access the present moment the ëhistorical materialistí has to stop
history. To taste ënow timeí, the agent has to break out of ëthe
homogenous course of historyí, blasting a specific life or, in Bolandís
case a womanís experience, out of the historical continuum. Like
Benjamin, Boland hopes to break through the continuum of History
with a present moment that is arrested, held or fixed into her poems
like a tableau. It is as if ënow timeí has to be held in a vacuum apart
from the wheels of History. But by its very nature, representation
cannot get to a ënow timeí since as it re-presents, the moment cannot
be held out to us as ënow.í So it is difficult to imagine how Benjamin
imagines he will ëarrestí the historicist continuum and how Boland
can represent a more authentic ënow timeí or version of herstory
within a representative space which tends to miss the present and
therefore becomes a misrepresentative space. How far then is
Bolandís exploration of female identity, female time, and the
relationship between ëWomaní and ëNationí bound up within the same
old structures of oppression?
The Authentic and Inauthentic
ëThe Achill Womaní begins Outside History: A Sequence and it
constitutes an attempt to break free from idealized and delimited
representations of Irish female identity. Boland depicts an Irish
woman who at first appears not to be idealized into the symbols of
Goddess or Motherland. Instead, she is represented as a living woman
ëcarrying waterí rather than a sceptre, wearing ëa tea towel around her
waistí and a ëwool cardiganí rather than a hooded cloak. Neither is the
Irish landscape around her mythologized as an Emerald Isle of
romantic mists and towers as is found in the Revivalist writing of
W.B. Yeats. The apparent simplicity of the womanís appearance
suggests that she has been ëdemythologized.í Even so, there is some-
thing timeless and ëIrishí about this woman who is associated with an
ëEaster moon.í Of course, Easter has particular resonance within Irish
nationalist history and femininity tends to be symbolized by the moon.