Question

In Yeats’ poem “Crazy Jane Grown Old Looks at the Dancers”, how is love like a lion’s tooth? The poem references dancers, what kind of dance are they doing? how can you tell from the poem?

Answer 1

Introduction- Crazy Jane has long been a critical focus in discussing Yeats’s dramatis persona in his poems. Critics have approached her from various perspectives source studies, feminist analysis, psychoanalytical interpretation, biographical context, postcolonial approach etc.

Portraits of Crazy Jane are roughly classified in three types, first as impersonal mask, second as androgynous voice and gender reverse to express Yeats’s other, the finally the revision of the traditional gender role and personification of national identity.

Summary- Crazy Jane is in the line of culture of literary anonymity led by swift which many modernist followed. Crazy Jane grown old looks like at the dancers, she identifies herself with the female dancer and then moves towards the synthesis of both male and female dancers. The female dancer’s dance is “a knife” drawn “to strike him dead” but the male dancer’s dance is also to “strangle her.” In dancing Yeats’s metaphor for love making i.e. the ritual of synthesizing, both male and female are exposed to death because Love’s ritual of rebirth for Yeats require of killing them both before their eventual redemption wherein Life and Death are one in the cycle of reincarnation.