The poem represents the central character Aunt Jennifer as a timid and passive woman who is being suffocated by her marriage she is stuck in. While the poem also goes on to talk about “Find even the ivory needle hard to pull/The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band” (Nelson line 6-7) the idea of male dominance upon her life and all of her Uncle’s ideals being presses against her, especially in the time this was wrote during. The weight of the band is the idea of promise to marry a man and stay within the marriage through sickness and health which is oppression. The tone set by the poem is mostly bleak and dreary and in the end causes her to wish to be dead to escape from her current life. The item as a green topaz is a symbol of how she is a rare gem that is only valued for their worth. While continued protected by her survival of pain to prove her innocence, the painting she has created and the tigers within them “The tigers in the panel that she made / Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid” (Nelson line 11-12) represent her pride that she has, and also will continue to go on until she has died without fear knowing what will become to her is only death. The author uses words like terrified and mastered to depict her submissive nature. This is directly contrasted with her panel, which will go on as a symbol of independence and fortitude. The final stanza contains imagery that reflects back on the first two stanzas. The reference of the hands symbolizes Aunt Jennifer as a whole. Though her death would free her from her present miserable state, her hands will remain terrified with the wedding ring which binds her to her ordeals that took complete control of her. The only sign of her freedom from her present life is the art work which she escapes into by depicting the prancing, proud and unafraid tigers which is what she really wants to be and which she attains