The Shadow Doll 1990
- Rhyme & Form: 3-line Stanza
- Tone: Contemplative, Anxious, Uncertain
- Imagery: World of Women, Past Traditions, The Locked Case
- Themes: Marriage, Time and Memory, Entrapment and Silence
- Poetic Techniques: Alliteration, Repetition
A Shadow Doll was sent to a bride-to-be in Victorian times by a dressmaker – it was a porcelain doll under a dome of glass modelling the dress.
This poem was published in the same year as The Black Lace Fan and there are some similarities between the two, mainly the technique of showing the past and present side by side (also see in The Famine Road). The story of this poem is that Boland is remembering the night before her wedding in the 70s and this prompts her to think about pre-wedding nights in the Victorian age (century previous). Boland describes how the dress was made:
They stitched blooms from ivory tulle
to hem the oyster gleam of the veil.
They made hoops for the crinoline.
The words Boland uses here to describe the dress are not meant for an ordinary wedding dress: ‘blooms’ – ‘oyster gleam’ – ‘crinoline’ suggests something much more elegant and special. Boland moves us into the present from the past as she now looking at the doll:
Now, in summary and neatly sewn -
a porcelain bride in an airless glamour –
the shadow doll survives its occasion.
Boland uses the term ‘airless glamour’ to emphasise that the doll has no life (no air) – it is lifeless suggesting Boland’s feelings on what marriage (and the entrapment that goes with motherhood) can do to someone. The image of the doll in her ‘airless glamour’ also represents all the forbidden, unspoken things in the female experience, all the things that were kept ‘under wraps’, all the things that fill Boland’s poetry. But the doll survives – even though the dress and the tradition of the shadow doll belong to the past, there is a reason for the doll surviving into the present but Boland does not make this clear – perhaps it is that even though she must suffer for a short time, she will endure beyond it?
Under glass, under wraps, it stays
even now, after all, discreet about
visits, fevers, quickenings and lusts
Boland informs us that the shadow doll, while kept in her glass box was privy to a world of social interaction, illnesses and impulses. It was often kept by the married woman and stored in a place where it could witness the world around it. Boland feels that this doll was keeping quiet about many things, note the use of the word ‘discreet’ and the plurals following. She goes on to put herself into the shoes of the bride-to-be:
and just how, when she looked at
the shell-tone spray of seed pearls,
the bisque features, she could see herself
inside it all, holding less than real
stephanotis, rose petals, never feeling
satin rise and fall with the vows
We get the sense that the Victorian bride feels imprisoned in this dress (remember it is Boland who is imagining herself as the bride in the past) – Boland feels that the woman has become the shadow doll ‘never feeling the satin rise and fall’ as she speaks her vows – it is the ultimate image of entrapment or imprisonment as she cannot do anything to help her own situation. Boland switches us back to more recent past – the night before her own wedding in stanza six. The poem has moved from imagining what the Victorian bride felt to real feelings, that of the poet herself. Boland dwells on the doll, the Victorian lady and her vows, and Boland’s own vows:
I kept repeating on the night before -
astray among the cards and wedding gifts -
the coffee pots and the clocks and
Boland has moved into her own present as she repeats the vows that she will publicly announce in the morning. This is a typical scene as we see the bride in a room containing the wedding presents and cards – she contemplates the life that she will lead after tomorrow. Even though she is ‘astray’ the final stanza is quite decisive:
the battered tan case full of cotton
lace and tissue-paper, pressing down, then
pressing down again. And then, locks.
What ever is contained inside the case is irrelevant; the important image to take from the end of the poem is the gesture of locking. Boland presses down on the case, and presses down again as the movement is captured – even the phrasing of the final line is intentional here as the final verb locks the sentence into place, and also locks the case.
Eavan Boland was not sent a shadow doll, therefore she did not feel the trappings of marriage as she may have if she saw herself in the image of a shadow doll – symbolism is key here. She locks her case and symbolically locks away any notions of a married woman being trapped in her home as the housewife and mother – Boland emerges in control of her future; the ‘astray’ woman in the penultimate stanza is no longer wandering. Boland challenges society’s discriminatory standards that the true feelings and expressions of women must remain ‘under wraps’ like the porcelain doll; women are expected to conform to the norms of a male dominated world.
Damien Gallagher
