(1) Compare Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Joy Harjo, Wendy Rose, James A. Wright, and June Jordan as witnesses of wrongs done to women. Determine which poets best characterize Rich’s belief that “Poems are like dreams: in them you put what you don’t know you know.”
(2) Discuss Rich’s views of female individualism in “Snapshots of a Daughter-in-law.”
(3) How does the speaker in “Snapshots of a Daughter-in-law” achieve a personal transformation? What is this transformation?
(4) What does the wreck symbolize in “Diving into the Wreck”?
(5) Discuss the downward motion in “Diving into the Wreck” in terms of the speaker’s personal growth. How does this downward motion compare to that found in “Snapshots of a Daughter-in-law”?
(6) Explain Rich’s belief that women themselves must reshape the pattern of female existence to excise old expectations of “the Victorian Lady of Leisure, the Angel in the House, and also of the Victorian cook, scullery maid, laundress, governess, and nurse,” which she characterized in Of Woman Born.
