Degas’s Laundresses: Poet & Context

Poet: Eavan Boland

Eavan Boland (1944-2020) was an Irish poet and academic who is renowned for her poetry that tackles issues related to women’s life experiences and the history of Ireland.
She experienced controversy in Ireland due to her unflinching depiction of women’s domestic life, particularly during the 1980s when her feminist ideas directly challenged the “celebratory male-orientated nationalism” of Irish literature.
Boland’s body of work often challenges traditional depictions of women in literature and art, portraying women in ordinary, everyday situations, in contrast to the romantic or heroic depictions often seen in the works of male artists and writers.
As a proponent of womanhood and domesticity, she uses her poetry to bring attention to the often unseen labor and struggle of women, revealing the unsentimental reality of femininity beyond its romanticized portrayal.

The poem is a reflection on Edgar Degas’s painting, “Les Blanchisseuses” (The Laundresses), which depicts women labouring in the monotony and hardship of their daily work.
This painting, when viewed through Boland’s lens, becomes an exploration of the hidden stories of women and their unseen, often undervalued work.
Degas, as a part of the french Impressionist movement of the late 19th century, portrayed scenes of modern life and was acclaimed for his depiction of the Parisian working class. However, Boland opines that his depiction of these women, while appreciated as art, fails to do justice to their lived experiences.
The poem can also be seen within the wider socio-economic context of the 19th-century France where class disparity and gender roles were defined and rigid, a backdrop that empowers Boland’s commentary on the marginalisation of working-class women.
By providing a more realistic and humane perspective of the laundresses, Boland, in effect, challenges artistic traditions and assumptions about the depiction and perception of women in both art and literature.