Burning the Mirror: Eavan Boland's Femal Icon Reconstruction

Abstract

<p>In my paper, I discuss the reconstruction of the female icon in several poems by Eavan Boland, a contemporary female Irish poet, writer, and critic. The witch, the virginal maid, sinful Eve, and the "fierce mad Queen," are all icons used throughout Literature to represent the female body and psyche in poems by male writers. Each icon allows for the subjectivity of women, giving them roles solely based on their sexual or reproductive qualities. In response, Boland seeks to resurrect and reconstruct these female icons, allowing for an authoritative female voice recovered from the 'otherness' often associated with the feminine in these male writers' works. She does this by creating "grotesquely parodied (Rodriguez 93)" "icons [that] return to haunt the icon-makers" (qtd. in Rodriguez 93). In such poems as "Anorexic," "Fever, "Quarentine," and "Night Feed," Boland reconstructs several tabooed images of women, allowing them to be liberated from their subjective status, and rise into a role of authority. This process often occurs through baptism by fire, starvation, illness, or death, and often takes place within the domestic sphere. Indeed, each female subject experiences a kind of destruction before becoming a more powerful, liberated symbol for women. While critics have discussed the ways that Boland seeks to resurrect the female body, I propose that while doing so, she saves the female image from becoming symbolized based solely on sexual and reproductive value, as is seen in the icons represented within male-authored maleauthored poems. In Boland's poetry, she defends women against man-made symbols created by such male poets as Yeats, Pound, and Williams. By looking at the icons presented in these male writers' poems in contrast to Boland's representations of women, I will consider how Boland's creation of her own powerful female icons, resurrecting women from these examples of destructive images.</p><p>This presentation occurred at the Wright State University Campus-Wide Celebration of Research, Scholarship and Creative Activities on April 8, 2011</p>