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eBook details
- Title: Revaluations: Representations of Women in the Tragedies of Gregory and Yeats (1) (Critical Essay)
- Author : Irish University Review: a journal of Irish Studies
- Release Date : January 22, 2004
- Genre: Reference,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,Language Arts & Disciplines,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 364 KB
Description
Lady Gregory's professed agenda in devoting herself to the theatrical movement was to bring dignity to Ireland. The stage history of her tragedies is meagre, yet it is in Kincora, Dervorgilla, and Grania that a further possible agenda of bringing dignity to the condition of women in Ireland is seen at its most challenging. All three plays focus on strong women: 'strong' in the sense that none is content to be an adjunct to men but takes decisive steps that gain her a name in history and myth; each is a shaper of destiny. It is the particular name traditionally accorded to these figures that Gregory contests as a masculine construct, a too-easy placing (morally, sexually, politically) that merits her reappraisal. While she is fond of recording the ideas and judgements to be found in 'the book of the people', she does not always subscribe personally to the interpretation of the past that is written there. Noticeably, for example, the notes accompanying the publication of Grania recall 'that I never hear her spoken of with sympathy, and her name does not come into the songs as Deirdre's does' and she supposes that the motive for this is doubtless 'Grania's breach of faith'; (2) but her play offers a decided counterview, which, while it may not condone, never condemns, seeking rather to bring audiences into a state of sympathetic understanding. All thee tragedies invite flexibility of spectator response: they challenge audiences the better to open up traditional portrayals of women for reappraisal. It is significant in this that she never attempted a dramatization of the life of Deirdre: Gregory could recognize her appeal to men (she describes her as 'sad, lovely Deirdre', that is, as a worthy carrier of the male gaze in her state of pathos), but finds nothing in Deirdre's story to rouse her sympathy as a woman, because 'when overtaken by sorrow [she] made no good battle at the last (p. 283)'. For Gregory, Deirdre lacked resilience and tenacity of purpose and will; she was not a strong woman, the type that stimulated her creativity. The women whom Yeats depicted in his dramatizations of myth were generally of a very different quality than strong. The Grania he devised in collaboration with George Moore is febrile and flirtatious, a creature of whims rather than deep passions. The only women to appear directly in On Baile's Strand are anxious guardians of the hearth, embodiments of that 'settled' kingdom that Conchubar wishes the wild Cuchulain to subscribe to. Dectora in The Shadowy Waters has some touches of proud defiance on her first appearance as captive, but is predominantly conceived as the type of Pre-Raphaelite and Symbolist spiritual muse, leading Forgael veiled with her hair towards some unspecified consummation. Though these are innovative in being Irish dramas, there is nothing particularly innovative about the representation of women in them. When Yeats later turned to dance drama in imitation of the Noh, one might have expected change. The element of dance was not to be akin to ballet; and yet the representations of women through the medium of dance--the Hawk, Fand, the Young Girl (Dervorgilla)--are the stereotypes of classical ballet: bird-woman, sea-goddess, ghost.