SOURCE: "Ecriture Feminine and the Authorship of Self in Eavan Boland's In Her Own Image," in Colby Quarterly, Vol. XXVII, No. 1, March, 1991, pp. 48-59.

In the following essay, Allen-Randolph discusses the relationship among the poems in Boland's In Her Own Image, the female body, and the representation of women in patriarchal culture.

Alternately praised by the mainstream Irish literary establishment for her control, technical mastery, classicism, and lyric ear, and as frequently dismissed for her choice of subject matter, Eavan Boland has contributed significantly to the current debates concerning canon reformation and the nature of women's writing. Concurrent with attempts to marginalize Boland's poetry in Ireland is a steadily growing critical acclaim in the United States, where her poetry and essays have appeared regularly in American Poetry Review, Partisan Review, Parnassus, and, more recently, in Contemporary Literature, Georgia Review, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic Monthly. And although...