Mother Ireland: The Dilemma of Motherhood and Nationalism in Eavan Boland's Domestic Violence

In her poetry, Eavan Boland (born 1944) challenges the inherited image of Irish womanhood and interrogates the Irish tradition that has ignored the feminine and transformed it into a muse. In Domestic Violence (2007), Boland attempts to recast the female poet and citizen into real identities and real voices. Having lived most of her life in diaspora between London, Ireland, and the United States, she feels disoriented and disconnected from a place called home or motherland. This, however, does not diminish her desire for belonging in any way. Questioning whether national space and identity are domestic, Boland examines domestic violence in the highly patriarchal Irish society while simultaneously studying the violence innate to both gender and national identities. For Boland, the familial relationship between the biological mother and daughter is skin to that between the female citizen and the nation. This paper will focus on the way Boland challenges the notion of the disempowered woman by re-examining the "Mother Ireland" myth. Boland is acutely aware that a poet cannot write outside the influence of culture and history. In her poetry, she questions the silencing of Irish women in Irish history in an attempt to reclaim the lost voices of the past. Thus, Boland's poetry, which deals with the everyday experiences of a woman in relation to contemporary issues as well as mythology and nationalism, shifts the focus and perspective of traditional Irish verse.