Degas's Laundresses: Plot

Degas’s Laundresses: Plot

Overview and Themes

• “Degas’s Laundresses” is Boland’s reflective exploration of a painting by Edgar Degas which portrays the lives of working-class laundresses.
• Key themes include gender roles, social class, the intersection of art and reality and the significance of mundane, everyday life.

Imagery and Description

• The poem begins with a focus on the task at hand: “She has just rounded the corner”. Regular usage of enjambment ensures an ongoing sense of movement and struggle.
• The laundress is depicted with images that highlight her labour and discomfort, such as “burns” and “blisters”. This physicality paints a vivid picture of the hardships faced by the working-class women.

Use of Metaphors and Symbols

• The heat is personified as an antagonistic force: “the furnace gapes at her - a wanton mouth…”. This gives readers an insight into the harsh working conditions the laundress must endure.
• Laundry basket symbolizes the weight of hardship, burdens and societal expectations on women and working classes: “The basket, slack as a metaphor, clumsy as a full stop…”.

The Painting as Mirror of Reality

• Boland addresses the dichotomy between the depicted image and reality: “This is not her. There is no light.”. The directness of ‘not her’ is poignant, emphasising a strong disparity between the image and the actual experience of the laundress.
• Boland’s sustained focus on the materiality and the realism of Degas’ painting parallels her own insistence on the importance of domestic, ordinary, and overlooked elements of life.

Reflections and Concluding Thoughts

• The poem ends with a reflection on societal reformation over time: “her daughters will not bear the mark of the iron.”
• The use of the phrase “mark of the iron” suggests not only the literal iron used for pressing clothes but also the metaphorical iron in terms of its harshness and demanding nature.