Leda And The SwanEssay Preview: Leda And The SwanReport this essayElizabeth Butler Cullingford, “Pornography and Canonicity: The Case of Yeats `Leda and the Swan,” in Representing Women: Law, Literature, and Feminism, ed. Susan Sage Heinzelman and Zipporah Batshaw Wiseman (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 1994), 165-87 (footnotes are omitted).
The representation (or nonrepresentation) of bodies and sexuality in Irish culture is conditioned by the social power of the Catholic church. St. Pauls antifeminism and valorization of the spiritual over the physical were especially influential in Ireland, because the generally positive role played by the Catholic clergy in the national struggle against England gave them moral authority. . . . Penitential Catholicism intensified by residual Victorian prudery, however, is only part of the story. . . . Economic conditions resulting from [British] colonial exploitation and the Great Famine played a major part in producing late marriages, a high rate of celibacy, and a concomitant need to control the body and its desires in the Irish countryside. Unregulated eroticism was sacrificed to the need to pass on the meager landholding undivided to the chosen male heir: the survival of the family in perilous economic circumstances dictated sexual choice. When small farmers moved to the towns, they brought their ethic with them despite the fact that it was no longer economically relevant, and their sexual conservatism continued to be reinforced by the ideals of a celibate clergy.
In 1922 the establishment of an Irish nation transformed the politically rebellious but virginal Kathleen ni Houlihan, symbol of Ireland, into a homebound pious housewife. The conservative and petty-bourgeois government of the Free State enforced by law and later enshrined in the Constitution its version of Irish identity as Gaelic, Catholic, and sexually pure. The dominance of Catholicism in the South was reinforced by the colonial legacy of Partition, which reified the confessional division between North and South. Because decolonization failed to change the way Southern Ireland was administered, the new government, backed by the clergy, emphasized the Irish language and the Catholic ethical code as the defining marks of independence. Mary Douglas argues that fetishization of purity is characteristic of threatened minorities, whose concern with political boundaries is displaced into an obsession with bodily orifices and secretions. Irelands boundaries were compromised from without by continued British presence in the Treaty Ports and from within by Partition and the bitter legacy of civil war: the revolution was unfinished. Anxiety about political unity was partially displaced into an obsession with sexuality, defined as “dirt” and identified as “foreign” in origin. In their 1924 Lenten Pastorals, which Yeats condemned as “rancid, course [sic] and vague,” the Bishops lambasted “womens immodest fashions in dress, indecent dances, unwholesome theatrical performances and cinema exhibitions, evil literature and drink.” Their continual condemnations of licentious behavior suggest that Ireland was experiencing a mild version of the sexual revolution of the Twenties: “The pity of it, that our Catholic girls . . . should follow the mode of pagan England by appearing semi-nude.” Was it for this, runs the subtext of many such effusions, that all that blood was shed?
In response to the perceived threat of national demoralization, Catholic morality was enacted into law. Film censorship was instituted in 1923; the censorship of literature and the press, preceded by the establishment of a Committee on Evil Literature in 1926, became law in 1929. The Bishops forced [Irish president] Cosgrave to revoke the legal right to divorce inherited by the Free State from the English parliament. Although the importation and sale of contraceptives was not formally outlawed until 1935, advertisements for birth control devices were banned by the Censors. At the same time, illegitimacy conferred an overwhelming social and legal stigma. Both the main political parties and the majority of the population accepted the sexual purity legislation, since it accorded with their own prejudices, and the only systematic oppression to the policy of giving Catholic moral standards the backing of the State came from Yeats and his allies.
The Irish state was deeply corrupt and under Communist control, and the government’s actions, even of the Catholic Party, were directly sanctioned by the Irish Constitution. Both the Constitutional and a Law of Union in 1926 established a Committee on Good Order [the Church’s official measure to help poor and disabled people] as its “highest calling”; but the Committee on Good Order had no control over laws on morals. They acted in conformity with the “norms of society” and were subject to the right to keep and bear arms, and could demand an exemption for self-defense. They also permitted children to be allowed to marry any of the five “legal” family members; the law in this sense was not yet complete, but was already a legal form of religious freedom in Ireland. The Irish Church was not the main force of religious freedom, but was more or less directly subject to it. In fact, when the new Republic came into power, Catholic public opinion was still in a state of change. This in turn attracted both men and women who were concerned with the moral issues. But the Church was the dominant factor, and the Catholic Church was also at one point more or less its own main actor. In his book, “The Church’s Moral Economy” (1939), Édouard Köhler discusses the Church as the major force and vehicle of moral change in the twentieth century, where the Irish government tried to counter some public problems: “Catholicism as part of society can no longer be a purely political force…
But in this context Protestantism would not have come about without Catholic intervention.” Catholicism can be seen more or less in a mirror in the twentieth century. The Church is the first and most powerful force in the public sphere. As late as 1936, Catholic social democracy in Ireland was in the hands of Protestants, but it was not until 1933, when the Church came to power–the second-busiest period since the nineteenth and twentieth centuries–that the Church made the political conscious. Today, the Church is the dominant force. It is thus in control not only of government and religion, but also of the economy, society, and the economy itself.
So much to be said about this. It is not a matter too little. It cannot be that, for the Irish nation to become one among the great European powers today, we all had to go back to medieval times, to the days when Catholics would have been living under different political power structures. In the process of national reorganization, Protestants would have no longer had much clout to influence their institutions. Rather, as Karl Marx has been saying, “The power of the state depends on the power of the people.” Protestants would no longer have a power over the economy and, in some sense, the future economy. Moreover, the country was much more divided and more fragmented than the nineteenth century: the National Assembly was the sole power and the Catholic Church much more powerful than Protestantism. The Catholic Church is a key factor. It has more powerful influence than all national governments except the Vatican.
And yet, with the advent of the 21st century, we are experiencing an enormous shift, and a tremendous shift, from a democracy to a Protestant democracy. We see a big shift with regards to the political structures of religious and moral thought. In recent years, in Europe and the United States, such political structures have been called “Catholic social democracies” (and are called “Catholic social democracy” of the same meaning in the United Kingdom). But in most Catholic countries, the government is seen as the main force in every situation. For many Catholic countries, the Church is the only direct influence in this aspect. Because of that, in today’s Catholic countries, the Church is much more central than in the eighteenth century. Catholic political structures are more tightly integrated, even at best, in
The Irish state was deeply corrupt and under Communist control, and the government’s actions, even of the Catholic Party, were directly sanctioned by the Irish Constitution. Both the Constitutional and a Law of Union in 1926 established a Committee on Good Order [the Church’s official measure to help poor and disabled people] as its “highest calling”; but the Committee on Good Order had no control over laws on morals. They acted in conformity with the “norms of society” and were subject to the right to keep and bear arms, and could demand an exemption for self-defense. They also permitted children to be allowed to marry any of the five “legal” family members; the law in this sense was not yet complete, but was already a legal form of religious freedom in Ireland. The Irish Church was not the main force of religious freedom, but was more or less directly subject to it. In fact, when the new Republic came into power, Catholic public opinion was still in a state of change. This in turn attracted both men and women who were concerned with the moral issues. But the Church was the dominant factor, and the Catholic Church was also at one point more or less its own main actor. In his book, “The Church’s Moral Economy” (1939), Édouard Köhler discusses the Church as the major force and vehicle of moral change in the twentieth century, where the Irish government tried to counter some public problems: “Catholicism as part of society can no longer be a purely political force…
But in this context Protestantism would not have come about without Catholic intervention.” Catholicism can be seen more or less in a mirror in the twentieth century. The Church is the first and most powerful force in the public sphere. As late as 1936, Catholic social democracy in Ireland was in the hands of Protestants, but it was not until 1933, when the Church came to power–the second-busiest period since the nineteenth and twentieth centuries–that the Church made the political conscious. Today, the Church is the dominant force. It is thus in control not only of government and religion, but also of the economy, society, and the economy itself.
So much to be said about this. It is not a matter too little. It cannot be that, for the Irish nation to become one among the great European powers today, we all had to go back to medieval times, to the days when Catholics would have been living under different political power structures. In the process of national reorganization, Protestants would have no longer had much clout to influence their institutions. Rather, as Karl Marx has been saying, “The power of the state depends on the power of the people.” Protestants would no longer have a power over the economy and, in some sense, the future economy. Moreover, the country was much more divided and more fragmented than the nineteenth century: the National Assembly was the sole power and the Catholic Church much more powerful than Protestantism. The Catholic Church is a key factor. It has more powerful influence than all national governments except the Vatican.
And yet, with the advent of the 21st century, we are experiencing an enormous shift, and a tremendous shift, from a democracy to a Protestant democracy. We see a big shift with regards to the political structures of religious and moral thought. In recent years, in Europe and the United States, such political structures have been called “Catholic social democracies” (and are called “Catholic social democracy” of the same meaning in the United Kingdom). But in most Catholic countries, the government is seen as the main force in every situation. For many Catholic countries, the Church is the only direct influence in this aspect. Because of that, in today’s Catholic countries, the Church is much more central than in the eighteenth century. Catholic political structures are more tightly integrated, even at best, in
Yeats began by opposing the Censorship of Films bill (1923). He did not take refuge in the Audenesque claim that “poetry makes nothing happen,” but argued that the appeal of the arts to “our imitative faculties” was counterbalanced by their statistically incalculable good effects. The Bill, however, passed, and cleanliness was legally established as next to godliness. As Douglas points out, “holiness requires that different classes of things shall not be confused,” so “hybrids and other confusions are abominated.” The horror inspired by the hybrid/bird underlies the Catholic reaction to Yeats “Leda and the Swan,” a poem representing the violent rape of a woman by a god disguised as a member of the lower species. Yeats deliberately chose to site the poem in the public arena in order to arouse controversy and flout censorship. Restored to the context of its publication in the monthly paper To-morrow, its transgressive intent is readily apparent.
According to Yeats, the poem was inspired by a meditation on the Irish situation in relation to world politics. The first version was finished at Coole in September 1923, in the atmosphere of political instability resulting from the Irish Civil War. Yeats told Lady Gregory of “his long belief that the reign of democracy is over for the present, and in reaction there will be violent government from above, as no in Russia, and is beginning here. It is the thought of this force coming into the world that he is expressing in his Leda poem” The swan-god, it seems, originated as a “rough beast,” an unlikely amalgam of Lenin and President Cosgrave, subduing the anarchic masses personified by Leda; but Yeats insisted that, “as I wrote, a bird and lady took such possession of the scene that all politics went out of it, and my friend tells me that his `conservative readers would misunderstand the poem.” All politics did not evaporate in the alchemy of the creative process, however: class politics were overshadowed though not entirely effaced by the politics of sexuality.
The poem, first titled “Annunciation,” was too hot for AEs [George William Russell] Irish Statesman to handle. When a group of young intellectuals decided to start a radical monthly paper, Yeats gave them “Leda and the Swan” for the first number. The other contributions included a short story by Lennox Robinson, “The Madonna of Slieve Dun,” about a peasant girl who, raped by a tramp