Dec 24, 2009

It’s a Woman’s World | Critical Overview

The collection in which “It’s a Woman’s World” appears, Night Feed, stirred some controversy upon its publication in 1982. Along with Boland’s In Her Own Image, Night Feed marked a departure from her first collection by focusing on the role of women in Irish literature and society. Some early critics dismissed Boland’s poetry as “woman’s writing,” or unimportant in subject matter, while other critics lauded Boland’s woman-centered, feminist perspective, as well as her technical agility.

Many of the poems in Night Feed were...