Crazy Jane is the name of the woman speaker in a sequence of poems whichYeats wrote in the years from 1929 to 1931, and are collected in “Words for MusicPerhaps” section of The Winding Stair and Other Poems. Her words and deeds in thepoems show that she is a very interesting and impressive woman. This paper is anattempt to understand this “crazy,” old, and wild woman, and to relate her to Yeats thepoet and to Ireland.
The first and introductory part of the paper begins by reading “Crazy Jane Talkswith the Bishop,” the most famous poem of the Crazy Jane sequence. In Jane's talkwith the bishop in this poem, not only in what she says, but also in the manner of herspeech, we can quite clearly see what kind of person she is, and what kind of life sheis living. Such understanding prepares us for the reading of the whole poems in thenext part. Finding many of the poems difficult to understand, and interpretations ofthem different from critic to critic, the present writer tries to read the poems as closelyas possible.
Based upon the close reading of the poems in the second part, the third and lastpart of this paper considers some aspects of Crazy Jane’s personality and life, and theirimplications to Yeats and Ireland. First, the paper considers the possibility that Jane'sfree and bold expression of her sexual desire and love in the poems can be understoodas the awareness and affirmation of feminine sexuality and love, and the critique of therepressive sexual morality and culture of the Irish society, especially the CatholicChurch. Next, this paper relates Crazy Jane to Yeats the poet and to Ireland, anddiscusses the ways in which she can be read as Yeats’s other self or mask, or as theimage of Ireland.