The Body and Female Identity in Eithne Strong’s Flesh: The Greatest Sin

Hawk Chang

doi:10.17576/3l-2017-2304-12

Abstract

Bodily discourse, constantly appropriated as a symbol of Irish famine and hunger in the wake of British maladministration of the land and its people since the Great Famine, is prevalent in Irish culture. However, this bodily discourse is dominated by nationalistic and patriarchal narratives. An increasing number of women in contemporary Ireland look at themselves anew through their own bodies. Through the reading of Eithne Strong’s poetry collection, Flesh: The Greatest Sin (1980), this paper discusses how the conflation of body and sin is entangled in the Irish context, how the female writer manages to untangle the fine line fabricated between the two categories and reaffirm her female identity simultaneously, and finally the significance of such an attempt in the history of Irish literature. Keywords: the body; female identity; Eithne Strong; Flesh; The Greatest Sin

Highlights

Discourse, constantly appropriated as the symbol of Irish famine and hunger in the wake of British maladministration of the land and its people since the Great Famine in the mid-nineteenth century, is never foreign in Irish culture
The catastrophe caused by colonial mal-management, in conjunction with the taboos from Catholicism, renders Irish women disempowered in articulating their own bodies, as the body has been at the service of men and the female body defiled as impure and immoral
Due to the commitment of Robinson, McAleese, and many other women, an increasing number of Irish women, who had become more aware of their inborn faculties and were eager to put them to meaningful political use, have dedicated themselves to expressing their own unique self-identities, thereby facilitating a recognition of the modern Irish female identity-as-difference

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Constantly appropriated as the symbol of Irish famine and hunger in the wake of British maladministration of the land and its people since the Great Famine in the mid-nineteenth century, is never foreign in Irish culture. The Female Eunuch, first published in 1970, Germaine Creer challenges the prejudiced sexual discourse, promoting a more permissive and libertarian theory in favor of women’s sexual practice As she argues, “the female is considered as a sexual object for the use and appreciation of other sexual beings, men. In the 1980s, French feminists, including Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, and Julia Kristeva, made significant impact because of their influential theories on women in relation to language, identity, sexuality, and difference Notwithstanding their differences, these French feminists manage to subvert the inherently one-sided man/woman cultural dichotomy by moving beyond the hierarchical dichotomy and reaffirming women’s difference. Unlike Cixous and Irigaray, Kristeva in a certain sense maintains dualities, while calling it into question on another level simultaneously This is evidenced in Kristeva’s theory of the semiotic and the symbolic in Revolution in Poetic Language, a book first published in 1984. Instead of the regulatory body via performativity, Butler is committed to deconstructing the repetition of norms and promoting non-normative bodies and sexualities (1990, pp. 137139)

FEMALE BODY AND IRISH IDENTITY

THE BODY AS THE SOURCE OF ALL EVIL

THE FEMALE BODY FIGHTS BACK

CONCLUSION