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Sarah Landerholm

ENG 468

A. Auge

Nov. 14, 2019

The Wound We Leave:

The role of Myth in Eavan Boland’s “The Making of an Irish Goddess”

Eavan Boland has long been regarded as one of Ireland’s foremost female poets. Lauded

for the nuance of her feminist approach to writing—one focused on recasting the female

domestic sphere in more rounded terms—Boland’s poetry is shaped by her own experience as a

wife, mother, and Irishwoman. Implicit in her poetry are recurrent themes of womanhood,

motherhood, wifedom, and national identity, yet these identities are augmented from their

stereotypically liminal and one-dimensional definitions to encompass a female identity not

constrained by archaic notions of the feminine sphere. Boland’s feminist work resists simplified

and symbolic renderings of femininity, supplanting the mystification surrounding womanhood

by embracing the womanhood of her own experience, warts and all. In particular, Boland’s use

of myth and reality as contrasting entities seeks to demystify the female experience by replacing

idyllic and incomplete notions of womanhood—those found in myth—with more holistic

depictions. A prime example of Boland’s prowess at augmenting myth is exemplified in her

poem “The Making of an Irish Goddess,” which juxtaposes the romantic Greco-Roman myth of

Ceres and Persephone beside the less idyllic realities of Irish women.

“The Making of an Irish Goddess,” like many of Boland’s works, is significant for a

multiplicity of reasons. However, in order to understand Boland’s multidimensional poem in

totality, one must first understand the basic elements that set the contextual framework. In “The
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Making of an Irish Goddess,” Boland is the speaker, and she is speaking about the shortcomings

of myth and the way in which it influences notions of reality. The poem begins with the myth of

Ceres and Persephone, in which Ceres—the goddess of harvest—descends to Hades in an effort

to recover her daughter, Persephone. “Ceres went to hell / with no sense of time” (Boland 1-2).

For as long as Ceres is absent, earth remains unchanged, frozen in time until her return to the

world of the living. “When she looked back / all that she could see was // a seasonless, unscarred

earth” (3-4, 10) Boland then counters this mythical journey to hell with her own reality, one that

cannot make such a journey in the same, effortless way. Boland experiences a markedly different

reality—one that needs “time /…flesh and history / to make that same descent” (11-13).

Boland goes on to contrast the simplified fantasy of Ceres “seasonless, unscarred earth”

with an image of her own body, scarred by childbirth and age, paralleling the unforgiving,

painful, and unglorified side of female experience with that of mother Ireland. She describes an

Ireland that has been similarly scarred—by colonialism, blight, famine—and that bears no

resemblance to Ceres’s perfect, unaltered earth. Finally, Boland contrasts the myth of Ceres and

Persephone with an experience that she has with her own daughter, mirroring the mythical

relationship with her own reality of motherhood. In the myth, Persephone seeks to be reunited

with her mother; whereas in reality Boland’s daughter is growing up, growing away, and no

longer needs her mother in the same way she once did. Boland, in this final, personal moment

becomes the Ceres of reality. Holding her hand “sickle-shaped” to her eyes, looking at her

daughter, “her back turned to me,” Boland acknowledges what a mythic Ceres fails to: things

change, people change (38, 42).

With this speaking situation, or context, in mind, the poem takes on a more complex

connotation. Subsequently, Boland’s role as a speaker is essential to this poem, as it influences

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the work in a direction that is unique to her. For instance, at the end of “The Making of an Irish

Goddess” the poem shifts focus from the experiences of many Irish women to the experience of

Ireland as a whole, and then to the experience of Boland herself. The final scene is an integral

part of the poem—if not the integral part—and it exists because Boland is the speaker and

because Boland’s reality does not mirror the myth. To alter the speaker of “The Making of an

Irish Goddess” would be to redefine the poem’s meaning and distance the reader from the

intimate immediacy that Boland’s own experiences provoke.

Similarly, the particular speaking situation of “The Making of an Irish Goddess” modifies

the perception of the content within the poem and provides a groundwork for how readers, in

turn, should interpret Boland’s work. Therefore, the speaking situation is not only vital to

understanding the poem within a singular context of how myth and reality diverge in this poem

specifically, but also within the larger conversation about myth and reality that Boland’s poetry

engages in. If Boland is indeed a poet whose poetic content renounces myth as an incomplete

and too-idyllic representation of life, then the form of her poem—the speaking situation, in this

case—must also enhance this overall renunciation. In essence, Boland’s choice to be present in

the poem, to use her personal understanding of womanhood and motherhood to repudiate myth,

is necessitated by the content of the poem that pits reality against myth. Content and form in

“The Making of an Irish Goddess” thereby entwine and function cohesively, exhibiting the

essence of good poetry that poet Denise Levertov refers to as “dynamic interaction.” As such, the

relationship between the speaker and the speaking situation both point back to Boland’s thematic

locus, with the former commenting directly in the poem and the latter commenting through

context. Thus, the unity between Boland’s content and form is manifested and the contextual

groundwork for interpretation is laid.

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In addition to exemplifying the poetic unity and “dynamic interaction” that Levertov sets

as a key marker of good poetry, “The Making of an Irish Goddess” also fulfills the poetic duty

that William Wordsworth puts forth, in that it excites its readers’ imaginations without resorting

to “gross and violent stimulants.” Boland’s poem demystifies womanhood—effectively knocking

historically entrenched notions of femininity off their pedestal—and in doing so casts ideas of

motherhood and femaleness in an ordinary and realistic light. Rather than turning ordinary into

extraordinary, in this instance, Boland does the opposite first—but to great effect. “The Making

of an Irish Goddess” portrays the ordinary and less-than-pleasant reality of womanhood, and

Irish womanhood specifically in blatant contrast to the extraordinary myth of Ceres. Boland does

this intentionally; her drawn-out contrasts between herself and Ceres, a perfect mythic earth and

brutalized mother Ireland, helpless Persephone and her headstrong daughter, etc. tease out the

marked difference existing between myth and reality, and therefore provide a new and nuanced

understanding of their relationship to one another.

Moving beyond Wordsworth and Levertov, and the ways by which Boland executes

exciting and dynamic poetry, “The Making of an Irish Goddess” has yet to be interpreted in light

of these features. Understanding Boland’s work—and all poetry in general—requires an

awareness of how subtle yet important organizational aspects such as stanzaic structure, line

breaks, and imagery affect poetic meaning and facilitate revelation. The stanzaic structure of

Boland’s “The Making of an Irish Goddess” is yet another example of “dynamic interaction”

between form and content. The poem’s stanzas are arranged in an intentional progression:

beginning with Ceres’s descent to hell to save her daughter, Persephone. This introduction,

rooted in a myth of a mother trying to recover her daughter, sets up an idyllic and mythic straw

man for Boland to tear down—one that is “seasonless, unscarred,” (10) in which “arteries of
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silver in the rock / the diligence of rivers always at one level / wheat at one height” all remain

unchanged (5-7). The induction of myth is then paralleled beside Boland’s own contrary

understanding of womanhood and motherhood, one that needs “time / my flesh and that history /

to make the same descent.” (12-13).

The poem progresses a third time, broadening its focus from Boland to mother Ireland,

and then to the women of Ireland during the Irish Potato Famine, juxtaposing the mythic

changelessness of Cere’s descent beside the realistic horror of change that the Irishwoman of the

Great Famine experienced. In contrast to the timeless-appearing earth that the goddess Ceres

leaves in her absence, the absence of harvest that the Famine brought about is one of “…failed

harvests / fields rotting to the horizon / the children devoured by their mothers” (24-26). And

then the poem shifts, departing temporarily from its comparison of myth and reality to comment

directly on myth. In two lines, Boland explains what she’s been getting at in the other forty:

“myth is the wound we leave / in the time we have” (31-32). Myth changes how we perceive

reality; it comments on it and is part of our story, part of our legacy. Myth is the wound we

leave; it is the ideology—the particular understanding of or perspective on life—that we

actualize, represent, and in turn pass on. And “there is no other way,” Boland writes (30).

Structurally, this moment of reflection deviates from an otherwise descriptive poem, and rather

than releasing the tension built up in the preceding stanzas, adds to it tenfold.

The final progression of the poem returns back to Boland, focusing on an intimate

moment of realization that, yet again, is an opposing counterpart to the myth of Ceres and

Persephone. In the myth, Ceres goes down to save her daughter—a daughter that desires to be

reunited with her mother—however, Boland’s experience with her own daughter is markedly

different. Boland’s daughter, unlike Persephone, has turned away, grown up. This ending,
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culminating in a daughter’s turning away— “her back turned to me”—is the final digression

from myth, and this last contrast, one in which Boland becomes a realistic version of Ceres,

drives home the idea that myth and reality are truly different; that things containing mythic

elements are grossly simplified and do not manifest an actual completeness, but an idealized

incompleteness.

In this way, the development from myth to reality, and then reality away from myth is

executed because of the stanzaic structure, and the way in which idealized myth is first

introduced, and then countered through stanzaic progression with the true reality. The stanzas are

set in such a way that the structure of the myth of Ceres and the structure of the realities of actual

women—Boland, Ireland, and then all Irishwomen—are near identical. Both begin with a

descent, Ceres’s being one of mythic ease, Boland’s one of human struggle. Both perspectives

describe the change of the earth, with Cere’s earth remaining unaltered and unscarred, while

Boland hides the remnants of a scar, alluding to the sufferings of Ireland when she describes the

permanent blemish as, “an accurate inscription / of that agony:” (22-23). Ceres and Persephone

and Boland and her daughter are also paralleled in “The Making of an Irish Goddess,” yet again

from contradictory perspectives. Ceres eventually recovers Persephone, whereas Boland

recognizes that her daughter seeks freedom rather than recovery.

Like stanzaic structure, the line breaks within “The Making of an Irish Goddess” function

with an intentionality that elicits a fuller understanding of the poem’s meaning. Line breaks

between stanzas create the effect of a prolonged pause, and in Boland’s case, they point the

reader to moments that are central to the message of the poem, as well as to instances that are

crucial yet subtle shifts in perspective. At the end of her description of myth, Boland clinches the

depiction with a single line, separated into its own stanza, which describes the state of earth that
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Ceres returns to: “a seasonless, unscarred earth.” Not only is this the last line that refers directly

to the myth, and therefore signifies a shift in the poem’s thinking, but this is also an important

moment that points back to the poem’s internal message about how myths wound understandings

of reality. This “seasonless, unscarred earth” is the first wounding that Boland goes on to

contradict, and the intentional emphasis that is put on this moment in the poem is indicative of its

import.

Another line break that calls attention to a key moment in the poem occurs as Boland is

contradicting the idyllic, unaffected earth of Ceres with the damaged and afflicted earth of a

Mother Ireland scourged by famine. Commenting on her own blemishes, marks of aging,

maternity, and time’s passing, Boland extends the comparison from herself to Ireland, describing

a scar in comparison to a similar one borne by her homeland:

the way I pin my hair to hide

the stitched healed blemish of a scar—
must be

an accurate inscription
of that agony: (19-23)

The line break that occurs halfway through line twenty-one is structurally unusual, and therefore

alludes to a moment of importance that demands such an obvious break in thought. This break

between “must be” and “an accurate inscription” slows the reading of the next two lines, forcing

readers to dwell on these moments for a moment longer. Within these lines, Boland is making

both a comparison and a contrast; she is comparing her reality to Ireland’s reality—one that is

blemished and scarred—and thereby contrasting the idealized ‘reality’ of Ceres’s earth, which is

unblemished and unscarred. This line break, like the one previously mentioned, points back to
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the wounding nature inherent in myth, a nature that falsely presents a cherry-picked fantasy as

reality.

The final line of the poem is another line break that is structurally unusual. A modern-day

“Irish Goddess,” Boland ends the poem by paralleling herself to Ceres, augmenting myth with

her own experience of motherhood:

Holding up my hand,
sickle-shaped to my eyes
to pick out
my own daughter from
all the other children in the distance;

her back turned to me (37-42)

The last line, “her back turned to me,” is separated from the stanza before it although it is related

to it; this emphasizes not only a moment worthy of a stand-alone stanza, but a powerful idea.

Boland uses this last poetic instance of severing the line into its own stanza, to sever any

lingering perception that her experience of motherhood mirrors the myth of Ceres. This last

sentence stands independent from the others, just as Boland’s daughter, unlike Persephone,

stands independent from her mother. The line break echoes the independence that is being

implied by the content of the poem, while also forcing readers, through the implied pause of

extra white space, to acknowledge the importance of the line itself. This clinching line could

easily be reattached to the stanza before it, but the power of what it is implied in this singular line

demands its own stanza; its own room for thought.

The imagery presented in “The Making of an Irish Goddess” functions in much the same

way as the stanzaic structure and line breaks. Overall, the poem’s use of imagery consistently

juxtaposes images of myth and images of reality, putting them at odds with one another, and
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ultimately undercutting the incompleteness of myth with the more comprehensive illustrations

offered by reality. Ceres’s mythic portrayal of earth is the first image presented in the poem, and

it is quickly contrasted by the famine-plagued reality of a past Ireland; the changelessness and

perfection of Ceres’s world is paralleled in stark contrast beside the brutality and change brought

about by the famine that utterly effaced Ireland. Similarly, the image of Boland’s maternal body

joins itself to the image of Ireland as a mother, and both images establish a kinship between a

very real past and present that connects them to each other but distances them from Ceres.

The final major image is that of Boland and her daughter, Irish goddesses per se, who

represent, in contrast to Ceres and Persephone, real womanhood and real life. They, and the

women who came before them, cannot find resonance in a myth about motherhood and

womanhood that has no rooting in their own experiences of these quintessentially female

realities. Boland bears the scars of birth, aging, and a lived life. Ceres bears none of these things.

Persephone, too, models an incomplete and simplified version of a daughter: dependent, weak,

frightened. In contrast, Boland’s daughter is not looking for her mother to save her. Boland pits

the rounded images of herself and her daughter and Ceres and Persephone—who are little more

than stock characters—against one another intentionally, and in doing so reveals the power that

myth has as an influence on culture. Ceres is a prominent goddess, emblematic of womanhood,

yet she embodies a woman that is unrealistic. In calling this to our attention, Boland critiques the

way in which myth imposes itself upon ideologies and perceptions. Myth wounds our concept of

reality, as it depicts notions of womanhood and motherhood in grossly simplistic and inadequate

terms. Myth interferes with life, yet, as Boland acknowledges, myth is also something that we

participate in and pass on; it’s part of a legacy that we play into. It is, after all, the “wound” that

we leave “in the time we have.”

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Work Cited

Boland, Eavan. “The Making of an Irish Goddess.” New Collected Poems. W.W. Norton

& Company, 2005. Pgs. 178-179.