SOURCE: Clutterbuck, Catriona. “Irish Critical Responses to Self-Representation in Eavan Boland.” Colby Quarterly 35, no. 4 (December 1999): 275-87.

In the following essay, Clutterbuck addresses the critical reaction to issues of feminism and nationalism in Boland's verse.

This article examines Irish critical responses to a central issue in Eavan Boland's work, responses which were published during eight years of vital development, not only in her own aesthetic, but in her reputation as an artist and in the wider position of women in Irish cultural and political life. In 1987, the results of abortion and divorce referenda in the Republic had consolidated restrictive socio-sexual ideologies; access to contraception was legally restricted; the country was in the grip of recession, large-scale emigration and (though unrecognized at the time) widespread institutionalized corruption in its economic affairs; and the level of publication of Irish women's poetry, though noticeably on the increase, had not affected general debate...