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LORAS COLLEGE THESIS
Breaking From a Patriarchal Position:
The Interwoven Stances of Boland, Cixous, and Rich
By
Tyler Vatcoskay
A Thesis
Submitted to the Faculty of Loras College
Department of English
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree of Bachelor of Arts
Dubuque, Iowa
November 18, 2014
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“If women go to the poetic past as I believe they should, if they engage with it and struggle to change itseeking no exemption in the process-then they will have the right to influence what is handed on in poetry,
as well as the way it is handed on.”
---Eavan Boland
Breaking From a Patriarchal Position:
The Interwoven Stances of Boland, Cixous, and Rich
Both Eavan Boland and Adrienne Rich write from positions of restraint, whether
self-imposed or as products of cultural constraint. Boland’s position has been described
by Anne Fogarty as an “insistence on a poetics of absence and disjunction and [a]
resolute refusal to bridge the gap between lived experience and poetic form, between the
past and history, between the female author and her subjects.”1 In terms of this analysis,
Fogarty’s opinion positions Boland to answer what she calls “sustain[ing] what is already
a fiction: this talking across time and absence.”2 Absence stems from Boland’s statement
regarding the past: “It is, after all, the place where authorship of the poem eluded us.
Where poetry itself was defined by and in our absence.”3 By writing from an “outsider
looking in” perspective and a renouncing stance toward this “absenteeism” regarding her
part in the current flow of society, Boland addresses an action and its surrounding
circumstances from a position in opposition to and by choice omitted from the situation.
While Boland operates from a remote position, Adrienne Rich immerses herself
as an apparent active participant within and against the patriarchal framework. She insists
in When We the Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision that female writers “know the
1
Anne Fogarty The Influence of Absences (2)
Eavan Boland, A Journey With Two Maps (249)
3
Boland (251)
2
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writing of the past, and know it differently than [they] have ever known it, not to pass on
a tradition, but to break its hold over [them].”4 Boland’s poetry allows feminist writers to
not only act as Rich calls for, but also parallels Boland’s own Letter to a Young Woman
Poet, stating, “ We need to go to that past: not to learn from it, but to change it. If we do
not change that past, it will change us.5” Although Fogarty depicts Boland as disjointed
from elements seeming to need unification, it is Boland’s separation that enables a
feminist foundation to begin uninfected by masculine influence. Despite Boland’s
distance, she seeks to secure “[women’s] right as women poets to avail of [the past]”6 and
together, she and Rich strive to employ writing in efforts toward escaping bondage from
a dominant patriarchal tradition.
In combination, Boland and Rich’s poetry accomplish what Marilyn Hacker
explains in The Mimesis of Thought: On Adrienne Rich’s Poetry as “something useful,
and not only useful to younger poets.”7 Rich’s position remains more involved and
straightforward than Boland’s as Hacker describes it relying upon “her particularity as a
woman, and an American woman, and on the historical over-determination of women's
experiences and supposed limitations.”8 Rich’s focus points the compass past those
limitations through feminine triumphs, unadulterated by masculine manners of thought.
Similarly, Boland writes as “a girl who had come back late to her country. Who lacked its
language…And yet [her] skin, [her] flesh, [her] sex- without learning any of this- stood
as a subversive historian, ready to edit the text [of history].”9So in accordance with Rich,
4
Adrienne Rich, When We the Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision (167-168).
Boland, A Journey With Two Maps (251)
6
Boland, (251)
7
Marilyn Hacker, The Mimesis of Thought: On Adrienne Rich’s Poetry (230)
8
Hacker (231)
9
Boland (257)
5
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Boland intensifies her particularity as a woman and upon her body. Together, both poets
turn the very thing traditionally exploited to define woman against the patriarchy.
Both poets build on each other to meet Hélène Cixous’ demand in The Laugh of
the Medusa, stating, “Women must write through their bodies, they must invent the
impregnable language that will wreck partitions, classes, rhetorics, regulations, and
codes.”10 Rich also calls for a change in language, stating women have to “try to find
language and images for a consciousness [they] are just coming into.”11 Even further,
Boland writes in her Letter to a Young Woman Poet, “I still need to find a language with
which to approach the past.” In essence, all three women demonstrate that women’s
bodily experiences provide that opportunity to create an “impregnable language,” and
thus break free of patriarchal demarcations.
While Boland writes from a detached position to drive forward a feminist
language, Rich immerses herself in the position of a “woman” with the freedoms granted
by that, “freedoms” being as Hacker proposes, that a woman “could unsex herself or
attempt to, she could oversex herself at her peril, she could be the stunning exception or
the modest enabler.”12 Women’s liberties, as put forth in Hacker’s analysis of Rich,
converge with Cixous’ idealistic position stating, “woman must write herself,”13
explaining women’s “ability” to write with aims of using an eroticized “impregnable
10
Hélène Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa (886)
Rich (168)
12
Hacker (231)
13
Cixous (875)
11
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language” to craft a new “human narrative14” through female experience, and thus
advance and record the progression of women in the 20th century.
“A truly important poet changes two things, and never one without the other: the interior of the poem and
the external perceptions of the identity of the poet. By so doing, they prove that the two are inextricable.”
-Eavan Boland
Writing as the Women’s Agent:
Poetic Analysis
With poetry Boland’s, Rich’s, and Cixous’ corresponding critical stances can
address a problem (patriarchy and a patriarchal canon) in an example, as Boland provides
with, “Too may men. Not enough women. Too much acceptance. Too few questions.”15
Then, explain why that problem is detrimental to women and more so all writers
regardless of gender; and then give a method for solving it by “locat[ing] each of [their]
investigations in the poet's own physical body as it coexists with her body of knowledge
[as well as] in her own circumstances and surroundings.”16 A comparative analysis of
both Boland’s and Rich’s poems in light of treatises by Rich and Cixous demonstrates the
interweaving elements of these poets’ positions.
To understand Boland’s perspective, let’s observe a project entitled "Eavan-Mail:
Distance Learning with Eavan Boland," hosted by Youngstown State University. Boland
discusses her poem Degas’s Laundresses, declaring, “It still seems something like a
symbol of the way art can prey, and fix and fetter as well as liberate and make living…I
14
Hacker (231)
Boland (253)
16
Hacker (231)
15
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think there is a very real way in which art can fix and restrict life.” Boland’s reflection
serves as a model capable of addressing Adrienne Rich’s affirmation in her treatise When
We the Dead Awaken stating, “A lot is being said today about the influence that the
myths and images of women have on all of us who are products of culture. I think it has
been a peculiar confusion to the girl or woman.”17 The poem explores artistry’s
capabilities as it observes voiceless women, and ultimately ends up leaving the reader
with the implication that there could be something deadly about what artists like Degas
are doing to them. In Degas’s Laundresses, the focus falls upon Degas’ painting called
Laundresses Carrying Linen in Town, as shown below.
Boland’s writing of the poem as well as its subject correlate with Adrienne Rich’s
assertion that “woman has been a luxury for man, and has served as the painter’s model
and the poet’s muse.”18 Intriguingly, the women in the painting serve as Boland’s
“muses” after playing the role of the “painter’s (Degas’) models.” Yet Boland’s
exploration of Degas’ destructive capabilities further connects to Adrienne Rich, tying
17
18
Rich (170)
Rich (168)
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into Rich’s quote: “Patriarchy-the domination of males-is the original model of
oppression on which all others are based.”19 Furthermore, Anne Fogarty attributes that
oppression with an example relating to the laundresses’ status, stating, “the image of
silence serves as a redolent metaphor for the way in which patriarchal tradition alienates
women writers from themselves,”20 which points toward Rich’s desire for women to
“come to the point when this balance might begin to change, when women can stop being
haunted, not only by ‘convention and propriety,’ but by internalized fears of being and
saying themselves.”21 Boland’s shrouded (thus voiceless) laundresses and Rich’s muted
Aunt Jennifer serve as fictional examples of real hard-working women who remain
incapable of creating an “impregnable language” due to patriarchal allocations preventing
their participative discourse.
Boland’s poem identifies Degas’ actions as proponent of that patriarchy and
correlates with Rich’s observation of its faculty to prolong an ongoing silence. The idea
of silence stems from the conclusion of Degas’s Laundresses, which wraps the women in
a burial shroud Boland calls their “winding sheet”22 before they have a say in what
happens to them via artistic representation. By having the women entombed in Degas’
art, Boland seems to display concordance with Rich’s statement that “The creative energy
of patriarchy is fast running out; what remains is its self-generating energy for
destruction.”23 Rich’s statement leans toward Hélène Cixous as well, for Cixous
introduces a contradiction to support Rich’s words by magnifying women’s capability of
19
Rich (167)
Fogarty (259)
21
Rich (169-170)
22
Eavan Boland. New Collected Poems (109)
23
Rich (176-177)
20
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creativity, stating, “Woman’s imaginary is inexhaustible, like music, painting, writing:
their stream of phantasms is incredible.”24
Rich’s advice to poet and friend Marilyn Hacker supplements “woman’s
imaginary” as Hacker reflects, “Adrienne Rich expressed in a personal letter in the 1970s
the ardent and reasoned wish that I-as a woman and a feminist-would stop writing in
metrical forms.”25 Rich’s previous statement calling women to “know the writing of the
past…to break its hold over [them],” maintains rigidity within her letter and transforms
Boland’s poetic example, a powerful imaginary in traditional metrical form, into a source
capable of inspiring women to use forms of the past to their advantage. Essentially, it
establishes Boland’s work as a strong starting point for supporting the emerging power
and possibilities of “wom[e]n’s imaginary.”
However we should note that Cixous takes Rich’s assertions even further
regarding “women’s imaginary,” claiming men have no place in attempting to define
femininity. For instance, Cixous states, “I write woman: woman must write woman. And
man, man...it’s up to him to say where his masculinity and femininity are at: this will
concern us once men have opened their eyes and seen themselves clearly.”26 So Cixous
utilizes criticism to directly emphasize a skewed sense of perception (both of the self and
of the other) within a patriarchy.
Boland’s poetry takes more of an indirect approach, yet effectively supports
Cixous’ statement through demonstrating how art produced from a patriarchal perception
develops until it destroys the laundresses’ (women’s) humanity. Using a poem enables
Boland to exemplify that erosive process of subordinating “murder” while correlating to
24
Cixous (876)
Hacker (232)
26
Cixous (877)
25
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Rich and Cixous’ explanations. To analyze the assault that takes place and yields a
devastating deduction, Boland imagines the literal situation the women encountered
before being preserved yet falsely depicted in Degas’ painting.
Boland gives the women in Degas’ painting life and identity instead of stripping it
away or slaying it. She calls the laundresses “roll-sleeved Aphrodites” that “rise” and
“dawn.” By associating the women with Aphrodite, “the great Olympian goddess of
beauty, love, pleasure and procreation,”27 Boland empowers these laboring women with
divine significance. The choosing of the verbs “rise” and “dawn” implies the women’s
ascension or birth into a divine sphere, but more importantly it links them to an
archetypal artistic image of women; Botticelli’s painting of Aphrodite rising from the sea
at dawn as shown in The Birth of Venus below.
Botticelli’s painting served as one of the first to feature a nude woman when compared to
the Christian themed artworks produced during the Renaissance, but “Venus' body is
anatomically improbable, with elongated neck and torso. Her pose is impossible…her
27
“Stories of Aphrodite,” cited from Homer (Iliad & Odyssey)
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weight is shifted too far over the left leg for the pose to be held.”28 Basically, Boticelli
painted an inaccurate image of a woman by distorting her features, ultimately presenting
an unattainable position. Boland’s poem functions as an ekphrasis critiquing Degas’s art,
Botticelli’s art, and patriarchal art on a universal scale. The allusion to Botticelli’s
painting emphasizes a feminine archetype created by a masculine mind; a mind Boland
calls women’s “winding sheet.” Boland’s reference to a burial shroud censures artist’s
ability to affect culture and thus culture’s effect on people but more specifically women.
Boland’s allusion associates Botticelli with that influential and lethal power
shown through his famous distortion of Venus’s features into an unachievable position. If
a man’s mind exists as Boland’s “winding sheet,” the example implies Botticelli’s
painting “inters” women by objectifying one into an impossible ideal, which then lives on
to represent women. In other words, actual laboring women die without accurate
representation but Botticelli’s image lives on; his art’s lasting authority keeps women
incapable of creating any motion against his established archetype.
In short, Boland’s ekphrastic poem subverts the aforementioned cultural ability of
art. She takes a conversation beyond poetry and to the literary picture, but more
particularly enters a previously male-dominated conversation in a critical manner, thus
reinventing the implications of the painting. In doing so, Boland suggests patriarchal
artistry creates fabricated feminine models while authentic depictions of women prove
both unseen and unheard, or as Degas’s Laundresses illustrates “buried” with the stillness
of death.
Furthermore, on a surface level Boticelli’s painting allows Boland to accentuate
expected points of emphasis for a masculine frame of mind, those details being solely
28
Beth Harris and Steven Zucker, “Botticelli’s Birth of Venus.”
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associated with beauty and the female body. Moreover, the shell in Botticelli’s painting
may hint at an intentionally included form of confinement, for the classical texts
regarding Aphrodite’s birth myths make no mention of a shell.29 As interpreted in Charles
R. Mack’s "Botticelli's Venus: Antique Allusions and Medicean Propaganda," the
painting represents that “once landed, the goddess of love will don the earthly garb of
mortal sin, an act that will lead to the New Eve – the Madonna whose purity is
represented by the nude Venus.”30
Supposedly, “draped in earthly garments Venus becomes a personification of the
Christian Church which offers a spiritual transport back to the pure love of eternal
salvation,”31 yet Boland’s poem opposes that statement and exposes irony regarding the
Christian Church, for it’s another form of patriarchal authority pushing woman away
from artistic autonomy. For instance, the male “wind” figure’s puffed face depicts him as
the dominant of the two as the female clutches him, suggesting he’s controlling their
actions as they force Aphrodite toward a pink cloth in the other woman’s hand, a fabric
similar to the laundresses’ “winding sheet.”
Additionally, Aphrodite emerges from the shell only to face another form of
captivity as she’s about to be concealed in the pink fabric. By working against Aphrodite,
the other women in the painting provide insight into Botticelli’s mind in relation to
Degas’; their actions build on a patriarchal pattern that advocates women must cloak each
other’s unadulterated appearance or dress it in funeral attire. Essentially, Boland choosing
Aphrodite presents her laundresses as pure, bare, and living temptations for male artists.
But more critically, Boland’s allusion displays how patriarchal actions try to kill the
“The Birth of Aphrodite”
Charles R. Mack (225)
31
Mack, 225–26
29
30
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“threatening” power of “woman’s imaginary” and also prevent unity amongst women by
keeping feminine archetypes defined and “dead” within patriarchal confines.
When applying Boland’s presentation and Botticelli’s painting to Cixous’ ideas,
she details bare exposure as exactly how to definitively deny male artists and escape all
forms of patriarchal definition, specifying that:
By [depicting] herself, women will return to the body which has been
more than confiscated from [them], which has been turned into the
uncanny stranger on display- the ailing or dead figure, which so often
turns out to be the nasty companion, the cause and location of inhibitions.
Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time.32
Through advocating women’s use of the female body to dismantle patriarchal
constructions of “lifeless” women, Cixous’ quote also supports Boland’s depiction of
masculine minds as “winding sheet[s].” Cixous’ analysis demonstrates how associating
women with Eve adversely subdues them within a patriarchal model that disables their
voices by urging male artists against recreating an “actual” or “original” woman. That
patriarchal caution toward and resulting exclusion of real women reflects in Christopher
L.C.E Witcombe’s “Eve’s Identity,” stating:
In both form and symbol, Eve is woman, and because of her, the prevalent
belief in the West has been that all women are by nature disobedient,
guileless, weak-willed, prone to temptation and evil, disloyal,
untrustworthy, deceitful, seductive…No matter what women might
achieve in the world, the message of Genesis warns men not to trust them,
and women not to trust themselves or each other.33
In essence, Witcombe describes an ongoing patriarchal abuse of the “Eve" example that
Cixous demonstrates as projected onto all women, and furthermore reveals a cultural
construction that conveys women as faulted and incapable of relying even upon
themselves. By turning Aphrodite into a figure of pride, power, and inspiration rather
32
33
Cixous (880)
Christopher L.C.E Witcombe, “Eve and the Identity of Woman.” (3)
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than a debased= temptress, Boland’s poem takes the first steps toward establishing a new
tradition. Furthermore, referencing the painting illustrates how women writers “coming
out of their shells” will be as goddesses rising “from the sea foam,”34 with the collective
froth causing a flooding of the rugged shore that is a patriarchy.
As “Aphrodites”, first the laundresses exist in a state of unparalleled beauty,
power, and magnificence. Boland describes the abilities of these women, tying them to
the feminine aspects that attract artists to recreate their appearance, stating, “You seam
dreams in the folds/ of wash from which freshes/ the whiff and reach of the fields/ where
it bleached and stiffened.”35 The language Boland operates with gives the women’s work
a sense of enchantment, gentleness, and purity. The repeated “f” and “h” sounds imply a
sense of flowing as the women work deftly. Moreover, the graceful demeanor invests
them with an inner life, an element absent in Degas’ painting.
However, Boland stops the flowing lines with emphasis on the hard end of
“stiffened” to begin to demonstrate and unmask the glorification of women and clichés
associated with them. Artists usually exaggerate stereotypical qualities, though in this
case Degas neglects spiritual and dignified ones. Boland’s initial description establishes
the very element she contemplates in Degas’s work as the women begin to “stiffen”
throughout the poem until being petrified in his painting.
Although equating the laundresses with divinity, Boland describes them as being
laden by their activity. She addresses them, stating “Your chat’s sabbatical:/ brides,
wedding outfits, / a pleasure of leisured women are sweated into the folds, the neat heaps
34
35
Hesiod, Theogony (II. 176-206)
Boland (108)
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of linen.”36 In essence, Boland juxtaposes women burdened by labor to women “sweating
pleasure” into wedding dresses, implying marriage (in this sense giving oneself up to a
man) as another form of encumbrance. By continuing with “Now the drag of the clasp,”
Boland conveys marital bonds as a constricting lock, an aspect also found in Adrienne
Rich’s poem “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers.”
Rich’s poem too discusses the subject of work from a restricted position, but
instead of multiple women, Rich focuses on only one, whom she names “Aunt Jennifer.”
Aunt Jennifer stitches a panel within a devitalizing marriage, demonstrated with the
statement, “Aunt Jennifer’s fingers fluttering through her wool / Find even the ivory
needle hard to pull.” 37 While Boland’s laundresses begin to “stiffen,” Aunt Jennifer
experiences almost an absolute weakening as she struggles to pull a sewing needle.
Although different examples, they similarly succeed in exhibiting the existence of
multiple forms of patriarchal oppression. Boland would describe the women as “fixed in
a place by giant hands,”38 “giant” here meaning oversized and crushing.
The second stanza further explains Aunt Jennifer’s pressuring burden, reading
“The massive weight of Uncle’s wedding band / Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer’s
hand.”39 Rich evokes the concept of weight to demonstrate Aunt Jennifer’s inhibited state
as “Uncle’s” wife. Furthermore, Rich gives a name and thus an identity to Aunt Jennifer
but leaves “Uncle” nameless, which associates his maltreatment with the patriarchy as a
whole.
36
Boland (108)
Rich (4)
38
Boland. (254)
39
Rich (4)
37
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Degas’ artistic effort has a similar deterring effect in Boland’s poem as she
transitions through the burdensome stress the laundresses’ work actually bestows upon
them. For instance, Boland describes the action stating, “Your wrists basket your waist. /
You round to the square of the weight.”40 The shift to a staccato structure implies a
forced urgency relating to the marital example, while also removing grace the
laundresses’ previously possessed. More notably, “square” contrasts the dull and rigid
linearity of patriarchal labor against the “round,” curved, and flexible figures of women
and portrays women as more dynamic than men in both skill and form.
However the laundresses’ “rounded shoulders” and “Aunt Jennifer’s hand”
introduce a sense of reality in the situations, demonstrating the laundresses’ real
physicality in opposition to Degas’ aesthetic substitute, and also presenting how marital
stress affects Aunt Jennifer’s well-being. Boland confronts the element of distortion, Rich
censures the act of degradation; in conjunction the poems exemplify a masculine
authority’s attempt to obstruct women and prevent them from achieving agency in their
respective spheres.
To further highlight the hazardous situations, Boland magnifies the struggles
women face by distinguishing the artist as a predator ready to take advantage of the
moment, while Rich displays a husband’s lasting damage on his wife. First looking at
Boland’s poem, she describes Degas’ stalking presence, warning the women:
Wait. There behind you.
A man. There behind you.
Whatever you do don’t turn.
Why is he watching you.
Whatever you do don’t turn.
Whatever you do don’t turn.41
40
41
Boland (108)
Boland (108)
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Boland takes the staccato effect even further to create a rapid pace and tactfully captures
the rushed yet paralyzing reaction to a pursuit. To enhance the severity of the happening,
she equips the male artist with armaments, portraying his preparation whilst he stands in
a state of disturbing comfort with the statement:
See he takes his ease
staking his easel so,
slowly sharpening charcoal,
closing his eyes just so,
slowly smiling as if
so slowly he is
unbandaging his mind.42
The consonance of the “s” sounds in the passage enhance the piercing sharpness of the
situation, emphasizing the artist’s glance, tools, and process. Furthermore, the passage
seems to associate Degas with a perverted pleasure in his shredding of the initial values
Boland attributed to the laundresses. The refrain of the word “slowly” underscores the
wickedly drawn-out gratification Degas takes in his rapacious procedure. By selecting
“charcoal” as the example of Degas’ medium of choice, Boland demonstrates an
oncoming of disfiguring, inhuming darkness.
Degas’ intellectual conceptualization of the laundresses gets noted with the
“unbandaging [of] his mind,” and concludes his analysis as threatening, trespassing, and
terrorizing. Moreover, “unbandaging” implies Degas’ mind as damaged in some way,
suggesting perhaps either infection, septicity, or festering existent within masculine
thought. Additionally, the poem’s image links to a story in Boland’s A Journey with Two
Maps, which details a man she worked for, whom she was “fascinated [with] in a
horrified sort of way, by the contrast between this almost demure man… wearing the
42
Boland (109)
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formal clothes of small daily ceremonies, hiding his damaged secret.”43 The “damaged
secret” is the ostensibly proper man’s eye, a “wound that never properly healed” which
he “dressed” and “bandaged” daily, and it proves a nonfictional image comparable to the
fictional Degas’ damaged mind.
An impaired eye and injured mind allow Boland to transcend her poem with two
key points. First, the images reflect patriarchal observation as not only unbalanced but
also as incomplete, such as seen in Degas’ production of lifeless laundresses. Second, the
images emphasize that patriarchal reasoning stems from a flawed understanding, one
example being Degas’ method of instant objectification. In summation, Boland’s poem
calls attention to the need for a “women’s imaginary” capable of cleansing the current
patriarchal contamination, thus replacing it with a clear, pure, and complete feminine
consciousness.
Although not explicitly stated in “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers,” Aunt Jennifer’s ending
position grimly relates to the procedure prescribed to Boland’s Degas. For instance,
Degas’ slow and destructive actions compare to Aunt Jennifer’s husband’s behavior as
the poem states, “When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie, / still ringed with
ordeals she was mastered by.”44 Rich presents an eternal entrapment as Aunt Jennifer gets
dominated unto her death similar to the laundresses being trapped in Degas’ painting,
both placing patriarchal roles in a lethal light. Though Rich’s poem provides less action
leading up to Aunt Jennifer’s final status, she endures a similar experience to the
laundresses observable through the term “terrified,” correlating to a fear of being preyed
upon by a man; and also the terms “ringed,” which again refers to marriage’s binding
43
44
Boland (256)
Rich (4)
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quality and resulting consequences; and “mastered,” posing Aunt Jennifer as subject to
her conqueror’s will.
In When we Dead Awaken, Rich reflects on the fifties stating, ““Life was
extremely private; women were isolated from each other by loyalties of marriage.”45
Rich’s description reflects in the poem she presents Aunt Jennifer as “Uncle’s” captive,
she can thus address those “loyalties of marriage” and transform traditional roles of
husband and wife into the oppressor and the oppressed. In so doing she paints the
patriarchy as both dominating and disabling, ultimately resulting in what Rich describes
as “the opposition of [Aunt Jennifer’s] imagination, worked out in a tapestry, and her lifestyle, “ringed with ordeals [Aunt Jennifer] was mastered by.”46
In effect, Rich explains Aunt Jennifer either lives in an oppressive reality or flees
into art, a sewn panel of fantasy where her “tigers prance across a screen, / Bright topaz
denizens of a world of green. / They do not fear the men beneath the tree; / They pace in
sleek chivalric certainty.”47 Essentially, Aunt Jennifer’s panel takes her away from an
authoritarian marriage, thus allowing her to create figures with qualities in her desired
image and engage in an artistic conversation freely. By providing Aunt Jennifer the
opportunity to express herself in the panel, Rich implies that art functions as a medium
enabling one to “speak” at will, thus supporting the exposure of “women’s imaginary”
and the formation of an “impregnable language.”
However though free within her panel, the reality of Aunt Jennifer’s situation
calls for further exploration into aspects of patriarchal domination. Returning to Boland,
her poem’s final stanza discloses the expected reply of Degas’ unwarranted models. The
45
Rich (173)
Rich (171)
47
Rich (4)
46
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poem reads, “Surely a good laundress/ would understand its twists, its white turns, its
blind designs-“(109). The sardonic tone and stress on the word “surely” allows Boland to
challenge Degas’ mind’s unearned right to “twist”, “turn”, and create “blind[ly]” an
inaccurate representation of women.
Furthermore, Boland uses “surely” sarcastically to exemplify Degas’ expectance
of feminine submission and critique that patriarchal notion. The “blind twists and turns”
demonstrate Degas’ lack of focus, yet she presents his mind as “[the laundresses] winding
sheet.” Unlike Aunt Jennifer’s sewn sanctuary, the “winding sheet” lays the laundresses
to rest, no matter how skewed, within a patriarchal perspective and presentation.
However, Boland’s satirical diction regarding the “winding sheet” solidifies her
presentation of the patriarchal mind as fragmented, sullied, blank, and visionless.
Regarding the conclusion of “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers,” the last lines provide hope
by hinting at a lasting conversation within feminine art. Rich’s poem states “The tigers in
the panel that she made, / Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid”(2). As possible
projections of Aunt Jennifer’s self, Rich’s final lines lean toward escaping of patriarchal
tradition and reflect that even past the scared-stiff fingers of death, a woman’s work
persists, in Aunt Jennifer’s case with the ferocity of tigers who “do not fear the man
beneath the tree.” Rich’s call for fearlessness gives inspiration to other women in efforts
of “break[ing] [a patriarchal tradition’s] hold over [them]”48
Jointly, Rich and Boland’s poems convey a patriarchal tradition as a dominant yet
damaged institution, which keeps its disease thriving by subjugating and silencing
women. Furthermore, the poems display how women facing oppression may use art and
poetry to display the “inexhaustible” power of “women’s imaginary,” engage art and one
48
Rich (168)
Vatcoskay 20
another in conversation, and begin the founding of an “impregnable language.” Rich’s
When We Dead Awaken; Writing as Re-Vision and Hélène Cixous’ The Laugh of the
Medusa address and analyze methods of inducing a purely feminine conversation, thus
breaking free from a patriarchal tradition.
“But if the tradition would not admit me, could I change its rules of admission? Either I would
have to establish an equal relation with it, or I would have to adopt a submissive posture,
admiring its achievements and accepting its exclusions.”
“Any menace to human beings constitutes a moral imperative, not just for other men and women,
but for poetry itself.”
-Eavan Boland
Moving from the Poem to Practice:
Contextual Comparisons
Boland further describes the past as “a template of poetic identity which still
affects us as women,” furthering the example with “if we are not careful, it is that
template we will aspire to, alter ourselves to, wrap our self-esteem as poets to fit.”49
Essentially, Boland’s analysis and the implications put forth in her and Rich’s poems
amplify solutions Rich and Cixous propose for inciting feminine liberation from that
historically patriarchal template and trap, and furthermore inspire female empowerment.
Boland pronounces women’s task, stating, “That past needs us. That very past in
poetry which simplified us as women and excluded us as poets now needs us to change
49
Boland (254)
Vatcoskay 21
it.”50 Boland’s call resonates with Aunt Jennifer’s restricted self-expression, and also
within Rich’s appeal to the evolution of artistic reality, stating, “if the imagination is to
transcend and transform experience it has to question, to challenge, to conceive of
alternatives, perhaps to the very life you are living at that moment.”51 As examined by
Boland, Degas’ painting Laundresses Carrying Linen in Town as well as Botticelli’s The
Birth of Venus fail to achieve Rich’s purpose due to their biased concentration on
capturing visual appeal; a perpetuation of what Rich calls “a devouring ego.”52
Rich’s following statement furthers the paintings’ reason for provoking both
caution and a call for change, explaining:
The enemy is always outside the self, the struggle somewhere else. The
mood of isolation, self-pity, and self-imitation that pervades nonpolitical
[art] suggests that a profound change in masculine consciousness will have
to precede any new male poetic- or other- inspiration.53
With her emphasis on the reformation of a masculine perspective currently centered upon
itself or on blaming others (more specifically, women), Rich addresses the mind needing
“unbandaging” in Boland’s poem, and this “wounded mind” image become a recurring
concept to address the perspective problem affecting Boland’s Degas, Botticelli, and the
masculine mind-frame as a whole.
To explore the “consciousness” crisis, Rich expounds on the previous statement
with a resolution, stating:
A change in the concept of sexual identity is essential if we are not going
to see the old political order reassert itself in every new revolution. Until
we can understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot
know ourselves. And this drive to self—knowledge, for women, is more
50
Boland (254)
Rich (174)
52
Rich(174)
53
Rich (176)
51
Vatcoskay 22
than a search for identity: it is part of our refusal of the selfdestructiveness of male-dominated society.54
So in her proclamation Rich essentially ascertains Degas’ and Botticelli’s work as flawed
because of the assumptive, self-imposing notions that led to its formation. Moreover,
Rich’s statement affirms that women must seek an understanding of themselves through
themselves instead of via detrimental masculine interpretation which has traditionally
defined feminine identity, as seen in “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers” through her subjugation via
“wedding band.”
Rich’s words also feed into Cixous’ solution, and it intensifies her address with
the statement, “woman must write herself; must write about women and bring women
away as violently as from their bodies- for the same reasons, by the same law, with the
same fatal goal.”55 Cixous’ approach reverses the patriarchal focus on women’s beauty,
advocating reclamation of that process for feminine hands. Boland, the latest writer of the
three, maintains and sponsors their beliefs, stating, “We need to change the past. Not by
intellectualizing it. But by eroticizing it.”56 Boland’s method of eroticization matches
Cixous’ recommendation, and both support Rich’s concept of a shifting sexual identity;
adopting it as the new feminine approach to establish dominance of the feminine self. For
example, if the women within the poems complied, the laundresses and Aunt Jennifer
would essentially take Degas’ procedure, make it their own, and thus through their work
freely express their own interpretation and qualities of themselves as women and also
human beings.
54
Rich (167)
Cixous (875)
56
Boland (254)
55
Vatcoskay 23
For example, the laundresses in Boland’s poem start as comparative to Aphrodite,
but get stripped of that position as a result of her Degas’s “winding sheet.” Using her
poem as ekphrastic art, Boland appeals to women’s ability to question and challenge
archetypes, convention, and implications within classical art. Furthermore, Boland
demonstrates an ability to pit a feminine perspective against a dominant masculine one,
thus showing art’s ability to allow the creation of resistance to an opposing or established
tradition, in Boland’s case patriarchal authority. Aunt Jennifer also lacks agency within
her marriage, but her lasting artwork gives an example of feminine ability by proving art
allows an escape from patriarchal bonds; her fantasy and “tigers” proved inadvertently
powerful under crushing pressure, like carbon becoming a diamond.
In continuance, Cixous’ opinions elaborate the effect Degas had in removing the
laundresses’ initial superiority, explaining that,
Men have committed the greatest crime against women. Insidiously,
violently, they have led them to hate women, to be their own enemies, to
mobilize their immense strength against themselves, to be the executants
of their virile needs. They have made for woman an antinarcissism! A
narcissism which loves itself only to be loved for what women haven’t
got!57
Cixious’ statement proves reminiscent of the action in Boticelli’s “Birth of Venus,”
suggesting that until detaching completely from a patriarchy, a woman cannot truly write
for herself or any woman. Women cannot exist as true “Aphrodites” but instead as Eves
given to temptation, afraid of their own nakedness and reminiscent of “original” sin and
the fall of humanity. Yet Boland depicts the final condition of Degas’ mind as “twisted,”
“turned,” and in “blind designs;” and to be inherently understood by the laundresses,
revealing a fabricated and faulted expectation existing solely within the mind of Degas.
57
Cixous (878)
Vatcoskay 24
Boland’s presentation of the masculine mind exposes a manner of not only
misinterpretation but also misrepresentation of women in a man’s image, not God’s.
Furthermore, the feeling of pleasure Boland’s Degas experiences while molding
women to his idea of perfection further characterizes the vanity felt toward his
presentation, not the women’s depiction of themselves. In relation to Rich’s notions of
sexual identity, Boland’s laundresses start with only their work to distinguish themselves
and become objects of prey subject to Degas’ interpretation, which echoes Cixous’
previous reflection regarding men who effectively engage the “mobilizat[ion] of
[women’s] immense strength [to only turn it] against them.”
Cixous further explicates the condition of Boland’s laundresses and Aunt Jennifer
in comparison to all women, describing them as, “muffled throughout their history, they
have lived in dreams, in bodies (though muted), in silences, in aphonic revolts.”58
Interestingly, Boland describes silence too, stating, “The only danger to poetry is the
reticence and silence of poets.”59 Both statements unmask the idea that though appearing
acquiescent, the laundresses, Aunt Jennifer, and all women should and have retained a
silenced opposition to patriarchal impositions, and should stay quiet no longer. Rich
mentioned that endurance as a desire to eradicate the “mood of isolation, self-pity, and
self-imitation” set forth by masculine perception. In essence, Cixous divulges the outlook
of Boland’s laundresses and impact of Aunt Jennifer’s panel while Rich explains the
causality behind it.
To break the silence, let us recall Cixous’ solution regarding women’s bodies. She
roars, “women… must invent the impregnable language that will wreck partitions,
58
59
Cixous (886)
Boland (251)
Vatcoskay 25
classes, rhetorics, regulations, and codes.” Rich would agree, as this would instigate the
necessary “profound change in masculine consciousness” through giving voice to women
and forcing masculine pride to face the choice between evolution and extinction.
Cixous scornfully jokes after the previous remark to predict the masculine
response to her, Boland, and Rich’s instruction, stating, “Let’s leave it to the worriers; to
masculine anxiety and its obsession with how to dominate the way things work - knowing
‘how it works’ in order to ‘make it work.’ ‘Utter objectification.’”60 Again, Rich’s
concept of the “self-destructiveness of male-dominated society” resonates through
Cixous’ language, correlating in condescension of how patriarchal processes of
organizational objectification seek to label, define, and retain possession of the ability to
establish “the way things work,” entirely through masculine discernment. By
demonstrating how masculine authority first figures in what way something happens, and
then alters it to “make it work” or more simply to suit and favor masculine motives,
Cixous satirically exhibits the suppressive routine pervading our society as well as that of
Boland’s laundresses and Rich’s Aunt Jennifer while precluding the procession of
feminine autonomy.
To further chasten patriarchal behavior in relation to both paintings and Rich’s
panel, Cixous again utilizes sarcasm to magnify the foolishness of masculine
manipulation with the quip, “Wait, you’ll have everything explained to you, and you’ll
know at last which sort of neurosis you’re related to. Hold still, we’re going to do your
portrait, so that you can begin looking like it right away.”61Cixous’ statement calls
attention back to Degas and Botticelli, while the use of words such as “neurosis” and the
60
61
Cixous (887)
Cixous (886)
Vatcoskay 26
evocation of mirroring an imprecise inanimate “portrait” indicate behaviors resembling
irrationality and insanity.
Essentially, Cixous’ commentary conveys the imposed patriarchal elements
women have to live with, and that the presumed authority of masculine roles awards the
ability to not only wholly understand the female mind, but also explain and define a
woman’s thoughts and psychological condition. The illogicality of that notion leads to
ridiculous rationalizations, resulting in those women designated as either crazy, or less
appealing to a man as an actual human being when provided the choice between her and
her portrait.
Basically, Cixous enriches the images in both poems by equating masculine
conceit as dangerously disadvantageous to a woman’s physical and mental health. She
exemplifies the masculine focus as falling upon subordinating women, like it does to the
laundresses and Aunt Jennifer, and demonstrates men’s instinctive censure and
condemnation of a woman’s behavior and appearance. In brief, Cixous’ mockery of
masculinity and its reliance on ridicule and discontent functions to augment the need for
an “impregnable language.” Furthermore, Cixous propagates the prevalence of a feminine
pattern; one provoking promotion of both breaking women’s silence and also Rich’s
described necessity for “a profound change in masculine consciousness.”
In summation, Boland’s Degas’s Laundresses and Rich’s Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers
serve the purpose of addressing a state of affairs that accentuates how masculine
influence and patriarchal authority disempowers women and the feminine role. Adrienne
Rich furthers Boland’s work by fostering focus upon the oppression patriarchal notions
have placed upon feminine identity, inspiration, and incorporation, thus calling for an
Vatcoskay 27
actuation amongst women to assemble against masculine suppression. Cixous’ doctrines
build upon Boland’s example while also supplementing Rich’s proposals with firm
feasible resolutions and therefore endorse feminine emancipation. The function of all
three women and their works upon unification yields a facilitation of the exposition of
patriarchal injustice, it clarifies the causality behind feminine subjugation, identifies the
inadequacies of the patriarchal structure, epitomizes the errors requiring alteration in
relation to constructed fallacies in societal perception, equips voice with reason to
propose practical preparation, and ultimately arms reason with attainable action to
fervently inflame a sweeping conflagration of active feminine resistance in the hopes of
triumph over the patriarchal dominion.
Vatcoskay 28
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Clark, Kenneth. Looking at Pictures. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
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