1. Introduction
Ireland, as the “oldest British colony” (Canny 25) experienced the colonization for almost seven centuries, what lead to the emergence of the postcolonial literature, which deals with the feeling of oppression. Besides the oppression from the dominant imperial centre, among this British Empire-colony parallel, there is another one, which must be mentioned, namely man-woman parallel. In the book A Double Colonization: Colonial and Post-Colonial Women’s Writing the editors Kirsten Holst Peterson and Anna Rutherford introduced the term “double colonization” and claimed that all women in colonial and postcolonial countries are doubly-colonized by experiencing the oppression of colonialism and patriarchy simultaneously (Visel 39).
Mary Condren supports this idea by saying that “. . . Irish women . . . were doubly colonized in virtue of their gender” (“Sacrifice and Political Legitimation: The Production of Gendered Social Order” 176), because British culture did not only bring a new language, new customs and new gender and value system, but also new images of the women. Ireland experienced the double colonization also …show more content…
Although Boland does not refer to this issue in her poem directly, it could be supposed that self-starvation is not released only by the fact that Catholic church views men as superior what results in the speaker’s desire of mirroring male body and rejection of the derogatory and sinful female flesh. Biologically, “female fat is closely related to menstruation and pregnancy; they are both indicative of a woman’s biological maturity” (González-Arias, “Foodless, Curveless, Sinless: Reading the Female Body in Eavan Boland’s ‘Anorexic’”), so it could be assumed that she is also governed by her wish to have no period and wants to suppress the procreative potential of her body. Besides, many medieval descriptions of the Virgin Mary
Ireland, as the “oldest British colony” (Canny 25) experienced the colonization for almost seven centuries, what lead to the emergence of the postcolonial literature, which deals with the feeling of oppression. Besides the oppression from the dominant imperial centre, among this British Empire-colony parallel, there is another one, which must be mentioned, namely man-woman parallel. In the book A Double Colonization: Colonial and Post-Colonial Women’s Writing the editors Kirsten Holst Peterson and Anna Rutherford introduced the term “double colonization” and claimed that all women in colonial and postcolonial countries are doubly-colonized by experiencing the oppression of colonialism and patriarchy simultaneously (Visel 39).
Mary Condren supports this idea by saying that “. . . Irish women . . . were doubly colonized in virtue of their gender” (“Sacrifice and Political Legitimation: The Production of Gendered Social Order” 176), because British culture did not only bring a new language, new customs and new gender and value system, but also new images of the women. Ireland experienced the double colonization also …show more content…
Although Boland does not refer to this issue in her poem directly, it could be supposed that self-starvation is not released only by the fact that Catholic church views men as superior what results in the speaker’s desire of mirroring male body and rejection of the derogatory and sinful female flesh. Biologically, “female fat is closely related to menstruation and pregnancy; they are both indicative of a woman’s biological maturity” (González-Arias, “Foodless, Curveless, Sinless: Reading the Female Body in Eavan Boland’s ‘Anorexic’”), so it could be assumed that she is also governed by her wish to have no period and wants to suppress the procreative potential of her body. Besides, many medieval descriptions of the Virgin Mary