were dictated not by any specifically feminist intention preceding the poem, but
rather by a reading of the dictionary.^6But it is precisely by reading the dictionary that McGuckianís poetic
demonstrates a feminist concern with the issues of gender.
McGuckianís etymology in ëAviaryí makes links between an ëaspen
tongueí, the Old English ëÊspeí or ëaspí from which the word ëaspení
derives, ëthe tongue of a womaní, ëaspení as ëa poplar tree with
especially tremulous leavesí and a ëpersimmoní or an ëevergreen tree
bearing edible pulpy orange fruitsí, and her ëwholly femaleí ëlonger
sentencesí.^7 Historically, women have been considered (usually by
men) to be very poor at grammar and a feminine line is characterized
as one that rambles and fails to operate in terms of the usual
grammatical laws.^8 By reading the dictionary, ëAviaryí provides a
snaky poetic line uttered by the forked or ëaspen tongueí ëof a womaní
whose ëdegree of falsehoodí questions rational modes of thinking to
which the male gender has been attributed. This leads to the prob-
lematization of communication between female and male, whereby
she characterizes a ëdifficult daughterí and a ëcache-/ Enfant against
all men.í
From the French verb ëcacherí, with its meanings of secrecy,
masking and hiding, ëcache-/ Enfantí is a useful name for
McGuckianís playful, protective and childish poetic speaker. ëCache-
cacheí refers to the game of hide-and-seek and is evocative of
McGuckianís secretive poetics. As a compound noun that is not listed
in either monolingual or bilingual dictionaries, the word ëcache-/
6 Docherty, ëPostmodern McGuckianí, p.191.
7 The Concise Oxford Dictionary, ed., Della Thompson (Oxford: Clarendon, 9th
edn., 1995), p. 73, p.1019.
8 For examples of the way in which a womanís bad grammar has been ironed out
see Anne K.Mellorís documentation of the ways Percy Shelley altered Mary
Shelleyís manuscript of Frankenstein changing her dashes into semicolons and
altering her straightforward and colloquial diction into a more ponderous and
latinate prose. Cf. Mellor, Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters
(New York: Routledge, 1988), pp.58ñ69 and Appendix; E.B. Murray,
ëShelleyís Contribution to Maryís Frankensteiní, Keats-Shelley Memorial
Bulletin, 29 (1978), pp.62ñ8. Here, there is published a useful sideñby-side
listing of the rough draft and fair copy, and the 1831 revision. Cf. Johanna M.
Smith, ëìCooped Upî: Feminine Domesticity in Frankensteiní, Frankenstein
Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism (Boston: Bedford, 1992), p.273.