BREAKING THE IDEALIZED MOTHERHOOD: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE POETRY OF EAVAN BOLAND AND LOUISE GLUCK

Abstract

This research paper examines the representation of motherhood that is unconventional and quite contrary to the idealized in the poems of Eavan Boland and Louise Gluck. The study focusses on the theme of restraint, repetition, ambivalence and economic use of emotions. Using a qualitative, text-based close reading methodology based on feminist criticism of maternal ideology and ethics of care, it explores how both poets contest culturally ideal discourses of motherhood.

Analysis shows that Boland creates the experience of a mother by being vigilant and by being accountable to the ordinary domestic time; the same way Gluck creates the experience of a mother by remaining silent, distant, and denying emotional resolution. Although the poets differ in their style of poetry and culture, both of them portray motherhood as a condition which is actually lived and is ethically challenging because of limitation and not emotional fulfillment.

The results indicate that the use of unsentimental motherhood in modern poetry provides a closer and rational approach of understanding motherhood, and is therefore, an addition to the feminist literary research on maternal subjectivity.