Matrophobia or Matrocompliance?: Motherhood as “Experience and Institution” in the Poetry of Eavan Boland and Paula Meehan

Abstract

This article traces and examines representations of motherhood and mother-daughter relationships in contemporary Irish women’s poetry in the light of Adrienne Rich’s theories in Of Woman Born. I particularly focus on Eavan Boland and Paula Meehan, whose work poses a direct challenge to the traditional values of motherhood, a metaphor that, in the Irish context, has been intrinsically connected with national identity. In their dealings with topics as diverse as pregnancy, childbirth, infertility, infanticide, miscarriage, abortion and motherdaughter relationships, both writers offer alternative perspectives to the myth of the benevolent and abnegated Mother, a social and cultural ideal recurrently manipulated in Ireland by nationalism and Catholicism.