B'ait Leo Bean: Gneithe den Ideeolaiocht Inscne i dTraidisiun Liteartha na Gaeilge by Mairin Nic Eoin Clochomhar 366pp, £13The Marxist concept of "ideology" is supposed to do for social behaviour what Galileo's telescope did for physics, enabling us to move neatly from appearance (literature, art, science, etc.) to reality (economics). The commentator says: you may think society is behaving in this way, but I will show you that, in reality, it is behaving quite differently. You may think your literature is open and humane; I will show you that it is, in fact, patriarchal and elitist.
Mairin Nic Eoin does this by giving us an ambitious "ideological" critique of over a thousand years of Irish literature and literary production. The book looks at the ancient literature (Part 1) and the early modern (Part 2) from three different points of view: the representation of women, the symbolic use of women in story and poetry, and the nature of women's creativity itself (women as writers and their work).
The early monastic literature tended to associate women with foolishness and sexual excess (mna baotha). This association can also be found in the symbolic literature, where even powerful female characters, such as Meadhbh in the Tain, are subject to patriarchal politics. In so far as they break out of these confines their influence is shown to be malignant and destructive. Women's advice should not be followed, still less a woman's commands, or destruction results.
The situation was not entirely oppressive, however. Words have been put into the mouths of some women in the stories (Deirdre, for example) which open up a space in which the combative basis of male society can be questioned and the patriarchal structure of the story itself challenged by the humane response of the principal female character.
In a truly astonishing way, Mairin Nic Eoin also manages to present us with a broad outline of how woman functioned as writers and of their position in Irish literary society. Although the introduction of Christianity severely diminished the status of female poets, women were, nevertheless, able to enter the religious life and in that way become scholars and authorities in their own right. Needless to say, not many of the names of these learned women or of their achievements have come down to us, but it is to them that we owe some of the finest poems of the Old Irish period.
With the arrival of the Continental religious orders in the later Middle Ages and the laicisation of the bardic schools, women were further excluded. Ireland followed the general European trend, promoted by the Church, of stricter social stratification parallel with the exclusion of women from the "men's world" of religion, politics, and the arts. With the decline of the bardic/noble hegonomy, however, women begin to appear again on the literary scene, though the basic patriarchal nature of the literature remains the same. This provoctative book is clearly written, readable and scholarly (most of the six chapters have over two hundred footnotes each). To label it a "feminist" critique is in no way to limit its scope or to imply that it is not a fundamental revision of our understanding. On the contrary, it shows, once again, that a feminist point of view not only can be valuable, rewarding, and revelatory, but can also provide a more complete explanation of certain phenomena than may have been available up to now.
Once again, therefore, in a relative short space of time, following on Breandan O Buachalla's Aisling Ghear, we are presented with a revolutionary book of scholarship in the Irish language. There can be little doubt that an important scholarly discourse has begun in our other language, encompassing both history and literature and overcoming the boundaries of both. It is to be hoped that scholars in other areas (archaeology, anthropology, sociology, economics, etc.) will overcome their prejudices against writing in Irish and contribute to this debate which has - as exemplified by this book - already enriched immeasurably our understanding of both the present and the past.