Adrienne Rich is a renowned American feminist poet and an articulate advocate of women's rights. She occupies a prominent place among the contemporary American poets by virtue of her long struggle for women's emancipation through her powerful poetry. Poem after poem, she censures the patriarchal polarization—man as progenitor and breadwinner, and woman as homemaker and child-bearer, who in addition is expected to be acquiescent, docile, and abjectly dependent on men. To overcome this sex discrimination, Rich promotes female culture and values as special qualities and ways different from those of the male. This paper attempts to study Rich's portrayal of the female culture in some of her poems. It also investigates her subversion of the patriarchal values, which have traditionally formed the basis of the discrimination and social disabilities women have suffered.

Feminist thinking keenly promotes new ideas and techniques that will bring about women's emancipation and sexual equality. Cultural feminism is the most significant of feminist ideas or `flavors.' It asserts the `female nature' or `female essence,' which is greatly at variance with that of the male. Cultural feminists argue that since sex is determined by nature, there are bound to be certain biological or sexual differences between men and women. But patriarchy uses this sexual difference as a reason for making male-female behavioral distinctions. While the male behavior is usually termed as aggressive, virile, rational, and universal, the female behavior is viewed as kind, gentle emotional, and contextual. To overcome this sexism or sex differences, cultural feminists celebrate "female characteristics, values, and beliefs" (Evans, 1998, p. 91) because they believe that women's special qualities, ways, and experiences are better than men's. If women ruled the world, there would be no wars, the environment would be cared for more, and the cities would become much more habitable places. They, thus, wish to have a world built on their own experiences and allow only their reality to prevail there.

Adrienne Rich is an accomplished American feminist poet and a prolific writer. She, like other cultural feminists, views femininity or the female biology as "the source of women's potential liberation" (Kufmann-McCall, 1983, p. 285). In Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, Rich says:

Patriarchal thought has limited female biology to its own narrow specifications. The feminist vision has recoiled from female biology for these reasons; it will, I believe, come to view our physicality as a resource, rather than a destiny (1973, p. 87).

But like other cultural feminists, Rich is not in favor of dichotomous thinking in its exclusively womanly qualities, such as love, care, filial relationship, and motherhood, which are distinguished from the male qualities. She feels that these qualities are superficial and are only an aspect of female personality. However, female personality, according to Rich, includes both aspects: womanhood and womanly qualities, since these aspects potentially form "a unity in character and characteristics…standing in opposition to the patriarchy: men and the structures of domination they have made" (Evans, 1998, p. 93). Alcoff explains:

American Literature Journal, Cultural Feminism, Social Disabilities, Astronomical Accomplishment, Translate Pulsations, Sociopolitical Context, Social and Economic Fabric, Radical Implications, Political and Social Climate, Biologically Human Beings.