community, though dragged forward faster by Westminster
legislation, is as traditionally patriarchal as Catholic nationalism.í^8
There is a colonial mentality lurking in Longleyís statement as she
imagines the legislation of Westminster is more progressive than the
legislation of Dublin. Moreover, there are significant differences
between the politics of Gerardine Meaney from the South and the
Belfast based unionist position of Longley. Even so, it is notable how
Meaneyís discussion joins with that of Longley above, when she
explains how the whole country abounds in Ancient orders of
Hibernian male bonding. Meaney, who has spent some time in
Belfast, comments that Unionism is ëequally prey to the sexualization
of political identityí. She writes: ëWhatever other divisions there are,
Ireland, North and South, is united in its denial of womenís rights to
choose.í^9 Meaneyís pamphlet Sex and Nation (1991) argues, as has
Richard Kearney in Myth and Motherland (1984), that the Irish
woman is the terrain over which power is exercised.
In her essay, ëThe Floozie in the Jacuzzií (1989), Smyth also
notes how the history of colonization in Ireland has been one of
feminization.^10 Focusing on the statue of Joyceís Anna Livia
Plurabelle in Dublin, Smyth investigates the disabling impact of the
iconized female for Irish women who are presented as colonized by
imperialist, nationalist and chauvinist discourses. As Molly Mullin
notices, struggles over historical representation are also struggles over
identities.^11 Smythís challenge is to culturally encoded historical
knowledge so as to contest received definitions and modes of
representation of women in an effort to revalorize the feminine.
Comparably, in her 1989 pamphlet ëA Kind of Scar: The Woman Poet
in a National Traditioní, the Southern Irish poet Eavan Boland has
alluded to the ëpower of nationhood to edit the reality of woman-
8 Edna Longley, ëFrom Cathleen To Anorexia: The Breakdown of Irelandsí, The
Living Stream: Literature and Revisionism in Ireland (Newcastle: Bloodaxe,
1994), p.187.
9 Gerardine Meaney, Sex and Nation: Women in Irish Culture and Politics
(Dublin: Attic, 1991), p.11, p.10.
10 Meaney, Sex and Nation, p.7; Smyth, ëThe Floozie in the Jacuzzií, The Irish
Review, Vol.6 (1989), pp.7ñ21.
11 Molly Mullin, ëRepresentations of History, Irish Feminism and the Politics of
Differenceí, Feminist Studies, Vol.17, No.1, Spring 1991, pp.29ñ50.