Revitalizing and Exalting the Domesticity: A Suburban Celebration in Eavan Boland's "Woman in Kitchen" and "Nocturne"

Abstract

    Female writers struggle to get recognition. The Irish literature has always been dominated by men. Irish poetry ignored the role of women and did not address their experiences and daily lives. As a result, the women's role was entirely passive. After finishing her second book, The War Horse, and having spent more time in the suburbs, Boland saw the suburbs in a different light. Her perspective on the suburbs shifted radically. Boland had depicted the suburbs as a dark place restricting women's freedom in her early collections, but she later realized that she could use the suburbs as a fertile ground to produce a new feature in her writings represented by conveying the voices of ordinary women.