How To Ruin Your Daughter's Life
Would he were Heathcliffe, brooding and dark,
Hated and chilling, but having love’s coveted mark.
Or would he were Romeo, tragic in life
But death brought him closure, closer to his loving wife.
Yet the fate of the Phantom was to be Yeats’ too
His own story helped make many-a great poetic brew.
Passion, unrequited love was to be his downfall,
A lass called Maud Gonne held him in her thrall.
In 1889 Maud Gonne he encountered,
She was passionate and fiery, he simply floundered.
Rich heiress she was, and politically headstrong
Beautiful as Helen, men followed her in throngs.
Not once nor twice but four times he proposed
Unfortunately for him, this idea she always opposed.
Drowning in sorrow, wallowing in his rejection
Yeats’ poems are an insight to this very dejection.
A poem he wrote, a prayer for his daughter
A series of blessings and attributes he wished upon her.
As polar opposite to Madame Gonne as could be
Insipid, domesticated and plain was what he wanted to see.
His daughter was to have the happiness that was never for Yeats.
For this he was willing to manipulate the Three Fates.
Beauty, opinions and Irish radical politics were his bane
His daughter’s happiness he wouldn’t let (by these) be slain.
Verse one introduces his love for the wee lass,
The times overshadowed by civil war, alas
Ireland was in the throws of a pitched battle
Yet he wished no worry upon her other than the whereabouts of her rattle.
Verse two and he’s pacing the countryside in worry
The lines between his past and her future are blurry.
Hereafter he wants her life to be of a peaceful strand,
Free of the murder and bloodshed tainting his beloved land.
Beauty is the theme of the third verse
No vice is more desired and none he finds worse.
Comparisons with Maud and her effect on him
Make his perfect daughter not stunning but prim.
To have just that beauty, enough to make her kind.
To have just that beauty, not enough to make a stranger blind.
To have just that beauty, that finds her a loyal friend
To have just that beauty, the knowledge that beauty is an ‘insufficient end’.
The fourth verse has myth and legend as reference
To why sensible over exquisite is always a preference.
Helen of Troy and Aphrodite of Greece
Couldn’t use all their beauty to buy them some mental peace.
The fifth verse and she would have to be polite to a fault
To be chosen over beauty by any man worth his salt.
Verse six would have her quiet in her abilities
So only persistence would reveal her versatility.
Verse seven espouses the horrors of hate
Her mind that shouldn’t detest is a wondrous trait.
The eighth would have her innocuous and vapid
For the chase of opinions by strife is quite rapid.
The ninth would leave her happy everywhere
Even when company and harmony is spare.
To be delighted, able to stick through it all
Even in dark times, herself she could enthrall.
The tenth is a wish for matrimonial bliss
Something that, in Yeats’ life, was obviously amiss.
He bids her marry into civility and etiquette
For they would mean that she’s never to fret
Over arrogance and hatred and other such things
And she’ll always revel in the bounty that they bring.
And thus Maud helped shape Yeats’ daughter –
What not to be like is what she has taught her.
As feminists, our opinion on the poem is rather forceful,
The poet’s hypocrisy and chauvinism is reproachful.
His heart was broken; just because he was jilted
He wants his daughter to be dull and stilted.
Agreed, his writing is quite resplendent
But his content is offensive to equality defendants.
Sorry Mr. Yeats, but get over yourself
And teach your daughter to think for herself.
- Ayesha Malik
2009
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