Eavan Boland Case

In a fine essay called "What Foremothers?" the wonderful Irish-language poet Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill writes "how the image of woman in the national tradition is a very real dragon that every Irish woman poet has to fight every time she opens her door." Discuss.

Object Lessons1 and Eavan Boland's opinion define Irish tradition as male and nationalistic, imposing "a certain sequence of importances and permissions for the Irish poem: for its themes, its language and purpose" (Object Lessons, 192). As a consequence, she denounces the confusion between the political and the public poems, which creates a construct where "the difficult 'I' of perception becomes the easier 'we' of a subtle claim." (Object Lessons, 177) Boland herself seemed sceptical of the structure of Irish poetry. It is evident when reading her work that you can see how her manifesto and poetry are linked with Object Lessons and how they are trying to move away from writing about her life experiences and also directly to her reader about her own views: political or social. This is comparable with her poetry as you can see (particularly in her earlier work) confusion as to whether she was writing as herself or as another. The transformation her poetry went through as she became more confident and assured of her own feminine voice within the traditional Irish male dominated literature scene is clear when examining poetry from New Territory all the way through to The Journey and Other Poems. It is clear to see how she sought to write a new feminine poetry that did not overwhelmingly scream femininity but instead sought to convey an intelligent poetic style that was clever and political so could not be ignored regardless of the gender of the author.

Irish literature historically was seen as a male orientated circle with the likes of W.B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot and many more modernist poets being hugely popular and critically acclaimed. However Eavan Boland, who is widely believed to be one of Irelands most important poets in contemporary Irish literature was not only female but also was pushing boundaries of topics that had previously been uncovered. Boland was born in Ireland however quickly moved to London because of her father's career. It was here that she became detached from Ireland and its culture and on her return she immersed herself within the culture again perhaps with a fresher outlook on it than poets that had grew up all their lives in the one country. Therefore it is sometimes easier to notice Boland taking on subjects that other poets would deem 'boring'. For example housewives and their lives, and the non-violent break up of marriage; alongside the dynamics of family and of women. Boland appears to see a certain beauty in these 'everyday' occurrences and situations, thus having a wonderful ability with language instead of reliance with the content and the reader's prior appreciation of its beauty.

In Eavan Boland's Object Lessons she tackles the issue of being a contemporary woman poet writing in Ireland. Boland and her contemporaries are preceded by a long and rich literary tradition, but one dominated by male writers. Not only this, but a heritage in which the woman has been the object rather than subject - or rather, a mystical and politicised figure. Ireland has traditionally been represented in female terms for example, 'Erin'. This literary exploitation of women as a representative of the nation has undermined the significance of the individual woman, as she exists in her daily life, and this is something Boland seeks to rectify. This male heritage presents what she identifies as an on-going challenge to women Irish poets, one which they must address and face on a constant basis. Deborah Pope questions in Women Creating Women: Contemporary Irish Poets asking, "Should a woman take a separatist stance, rejecting the attitudes, imagery, and language of a patriarchal tradition, or should she try to work from within, challenging and revising conventional images and ideas to turn the "trivial" and "private" into "universal" and "public"?"2. According to Pope, Boland chooses the latter. This is the central focus of the extract: how to write the private and personal experience of women into Irish poetry, and specifically political poetry. Eavan Boland feels that private experience is crucial to writing a powerful political poem, and to avoid making it a hollow, exclusively public commentary. She draws upon her earlier poem 'The War Horse'3 as an example of this political, but distinctly public poem which she wishes to avoid. It uses the image of a horse disturbing neighbourhood gardens as a powerful metaphor for the way in which the violence of the Troubles has torn through communities, and provokes thought on how people choose to react,

"You might say, only a crocus its bulbous head/ Blown from growth, one of our scream less dead./ But we, we are safe, our unformed fear/ Of fierce commitment gone; why should we care/ If a rose, a hedge, a crocus are uprooted/ Like corpses, remote, crushed, mutilated?/ He stumbles on like a rumour of war, huge,/ Threatening; neighbours use the subterfuge/ Of curtain..." ('The War Horse', 15-23).

It addresses the idea of distancing oneself from something which does not immediately affect you; why concern yourself with something from which you are safe? Boland highlights the futility of this, using curtains to present how useless such a defence will ultimately be. Also the disturbing image of the "scream less dead" carries a starling and poignant undertone. Yet Eavan Bolan feels that this poem fails to locate her own voice, as a woman writing in Ireland, within it. For Boland, as an already politicized figure, women should draw upon themselves and their experiences. She realises that she herself is a politic within the poem, as a woman writing within a tradition which has hitherto accorded her with an identity, a voice and a role which she has not claimed for herself, and therefore must re-address through her own writing, re-locating herself and the suppressed voice of the real woman within her poems.

With regards to locating the woman's voice within Irish poetry, an example from Boland herself is 'Athene's Song'4 originally taken from her first volume New Territory, a collection of poems which pay poetic homage to masculine heroes, including dominant Irish literary figures such as W.B. Yeats. This poem is exemplary of Boland struggling under the masculine dominated heritage and shows us that she has not yet found her place as a woman within her poetry. 'Athene's Song' exemplifies this struggle for the female voice amongst the din of male voices. "From my father's