Yeats and Gender

The presentation of women: An unavoidable feature of Yeats’ presentation of women is his recoil from what he calls their opinion. One of the regrets in ‘Easter 1916’ is what happened to the woman who took up revolutionary politics (lines 17-23). It is easy to see Yeats as someone who accepts conventional roles for women – such as delighting in good conversation and enjoying country pursuits. He certainly respected the life of the landed gentry, and in his poetry he honoured the culture of country houses. It is no good pretending that he was an unquestioning supporter of those changes in female aspirations that were associated with the suffragette movement. However, nor would it be just to cast him in the role of the unthinking misogynist. All the rebels in ‘Easter 1916’ are criticized for their single- minded devotion to a cause that sought political change through violence. What happened to the woman who once ‘rode to harriers’ happened not because she was a woman but because she, like the other rebels, forgot everything she once valued in order tp purue a violent course.

Leda and the Swan: Another difficult poem from the point of view of gender interpretation is ‘Leda and the Swan’. The story was popular, particularly with painters. Yeats used Michelangelo’s more explicit painting as a stimulus for his poem. Here the swan, its webbed feet visible, lies between Leda’s thighs with its long neck nestling between her breasts and its bill touching her lips. Yeats poem does not follow the picture in every detail; the swan does not hold her by the nape of the neck, and her fingers are not resisting attack. Might Yeats’ poem therefore be interpreted as being about rape? The following points need to be considered:

• The first 8 lines of the sonnet give an uncomfortable detailed account of the story. Leda is attacked ‘A sudden blow’, she staggers, her finders try to resist and she feels the heart of the swan beating. Yeats is confronting the reader with the actuality of sexual violation.
• The turning point of the poem is in line 9 ‘A shudder in the loins engenders there’ Perhaps the focus of the poems shifts. Rape is an expression of male power and desire; its aim is not usually impregnation. Furthermore, the elevated and archaic language – ‘loins engenders’ – belongs to myth or ancient chronicle.
• Inevitably questions about gender produce gender answers. We should not forget that this is a poem about the mythic past, and if we ask questions about myth, a different interpretation of the poem is obtained (see hand out on myth)
• Nevertheless, the close of the poem brings the reader back to the details of sexual attack. Yeats leaves us with Leda as a victim. There is a question, but we do not know the answer. The poem ends with the conventional picture of the indifference of a male attacker whose lust has been satisfied.

Maude Gonne and the traditions of love poetry: Many of Yeats’ poems are in some way concerned with Maude Gonne. Like many poets before him, Yeats writes about the pains of unrequited love, using the conventions of love poetry to write about the desired but unattainable woman. However, quite often Maude is mythologized and becomes a ‘construct’ of the poet’s writing.

• Yeats’ beloved is imagined in terms of a number of traditions. In the terms of classical literature, she is Helen of troy – the one with the ‘Ledaean body’ in ‘Among School Children’. And we should remember that Helen’s mother was Leda. The disturbing passions of ‘Leda and the swan’ might be felt when he presents Maude as Helen.
• It is a convention of traditional love poetry to present the beloved as the most beautiful of all women. This is apparent in many of his poems, when he comments upon Maude’s beauty, which although fades over time, will return in death and his youthful fervour will be renewed.
• One of the traditional roles of the beloved is that of the disdainful woman of Renaissance love poetry, who cruelly rejects the advances of the lover. This would seem to fit with Yeats’ personal experiences of rejection by Maude over and over, but can you see where this idea is reflected in his poems? She is certainly aloof in ‘The cat and the Moon’ and he seems to have accepted her rejection in ‘Broken Dreams’ doesn’t he?
• Like the Elizabethan poets, Yeats writes of the sorrows of love. The ache of the lack of fulfilment is present in ‘The Wild Swans of Coole’; his heart ‘is sore’ and he sees in the swans what he no longer has – ‘Passion and conquest’
• Both the beloved and the lover are involved in the politics of love. The happiness of the lover depends upon the beloved yielding to him; her power resides in refusal. Consequently women are often presented as unaccountable, unpredictable and capable of making strange choices.

Departing from the traditions of love poetry: In three respects, Yeats is not a traditional love poet.

• He openly writes of sexual passion; in the rhythms of ‘The Cold Heaven’ there is the turmoil of unsatisfied desire. Sexual desire is sometimes an unstated theme. The Byzantium poems are written from the perspective of one who knows he is one of the ‘blood-begotten spirits’.
• Yeats also dwells on the combination of sexual desire and old age. Sometimes he suggests that desire weakens and he quite often talks about how the passions of youth remembered in old age torture him. Even in his earlier poems, love and old age is a theme.
• Yeats does not name his beloved. Renaissance poets often either used the woman’s real name or adopted a name. Therefore, do we need to know the biographical details of the person behind his words or are his love poems more about the message and the character merely a construct used for his message about love?