Towards Female Empowerment

This monographic study analyses in depth the poetry written by four most significant Irish authors born in the 1970s. Together with insightful interpretations of the explored poetry, it offers a new reading of philosophy, social and cultural studies, and psychology connected with the subject matter of women’s empowerment. The poetry of Vona Groarke studies resistance articulated in historical terms, as resistance against political domination (colonisation). Sinéad Morrissey questions the expressions of political violence in the North, even those that might directly result from the reaction against the officially sanctioned system of domination. Caitríona O’Reilly analyses the fears that may be considered as existential (the passage of time, death, loss) that contribute to the sense of women’s incapacity. Here O’Reilly’s poetry seems to work like an empowering catharsis: imagining the least desired course of action and facing up to these vision. The poetry of Mary O’Donoghue probes two correlated though not synonymous phenomena: women being the actual victims of masculine violence, and the social mechanism of victimisation of women that ascribes to the female gender the “natural” and “established” role of a Victim. The book constitutes a thought-provoking debate on the up-to-date issues that need to be critically re-examined and re-thought these days. It is an inspiring reading for people interested not only in Irish poetry but in modern literature in general.

Preface 10 INTRODUCTION. Female Empowerment in Theory and in Practice: Four Irish Women Poets 12 CHAPTER ONE. Power-With: Irish women’s Relational Empowerment and Women’s Empowerment in Connection 40 1.1. Female Relational Empowerment as “The Self-In Relation” in the Poetry of Sinéad Morrissey 40 1.2. “To Act in Concert:” Women’s Mutual Empowerment in the Poetry of Mary O’Donoghue 90 1.3. The Female Power of Relational Autonomy: Establishing Indoor and Outdoor Connections in the Poetry of Vona Groarke 124 1.4. The Anxiety of Disconnected “Unmoored Pieces” in the Poetry of Caitríona O’Reilly 184 CHAPTER TWO. Power At: Ecopower and Irish Women’s Ecological Selves 222 2.1. The Empowering Ecofeminist Care Ethic and Land Ethic in the Poetry of Mary O’Donoghue 222 2.2. Mechanical Power versus Women’s Eco-empowering Criticism in the Poetry of Caitríona O’Reilly 252 2.3. “Lay it down there on the newspaper; / let it settle, unearth itself.” Gendering Nature in the Poetry of Vona Groarke 303 2.4. The Empowered Female Environmental Consciousness as the Source of the Spiritual in the Poetry of Sinéad Morrissey 351 CHAPTER THREE. Against Power-Over: Irish Women’s Empowerment Through Resistance 398 3.1. Resisting the Confinement of Other People’s Houses: Female Empowerment and Political Emancipation in the Poetry of Vona Groarke 398 3.2. Resisting Power Realised as Violence: “A Power Failure” and Female Empowerment in the Poetry of Sinéad Morrissey 448 3.3. Resisting the Victimisation of Women in the Poetry of Mary O’Donoghue 498 3.4. “Death, desirelessness: such kinless things:” Resisting female powerlessness in the Poetry of Caitríona O’Reilly 534 Conclusion 578 Bibliography 584