Selections from Midwife to the Fairies by Eilis Ni Dhuibhne and selected poems by Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill
1) Angela Bourke writes how "although women characters are found prominently in fairy legends, and many legends are told by women, women's voices as subjects within them are relatively scarce" (572). She sees writers such as Ni Dhomhnaill and Ni Dhuibhne as performing an act of "resistance" in their works and "rewriting" the woman's subject position in fairy stories. Where do you see that work taking place in both of the women writers we have read?
2) What is the significance of Ni Dhuibhne's splicing of traditional folklore with the contemporary story in "Midwife to the Fairies"?
3) Ni Dhomhnaill has made a concerted political choice not to write in English, and instead she writes in the Irish language and has other poets translate her work. She stated once in an interview, "One of the things that causes me to get up in the morning is the desire
to take Irish back from that grey-faced Irish revivalist male preserve." Why do you think she has chosen to write in Irish? Why do you think this choice is both a political choice and an act of female empowerment? Where do you see this kind of female empowerment in her work?
By Kate Bruegmann
ReplyDeleteIn Midwife to the Fairies, I find it to be a story that not very women are meant to succeed in. Women usually do not get experience that type of authority and duty. This women who delivered this unknown premature baby, could not do anything but be silent and accept the fact that this baby had been put in a box and it just left to die. I do not know if this could be related to the famine, but I think that the baby, that was defenseless, was metaphorically, the Irish people who were affected by the potato famine. And the other Irish people who did not help the starving and suffering people from the British were the women who delivered the baby. She had the power to make a difference and bring justice to what happened in this situation, but she listened to her husband and did nothing. He told her, “Keep your mouth shut, woman, You did your job and were paid for it. This is none of your business” (29.) Even though he said that to her, most people know what is right or wrong, we all have a conscious. She then got the courage to stand up for what happened and she went to the guards, but that became a catastrophe. The husband of the child threatened her if she was to say anything else to the guards. She had no choice but to remain silent about what she knew. The family of the women who borne the child are the British. They were the ones who did the destruction for no reason. All these people had the right to change their action for the good, but failed in that process.
By: Lynn Schambow
ReplyDeleteIn “Midwife to the fairies” I think that Dhuibhne uses a modern twist to fairy stories. She uses this midwife to help deliver a baby. The man comes to get her and says he will drive her both way to and from his home. She wants to drive her own car but finds that the car will not start even though it isn’t very old and is serviced regularly. They go off into the night and come to the house. The midwife says this about the place “The house you could hardly see either actually. It was kind of buried like at the side of the road, in a kind of hollow. You wouldn’t know it was there at all until you were on top of it” (26). This made me think of the mystery of the fairy world, you know really know where it is and you don’t know your there until you’re in it. The people in the house are not acting like and girl is in labor they are just sitting around. They are described as zombies watching a late night film. It seems like a strange world that they family isn’t doing anything and the girl is so quite. “She must have been feeling a good bit of pain but she didn’t let on, not at all. Just lay there with her teeth gritted” (27). This way that they all are seems like fairy abduction is young girl is having a baby and no one is acting like they care. The way the men act at the end by treating her is like they want this to be a secret and have the girl get the blame for this child dying. Even the priest says this to the midwife “You did your best and that’s all God will ask of you” (29).
By: Ashley Kreul
ReplyDeleteThe way I see Ni Dhuibhne portraying her story Midwife to the Fairies would be about a legend of a mortal woman, who is a midwife, is taken away to this magical fairylike world to deliver a child. The way that the world is explained gives off this mystical magical place that is blinded by the darkness, hidden by trees, like Dhuibhne says “It was kind of buried like at the side of the road, in a kind of hollow. You wouldn’t know it was there at all until you were on top of it. Trees all around it too (26). This gave me the idea of the otherworld, this magical place that the woman was taken to by this man. She goes to the house to deliver the baby and that shows the idea of kind of like authority, women know how to deliver or something. While at the place, it was kind of mysterious and awkward for the lady; she says “But all I wanted then was to get out of the place. They were all so quiet and unfriendly like” And then she says “All sitting like zombies..They gave me the creeps” (27). After the birth the baby is left in the words to die kind of brings up the idea of fairy abduction and kids being taken from their mothers. Fairy abduction happened to make mothers suffer and I feel like the females suffered in this fairyland. The idea that I really caught on to was at the end, explaining how she saw the fairies and how that ties into other stories of this otherworld. “Which eye do you see me with? He asked. “With the right eye,” she said. Before he said another word he raised his stick and stuck it in her eye and knocked her eye out on the road. “You’ll never see me again as long as you live (30). This quote made it seem to me that the women were again subdued to male power and were victims of abuse. This quote makes it seem that she was blinded from reality because, the eye he took out was the one she saw the “fairy” with. So in order for her not to see the “fairy” or “fairy world” again would be to take out the eye she does see them with and blind her. That’s what I got out of the quote and I felt it was the way of women being victimized.
By: Lukas Wagner
ReplyDeleteIn “Midwife to the Fairies” I think the women roll is shown as the way many women were treated in Ireland. The women were either treated really well or controlled by their men like the women was in Midwife to the Fairies. She wants to tell the guard everything and what has been going on but is threatened by her husband. To me I see that the men control more than anything the women are always there and have something to say but usually what the man says goes. I also think that the baby represents something more than just a baby they left behind. To me it represents all that the Irish people have had to go through like the potato famine. The baby was just left there to die defenseless with no way to survive. During the potato famine this is what happen to many of the Irish people they starved and were pretty much left for dead and had no way to survive. I also see this as a representing a lot of other things that the Irish people have gone through like the British trying to run their country. They had been fighting a battle that was not easy where many of the Irish people died. In the end I think that this story represents all the bad things that the Irish people have gone though.