Clodagh Finn: Please stop calling Maud Gonne ‘Yeats’ muse’

Maud Gonne deserves to be recognised as more than being defined by the men in her life. She was both fascinating and flawed.

It always bothers me when a woman is described only in terms of her relationship to the men in her life. Mention the name Maud Gonne, for instance, and someone is bound to add the annoying rider, “muse to poet WB Yeats”.

A muse conjures up some kind of ethereal sprite with no agency of her own and Maud Gonne, standing at 6’2” or 6’4” depending on the account you read, was anything but. She was an activist, a revolutionary, an awe-inspiring political agitator, a suffragette, a lecturer, a writer, a separated woman, and an actress who was both celebrated and booed on the Abbey stage. She was also an anti-semite, but more on that anon.