem:

  • Lines 1-13
  • Lines 26-32
  • Lines 40-49
  • Lines 53-59
  • Lines 60-68
  • Lines 86-107
• 

  Daughterhood and the Generation Gap

  Where this theme appears in the poem:

  • Lines 1-13
  • Lines 14-25
  • Lines 60-68

Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law”

• Lines 1-6

  You, once a belle ...
  ... "

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 7-13

  Your mind now, ...
  ... grows another way.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 14-19

  Banging the coffee-pot ...
  ... you cannot save.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 20-25

  Sometimes she's let ...
  ... into her eyes.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 26-27

  A thinking woman ...
  ... her, she becomes.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 27-32

  And Nature, ...
  ... heads and orchids.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 33-39

  Two handsome women, ...
  ... semblable, ma soeur!

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 40-49

  Knowing themselves too ...
  ... day of life.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 50-52

  Dulce ridens, dulce ...
  ... like petrified mammoth-tusk.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 53-59

  When to her ...
  ... of an eye.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 60-68

  Poised, trembling and ...
  ... sons never saw?

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 69-76

  "To have in ...
  ... shrew and whore.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 77-80

  "You all die ...
  ... blankening with steam.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 81-85

  Deliciously, all that ...
  ... our middle years.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 86-91

  Not that it ...
  ... if we could?

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 92-99

  Our blight has ...
  ... our mediocrities over-praised,

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 100-107

  indolence read as ...
  ... for that honor.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 108-115

  Well, ...
  ... or helicopter,

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 116-122

  poised, still coming, ...
  ... ours.

  

  

  

  

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“Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law” Symbols

• 

  Household Items

  Where this symbol appears in the poem:

  • Lines 12-13: “Nervy, glowering, your daughter / wipes the teaspoons, grows another way.”
  • Line 14: “Banging the coffee-pot into the sink”
  • Lines 20-23: “Sometimes she's let the tapstream scald her arm, / a match burn to her thumbnail, / or held her hand above the kettle's snout / right in the woolly steam.”
  • Lines 34-35: “I hear scream / across the cut glass and majolica”
  • Lines 43-44: “Reading while waiting / for the iron to heat,”
  • Lines 45-46: “writing, / My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun— / in that Amherst pantry while the jellies boil and scum,”
  • Lines 48-49: “iron-eyed and beaked and purposed as a bird, / dusting everything on the whatnot every day of life.”
• 

  The Blank Windows

  Where this symbol appears in the poem:

  • Line 80: “behind closed windows blankening with steam.”

“Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Juxtaposition

  

  

  

  

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  Where juxtaposition appears in the poem:

  • Before Line 1
  • Lines 1-13
  • Between Lines 13-14
  • Lines 14-25
  • Between Lines 25-26
  • Lines 26-39
  • Between Lines 39-40
  • Lines 40-49
  • Between Lines 49-50
  • Lines 50-52
  • Between Lines 52-53
  • Lines 53-68
  • Between Lines 68-69
  • Lines 69-76
  • Between Lines 76-77
  • Lines 77-85
  • Between Lines 85-86
  • Lines 86-107
  • Between Lines 107-108
  • Lines 108-122

• Allusion

  

  

  

  

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  Where allusion appears in the poem:

  • Lines 4-6: “and play a Chopin prelude / called by Cortot: " / Delicious recollections / float like perfume through the memory. / "”
  • Lines 28-29: “that sprung-lidded, still commodious / steamer-trunk of / tempora / and / mores”
  • Lines 31-32: “the terrible breasts / of Boadicea”
  • Lines 33-36: “Two handsome women, gripped in argument, / each proud, acute, subtle, I hear scream / across the cut glass and majolica / like Furies cornered from their prey:”
  • Line 39: “ma semblable, ma soeur!”
  • Lines 45-46: “writing, / My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun— / in that Amherst pantry while the jellies boil and scum,”
  • Line 50: “Dulce ridens, dulce loquens,”
  • Lines 53-54: “When to her lute Corinna sings / neither words nor music are her own;”
  • Lines 63-63: “is this / fertilisante douleur / ?”
  • Lines 69-76: “"To have in this uncertain world some stay / which cannot be undermined, is / of the utmost consequence." / Thus wrote / a woman, partly brave and partly good, / who fought with what she partly understood. / Few men about her would or could do more, / hence she was labeled harpy, shrew and whore.”
  • Line 77: “"You all die at fifteen," said Diderot,”
  • Lines 86-87: “Not that it is done well, but / that it is done at all?”
  • Line 95: “Sigh no more, ladies.”
  • Lines 108-122: “Well, / she's long about her coming, who must be / more merciless to herself than history. / Her mind full to the wind, I see her plunge / breasted and glancing through the currents, / taking the light upon her / at least as beautiful as any boy / or helicopter, / poised, still coming, / her fine blades making the air wince / but her cargo / no promise then: / delivered / palpable / ours.”

• Metaphor

  

  

  

  

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  Where metaphor appears in the poem:

  • Lines 10-11: “crumbling to pieces under the knife-edge / of mere fact.”
  • Line 15: “she hears the angels chiding,”
  • Line 22: “or held her hand above the kettle's snout”
  • Line 23: “right in the woolly steam.,” “They are probably angels,”
  • Lines 24-25: “since nothing hurts her anymore, except / each morning's grit blowing into her eyes.”
  • Line 26: “A thinking woman sleeps with monsters.”
  • Lines 27-30: “The beak that grips her, she becomes. And Nature, / that sprung-lidded, still commodious / steamer-trunk of / tempora / and / mores / gets stuffed with it all:”
  • Lines 37-38: “all the old knives / that have rusted in my back, I drive in yours,”
  • Lines 41-42: “their gifts no pure fruition, but a thorn, / the prick filed sharp against a hint of scorn...”
  • Lines 56-57: “only the song / of silk against her knees”
  • Lines 58-59: “and these / adjusted in reflections of an eye.”
  • Lines 60-62: “Poised, trembling and unsatisfied, before / an unlocked door, that cage of cages, / tell us, you bird,”
  • Line 62: “you tragical machine—”
  • Lines 63-66: “Pinned down / by love, for you the only natural action, / are you edged more keen / to prise the secrets of the vault?”
  • Lines 66-68: “has Nature shown / her household books to you, daughter-in-law, / that her sons never saw?”
  • Line 82: “all that we were—fire,”
  • Lines 89-90: “This luxury of the precocious child, / Time's precious chronic invalid,—”
  • Line 92: “Our blight has been our sinecure:”
  • Line 94: “glitter in fragments and rough drafts.”
  • Lines 96-97: “Time is male / and in his cups drinks to the fair.”
  • Line 101: “slattern thought styled intuition,”
  • Lines 102-104: “our crime / only to cast too bold a shadow / or smash the mold straight off.”
  • Lines 105-107: “For that, solitary confinement, / tear gas, attrition shelling. / Few applicants for that honor.”
  • Line 111: “Her mind full to the wind,”
  • Lines 117-122: “her fine blades making the air wince / but her cargo / no promise then: / delivered / palpable / ours.”

• Simile

  

  

  

  

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  Where simile appears in the poem:

  • Line 2: “with henna-colored hair, skin like a peachbud,”
  • Lines 5-6: “" / Delicious recollections / float like perfume through the memory. / "”
  • Lines 7-11: “Your mind now, moldering like wedding-cake, / heavy with useless experience, rich / with suspicion, rumor, fantasy, / crumbling to pieces under the knife-edge / of mere fact.”
  • Lines 33-36: “Two handsome women, gripped in argument, / each proud, acute, subtle, I hear scream / across the cut glass and majolica / like Furies cornered from their prey:”
  • Line 48: “iron-eyed and beaked and purposed as a bird,”
  • Lines 51-52: “she shaves her legs until they gleam / like petrified mammoth-tusk.”
  • Lines 81-85: “Deliciously, all that we might have been, / all that we were—fire, tears, / wit, taste, martyred ambition— / stirs like the memory of refused adultery / the drained and flagging bosom of our middle years.”
  • Lines 109-110: “she's long about her coming, who must be / more merciless to herself than history.”
  • Lines 113-115: “taking the light upon her / at least as beautiful as any boy / or helicopter,”

• Irony

  

  

  

  

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  Where irony appears in the poem:

  • Lines 4-11: “and play a Chopin prelude / called by Cortot: " / Delicious recollections / float like perfume through the memory. / " / Your mind now, moldering like wedding-cake, / heavy with useless experience, rich / with suspicion, rumor, fantasy, / crumbling to pieces under the knife-edge / of mere fact. In the prime of your life.”
  • Lines 23-25: “They are probably angels, / since nothing hurts her anymore, except / each morning's grit blowing into her eyes.”
  • Lines 37-39: “The argument / ad feminam / , all the old knives / that have rusted in my back, I drive in yours, / ma semblable, ma soeur!”
  • Lines 47-49: “or, more often, / iron-eyed and beaked and purposed as a bird, / dusting everything on the whatnot every day of life.”
  • Lines 50-52: “Dulce ridens, dulce loquens, / she shaves her legs until they gleam / like petrified mammoth-tusk.”
  • Lines 53-54: “When to her lute Corinna sings / neither words nor music are her own;”
  • Lines 60-61: “Poised, trembling and unsatisfied, before / an unlocked door, that cage of cages,”
  • Lines 75-76: “Few men about her would or could do more, / hence she was labeled harpy, shrew and whore.”
  • Lines 79-80: “Still, eyes inaccurately dream / behind closed windows blankening with steam.”
  • Lines 86-88: “Not that it is done well, but / that it is done at all? / Yes, think / of the odds! or shrug them off forever.”
  • Lines 95-97: “Sigh no more, ladies. / Time is male / and in his cups drinks to the fair.”
  • Lines 102-107: “our crime / only to cast too bold a shadow / or smash the mold straight off. / For that, solitary confinement, / tear gas, attrition shelling. / Few applicants for that honor.”
  • Lines 108-110: “Well, / she's long about her coming, who must be / more merciless to herself than history.”
  • Lines 114-115: “at least as beautiful as any boy / or helicopter,”

• Asyndeton

  

  

  

  

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  Where asyndeton appears in the poem:

  • Line 2: “with henna-colored hair, skin like a peachbud,”
  • Lines 7-11: “Your mind now, moldering like wedding-cake, / heavy with useless experience, rich / with suspicion, rumor, fantasy, / crumbling to pieces under the knife-edge / of mere fact.”
  • Line 12: “Nervy, glowering, your daughter”
  • Lines 30-32: “the mildewed orange-flowers, / the female pills, the terrible breasts / of Boadicea beneath flat foxes' heads and orchids.”
  • Line 34: “each proud, acute, subtle,”
  • Lines 82-83: “fire, tears, / wit, taste, martyred ambition”
  • Lines 98-102: “we hear / our mediocrities over-praised, / indolence read as abnegation, / slattern thought styled intuition, / every lapse forgiven,”
  • Lines 105-106: “For that, solitary confinement, / tear gas, attrition shelling.”
  • Lines 120-122: “delivered / palpable / ours.”

“Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law” Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• Belle
• Shreveport
• Henna-colored
• Dresses copied
• Chopin prelude
• Cortot
• Moldering
• Nervy
• Glowering
• They
• Insatiable
• Grit
• Steamer-trunk
• Tempora and mores
• Sprung-lidded
• Commodious
• Orange-flowers, foxes' heads, orchids
• The female pills
• Boadicea
• Foxes' heads
• Cut glass and majolica
• Furies
• Argument ad feminam
• Ma semblable, ma soeur!
• Fruition
• My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun—
• Amherst
• Scum
• Dulce ridens, dulce loquens
• Petrified
• When to her lute Corinna sings
• Fertilisante douleur
• Prise
• "To have [...] utmost consequence."
• Harpy, shrew, and whore
• Diderot
• Blankening
• Matryred
• Drained and flagging
• "Not that [...] done at all?"
• Chronic invalid
• Sinecure
• Sigh no more, ladies
• In his cups
• Bemused
• Abnegation
• Indolence
• Slattern
• Styled
• Attrition shelling
• She's long about [...] no promise then
• Palpable

• (Location in poem: Line 1: “You, once a belle in Shreveport,”)

Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law”

• Form

• Meter

• Rhyme Scheme

“Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law” Speaker

“Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law” Setting

Literary and Historical Context of “Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law”

More “Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law” Resources

• External Resources

  • The Poet's Life and Career — Read a biography of Adrienne Rich at the Poetry Foundation.

  • Rich and Brand: A Conversation — Watch a filmed conversation between Rich and fellow feminist writer Dionne Brand, complete with readings of their work.

  • Rich's Feminist Awakening — Learn about how Rich's feminism evolved over the course of her life and work.

  • Rich, Remembered — Read Rich's 2012 obituary in the New York Times.

  • Marilyn Hacker on "Snapshots" — Poet Marilyn Hacker honors the literary legacy of "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law."

• LitCharts on Other Poems by Adrienne Rich

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  • Diving into the Wreck

  • Living in Sin

  • What Kind of Times Are These