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Therese Jung
Dr. Auge
Literary Criticism
December 8, 2011
Intertextual/Feminist Approach: “Formal Feeling” by Eavan Boland
Adrianne Rich calls for women writers to “enter[s] . . . an old text from a new critical
direction . . . not to pass on a tradition but to break its hold over us.” She calls for this re-vision
of literary Tradition that has been dominated by a male agenda which she experienced
personally in her own efforts in writing: "Poetry meant universal and therefore non-female."
Eavan Boland’s criticisms of this very tradition are made clear in her revealing poem “Formal
Feeling”. In this poem she parallels the blind acceptance of Eros by Psyche to women
perpetuating that exclusionary Tradition by blindly following the format of “love poetry”
designed by men. In her attempt to re-write the myth, she is also re-writing this tradition and
giving the story a true feminine perspective. Much of Helene Cixous' theory relies greatly on
Freud’s deconstructive maneuver and Greek mythology in attempts to depose the narrative
myths that dominate our culture. Cixous' believes that in order to escape “the discourse of
mastery” women must begin to write the body. To Cixous, our sexuality and the language in
which we communicate are indissolubly connected. To free one means freedom for the other.
Concerned with traditional representations of women by men in literature and other
scholarly texts, Cixous begins her analysis by invoking the classical figure of Medusa, but she
does so by refiguring how Medusa has been represented through the ages. In this way, Cixous
reclaims her. Traditionally, Medusa has been depicted as a physical and ethical monster; with
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snakes in place of hair and the ability to turn the men who look upon her to stone. However,
Cixous’s Medusa laughs; which is both a joyful and a disruptive act that can lead to new
directions for women’s writing. Eavan Boland clearly uses this feminist strategy in her poem
“Formal Feeling” in which she refers to the myth of Eros and Psyche as an extended metaphor
of the relationship women have with writing love poetry, and the struggle with the male agenda
that has been embedded in the tradition of writing lyrical love poetry. In her essay We Dead
Awaken, Adrianne Rich reflects on her own struggle of disassociating herself from this
exclusionary tradition:
“Looking back at poems I wrote before I was Twenty-one, I’m startled
because beneath the conscious craft are glimpses of the split I even then
experienced between the girl who wrote poems, who defined herself in
writing poems, and the girl who was to define herself by her relationships
with men” (Rich).
The use of the myth of Eros and Psyche in Boland’s poem is intended to reveal this struggle
and in turn, to make Psyche the subject of the myth not just an object of eroticism designed by
men.
Boland’s use of this particular myth is significant for several reasons, one being her use
of Eros, the Greek god of love and sexual desire, and his relationship with the mortal, Psyche.
Sappho the poet summarized Eros as being bitter sweet, and cruel to his victims, yet he was
also charming and very beautiful. In her fit of jealousy over Psyche’s beauty and the attention
she was getting from men, Aphrodite asked Eros to shoot his arrow into the heart of Psyche
and make her fall in love with the ugliest man on earth. He agreed to carry out his mother’s
wishes, but on seeing her beauty Eros fell deeply in love with Psyche himself. He would visit
her every night, but he made himself invisible by telling Psyche not to light her bedroom.
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Psyche fell in love with Eros even though she could not see him, until one night curiosity
overcame her. She concealed a lamp and while Eros slept she lit the lamp, revealing the
identity of Eros. But a drop of hot oil spilt from the lamp awakening the god. Angered she had
seen him Eros fled and the distraught Psyche roamed the earth trying in vain to find her lover.
This is the point at which Boland deviates from the original version of the myth. After Psyche
angered Eros She went to the temple of Aphrodite and prayed for help. Aphrodite responded
by giving her a series of tasks to do -- tasks that Aphrodite believed would be impossible
accomplish. After a series of tests (the third of which she fails) Eros went to the heavens and
asked Zeus to intervene. He spoke of his love for Psyche so eloquently that Zeus was moved
to grant him his wish. Eros brought Psyche to Zeus who gave her a cup of ambrosia, the drink
of immortality. Zeus then joined Psyche and Eros in eternal marriage.
Boland re-writes this myth by analogizing it with the process and implications of
writing love poetry. She begins the poem by stating: “A winged god/came to a woman at
night//Eros you know the story. You ordained it.” What Boland is addressing at this point in the
extended metaphor would be the idea that the task of writing love poetry has been designed by
a male agenda, and thus has been appointed by them as “women’s writing”. Cixous also brings
up this idea by stating: “First it must be said that in spite of the enormity of the repression that
has kept [women] in the ‘dark’—that dark which people have been trying to make them accept
as their attribute—there is no general woman, no one typical woman” (Cixous 1644). This is
reflected in the poem by the next line “The one condition was she did not see him//so it was
dark when he visited her bed.” Eros literally kept Psyche in the dark, not allowing her to look at
his face in the same way literary tradition has excluded women and kept them in the “dark” as
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Cixous describes. Boland also reflects on this in the seventh stanza, pondering “How can I
know a form unless I see it? /How can I see it now?” witch is analogous with the “form” of
lyric love poetry and the bodily “form” that Eros attempts to keep from Psyche. It is this
awareness that Rich and Cixous stress in their feminist argument: “Until we can understand the
assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves” (Rich 518). This is the point
Boland is attempting to get across, that for women to break free from this tradition of male
mastery in literature they must liberate themselves by consciously changing the trend set forth
by a male dominated hierarchy.
Boland goes on to explain the myth of Eros and Psyche: “She felt how good it was./But
she was curious. And lit a lamp./and saw his nakedness. And he fled” (Boland). Boland
reiterates the myth to the reader to make clear the implications of Psyche’s curiosity and
defiance of the god’s wishes. Following this stanza, Boland begins to radically revise her
telling of the myth. She goes on to say Eros fled “Into the dark. Into the here and now/and air
and quiet of an Irish night,/where I am writing at a darkening window about a winged god and
his lover” (Boland). This deviation from the actual myth is significant for several reasons. At
this point in the poem, Boland inserts herself into the action and begins to reflect on the idea of
writing love poetry. Also, the image of the “dark” is brought up again, emphasizing the extent
to which Eavan Boland thinks the issue of exclusion of women’s writing has been ignored in
literary tradition. Cixous makes the same observation in her essay: “I say that we must, for,
with a few rare exceptions, there has not yet been any writing that inscribes femininity...It is
well known that the number of women writers…has always been ridiculously small” (Cixous
1645). Even worse than simply being ignored, Eavan Boland suggests in the next stanza how
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the process of writing poetry has been devised and designed by men: “watching the lines and
stanzas and measures,/which were devised for these purposes,/disappearing as the shadows
close/in around the page/under my hand” (Boland). Here Boland is describing the technical
process of writing poetry designed by men, and potentially using the image of shadows closing
in around her hand to illustrate how female poets have constantly lived in the shadows of male
poets, causing the lack of confidence that is preventing women from writing. Cixous also
follows-up her observation by stating: “This is a useless and deceptive fact unless from their
species of female writers we do not first deduct the immense majority whose workmanship is in
no way different from male writing, and which either obscures women or reproduces the classic
representations of women (as sensitive intuitive dreamy, etc.)” (Cixous).
Boland goes on to continue revising the myth in her poem: “I propose/the light she
raised over his sleeping body/angered heaven because it made clear/ neither his maleness nor
his birth, nor/his face dreaming, but// the place where the sinew of his wings/touched the heat
of his skin/and flight was brought down – To this. To us. To earth” (Boland). At this point
Boland is suggesting an alternative possibility for why the gods were angered other than Psyche
being mortal and looking upon the face of a god. Rather, Boland is proposing that it was
because she saw the part of his body where both human and god meet, in essence bringing
himself (or his “godliness”) to an attainable level. This again parallels with the idea of writing
literature becoming more attainable for women if the male dominated hierarchy would no
longer exclude them and if women would begin to write with a true feminine perspective.
Boland then addresses Eros “Eros look down./See as a god sees/what a myth says: how
a woman still/addresses the work of man in the dark of the night” (Boland). At this point it can
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be surmised that Eros at this point is being analogized with the men who have perpetuated this
disservice to women writers. Cixous also reflects on how there is still not enough of a
movement for the advancement of female poets and that this “male-centric” tradition is still in
place: “Nearly the entire history of writing is confounded with the history of reason, of which it
is at once the effect, the support, and one of the privileged alibis. It has been one with the
phallocentric tradition. It is indeed that same self-admiring, self-stimulating, self-congratulatory
phallocentrism” (Cixous 1646). Cixous proposed solution for this problem is for women to
begin to write from themselves and from their bodily experience which is precisely the strategy
Boland employs in this poem. “The power of a form. The plain/ evidence that strength
descended here once./And mortal pain. And even sexual glory” (Boland). The “form” Boland is
referring to at this point is lyric poetry, which she believes holds great power and potential for
women writers; if they can begin to write from a true feminine perspective and change the
status quo than they will be as free to express own “strength”, “mortal pain” and “sexual glory”
as men have been in literary tradition.
The final stanza of the poem is hopeful in nature, with Boland still addressing Eros,
committed to changing this long-standing patriarchal tradition: “And see the difference./This
time – and this you did not ordain—I am changing the story.” This also ties into Cixous
strategy of writing out of our bodily experience which she describes as: “an act that will also be
marked by woman’s seizing the occasion to speak, hence her shattering entry into history,
which has always been based on her suppression. To write and thus to forge for herself the
antilogous weapon.” This act is precisely what Eavan Boland evokes in the last stanza of
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“Formal Feeling”, by committing to changing this tradition; Boland is acting out Adrianne
Rich’s call to women to revise the literature of the past with a feminine perspective:
“A radical critique of literature, feminist in its impulse, would take the
work first of all as a clue to how we live, how we have been living, how
we have been led to imagine ourselves, how our language has trapped as
well as liberated us, how the very act of naming has been till now a male
prerogative, and how we can begin to see and name—and therefore live—
afresh” (Rich 518).