earticle

영어

For Irish woman the attempt to (re)discover their feminine identity has been overshadowed not only by imperialistic, nationalistic masculine patriarchy and the dictates of patriarchy but also by the otherness of Ireland. Retaining the image of the relationship between Great Britain and Ireland as one between masculine and feminine, the metaphors most frequently used have been those of robbery and rape. Irish feminity in Heaney's poems is identified with nationalistic and romantic Irish poets. Heaney, likening woman to Ireland, chants the rebirth of Ireland,－the Ireland as woman, the woman as Ireland defeated by Imperial. So the study of Irish feminity agrees with the project for recovering identity and culture of the lost Ireland. For long hidden under patriarchal imperative the Irish woman has been doubly denied her voice. The Irish woman silenced and marginalised by patriarchal power and the Irish language(Gaelic) devalued and minimalised by British imperialist culture make it more difficult to express Irish women's experiences or national experiences. In this context, what is colonializing the language and image of the female is a commonplace. The patriarchal language colonizes the self-image of woman by presenting the male as the norm and the female as an aberration. For recovering the value of feminity oppressed, silenced, and marginalised by the otherness of Ireland and sexual difference, it is necessary for Irish women to improve their roles through sexual redress, political redress and cultural redress which Heaney explicates in The Redress of Poetry.