Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law

Adrienne Rich was a contemporary of Confessional poets Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton; though not a Confessional poet, firsthand experiences and autobiographical details found their way into Rich's poetry. "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law” is one such piece: Rich used her experiences of being a wife and mother to craft a poem examining the societal role of women. Hence, while the speaker in the poem is unnamed, it is evident that the speaker is Rich herself.

The poem is divided into ten sections each further broken into stanzas comprising a photographic description of a "daughter-in-law." Significantly, the "daughter-in-law" in question is not a single person, but a persona; hence, the descriptions are of different women who all examine the "daughter-in-law" role. Further, this role is not, as one would assume, restricted only to married women, who become daughters-in-law to their husbands’ mothers; the "mother-in-law" in question is Nature herself—as Rich hints in Section Six—to whom all men are sons, but all women are daughters-in-law.

The first snapshot in the opening section is of an older woman, once a Southern beauty—a “belle in Shreveport” (Line 1). Now, however, her mind is “moldering like wedding-cake” (Line 7). The comparison points to how the decay began with the wedding itself: Once a woman occupies the role of wife, her mind begins to dim.