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THE TREATMENT OF WOMEN IN THE PLAYS OF WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS .CATHERINE COWEN WEDWICK A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY December, 1975 BOWLING GREEN STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY • * ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to examine the diversified ways in which William Butler Yeats characterized the women in his plays, with particular emphasis on his concepts of the various roles inherent in womanhood. The critical method used employed detailed analysis and close textual study of Yeats’s plays. Specific plays and characters were singled out because they represented an apparent pattern in Yeats's work, and because they tended to represent the fullest development of a type of play or character, or a particular view of womanhood. Yeats’s vision of the concept of love as a conflict with self revealed a bleakly ironic philosophy that saw life as a pattern of defeat. Study of the characters indicated an intricate variety of temperaments, values and motives. Yeats's woman as child is stripped of her right to a sense of self, and viewed as an appendage of her mate. Using the idea of sex and birth as a violation of woman as mother, Yeats manipulated her self-sacrificing love into a punitive emotion capable of stifling mature action by the hero. Yeats allowed his woman as queen the right to pursue personal freedom and self- interest, making clear that freedom is something one grants to one’s self. The study concluded that Yeats exhibited an unique willingness and ability to express an ever-changing, multi-faceted view of womanhood; and that the presence of the Yeatsian heroine and her moral choices are mandatory factors in the development of the Yeatsian hero. Ilî ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am deeply indebted to Dr. Charles R. Boughton, advisor and friend, for extending to me the benefits of his scholarship; and for the encourage­ ment and guidance necessary to the completion of this dissertation. I gratefully acknowledge the assistance and valuable insight af­ forded by the members of my doctoral committee: Dr. Lois Cheney, Dr. Agnes Hooley, Dr. Briant Hamor Lee, and Dr. Allen Kepke. Lastly, I wish to thank my parents, James and Frances Cowen, for the many sacrifices made in my behalf; and my husband, Dr. Daryl M. Wedwick, for his help, understanding and confidence. I'/ TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I Introduction ......................... 1 Background.............................................. 7 II Woman As Child..................... 29 III Woman As Mother............. 67 IV Woman As Queen............................... 100 V Conclusions. ....................... 138 Bibliography . ......................... 145 V IN MEMORY OF MY GRANDMOTHER, MARY ANN O'TOOLE NAUGHTON, WHO TAUGHT ME WHAT IT MEANS TO BE IRISH CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION In an era when an ugly spirit of class-conscious intolerance and closed-shop bigotry yawns over the chasm between the native Irish popu­ lace and the Anglo-Irish minority, it may seem strange that William Butler Yeats is elevated to the top echelon of Irish immortals. It would indeed be difficult to overstate the importance of the master founder and architect of what came to be known as the Irish Literary Renaissance, a re-birth which indeed without him would have been doomed to non-existence. A singularly special man, by all rights Yeats should have followed his Anglo-Irish Protestant heritage and proceeded down the literary path forged by Goldsmith, Congreve, Sheridan, and, in his own time, by Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. It would have been the natural thing in those late years of the nineteenth century and the early ones of the twentieth for the father-to-be of the Irish theater to have followed his cultural bent and to have ended up in Edwardian London. John Philip Cohane characterizes Yeats as the immortal who above anyone else "brought back into the sunlight Ireland’s dimly remembered past,"l and even more, Ijohn Philip Cohane, The Indestructible Irish, Meredith Press, New York, 1969, p. 27. 2 . because when the moment of supreme truth arrived he, an Anglo-Irish Protestant, saw for the first time that the common Irish around him in the flesh were the equals in every way of those whose epic spirits had long enthralled and inspired him. 2 Instead of giving In to the tyranny of his cultural background, Charles Lucey contends that Yeats thought --- and said no. He turned instead to Cuchullain and Maeve and Deirdre in Irish saga and to the impoverished but unconquerable Irish peasant in field and bog.3 That William Butler Yeats loved Ireland is abundantly apparent in his desire to raise the level of the literature written in and for Ireland, and in his determination to link the Ireland of his times to the Celtic traditions of her past; thereby giving her an artistic legacy. What may not be apparent, and cannot be neglected, is that, given the choices foisted upon him by his Anglo-Irish Protestant ancestors, Yeats decided to deny the English traditions, the Edwardian London that he hated, and formalized religion. In short, Yeats chose simply to be Irish. Ireland herself Is symbolized by a woman, Cathleen Ni Houlihan or Dark Rosaleen or the Shan Van Voght --- The Poor Old Woman. The feminine motif is strong in Ireland; her history is laced with earthy, passionate, dominant females like the ancient queens Deirdre and Maeve of Connaught, and the Galway pirate queen Grace O’Malley, along with the numerous heroines of the Irish Revolution. ^Cohane, p. 28. ^Charles Lucey, Ireland and The Irish: Cathleen Ni Houlihan Is Alive and Well, Doubleday and Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, 1970, p. 128. 3 Richard O’Connor, in discussion of the women represented in Celtic mythology has pointed out that . their vibrant passions might be compared with the curious conduct of the ancient hero Cuchullain, whose wild fury in combat could be stilled immediately if the enemy sent forward a naked woman, upon which Cuchullain would cover his stricken eyes. As one com­ mentator on the ancient legends has remarked, ’The male is a characterless, wailing and complaining figure, acting not from the heat of the blood but in conformity with a destiny laid upon him by spells and oraclesThe women, however, were figures of splendid wrath and active dispositions. Even the most cursory study of Yeats’s plays and poetry will re­ veal his strong attraction for these legendary heroines. A brief glance at a Yeats biography will show that from the beginning of his adult life to its end, women were always important to him. He rarely undertook an activity in which women were not involved, and he chose women as his confidantes throughout his life. Joseph M. Hone states in the definitive biography of Yeats that he was usually more at ease in the company of women than of men.5 in her biography of Lady Gregory, Yeats’s co-founder at the Abbey Theatre, Elizabeth Coxhead comments: What is plain from his correspondence is that Yeats was one of those rare men who have a gift for intel­ lectual friendship with women, and with several of them simultaneously . The friendships survived his correspondents marriages, and eventually his own, surely another pointer to their nature.6 ^Richard O’Connor, The Irish: Portrait of a People, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1971, p. 163. 5Joseph M. Hone, W. B. Yeats: 1865-1939, 2nd ed., St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1962, p. 55. ^Elizabeth Coxhead, Lady Gregory: A Literary Portrait, 2nd ed., Seeker & Warburg Limited, London, 1961, p. 50. The specific object of this study Is to examine Yeats's treatment of women as they are characterized in his plays. It is these women who em­ body his ideals: perfect beauty, heroic nobility, aristocratic excellence and wisdom. Such exploration will necessarily involve a delving into the cultural background in which Yeats chose to set down his roots, and subsequently find his subject matter. An exploration of the fiber of his women characters will hopefully divulge the attitudes toward love, hate, sexual expression, violence and isolation that shaped his imagery and his drama. The duality of the sexes was for Yeatsfe symbolic of the duality of human life; in their union (body and/or spirit) he saw the symbol of the transcendant unity for which human life reaches. It is also possible to arrive at a somewhat clearer insight into the men in Yeats plays, for any character is best seen in relationship to the other characters in a play and in their interaction. * The relationship of William Butler Yeats with the women in his life as reflected in his poetry has been exhaustively chronicled by Margaret Mary Vanderhaar in her unpublished dissertation Yeats's Relationships With Women and Their Influence On His Poetry. Brenda S. Webster, in her book, Yeats --- A Psychoanalytic Study, has tracked the creative process in Yeats's work by analyzing the fantasies and dreams embedded in his life and work, to show the relationship of his view of his body with the sug­ gestive facts of his life. This present study will seek to establish Yeats’s view of womanhood as it derives from the very nature of Yeats as an Irish man, steeped in the time honored traditions and attitudes of his native country, and his 5 native mythology. In a broader sense, the study will attempt to show that Yeats’s Irishness is at the core of the attitudes that took ex­ pression in his drama. The method In the following study is basically critical, and em­ ploys close textual study. Specifically, an attempt will be made to paraphrase the content of each play studied, and to relate it to its folk sources.

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