New Domesticity, New Poetic Tradition and New History: Eavan Boland

Abstract

Eavan Boland is a female poet representing the emerging Irish nation, as well as giving voice to everyday Irish woman rather than presenting an idealized woman voicing her womanly experience. Boland was successful in creating new spaces for women by celebrating their feminist poetics. Irish women have been traditionally presented as lovely, homely and docile and consequently they were subordinated and marginalized by both Irish nationalism and English colonization. The current article observes that Boland is deconstructing and reconstructing the dominant male literary tradition and consequently paves the way for many other female poets to assert their voices, including Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Medbh McGuckian and Paula Meehan. Besides, the article sheds light on the plight of Irish women and Boland’s efforts to unsettle the male poetic tradition. For centuries, the Irish poetic tradition had been dominated by male voices including Jonathan Swift, Thomas Moore, W.B. Yeats, Patrick Kavanagh, Derek Mahon and Seamus Heaney. In her poetry, Boland is rewriting her ideas of nationhood, literary tradition and the place of the poet and in particular female poets in the literary tradition. In her poetry, Boland is rewriting her ideas of nationhood, literary tradition and the place of the poet and in particular female poets in the literary tradition. Mother Ireland is often present in Boland’s poems and is given the chance to talk freely. Suburban area of Dublin and the everyday life of the suburban mother are recurring in her poems.