본 연구의 목적은 T. S. 엘리엇의 황무지에 나타난 여성들의 노래를 통하 여, 여성의 억압과 자연의 착취 사이에 직접적 연관성이 있음을 진단하는데 있 다. 또한 이를 종교학, 여성학, 생태학적 비평을 융합하여 사회의 불평등 구조를 진단하고 해결하려는 시도를 하였다. 이전에 연구되었던 수많은 엘리엇의 선행 연구들은 다양하고 풍성하였다. 하지만 그의 종교성과 음악적 요소는 부분적으 로 연구되었고, 특히 여성들의 성적타락과 부도덕에 관해서 많은 비판이 있었던 반면, 그들의 노래에 재현된 고통과 갈망에 대한 연구를 거의 찾아볼 수 없었다. 생태비평적 관점에서도 여성들의 영성에 관한 연구는 찾아보기 힘들다. 따라서 본 논문에서는 엘리엇이 노래와 내러티브에 효율적으로 반향시킨 여성들의 종 교적 영성을 에코페미니스트 관점에서 분석하였다. 이는 황무지를 새롭게 재 해석하는 시도가 될 것이다. 엘리엇이 황무지에서 효율적으로 그려낸 신의 죽음/영성의 부재에 대한 각성, 황폐화된 자연환경, 여성의 억압적 사회구조를 인식하여, 조화롭고 평등한 사회로 발전시킬 가능성을 타진하였다. 이를 위하여 치유의 영적 에코페미니즘을 적용하여 분석하였다.

'Eco-feminism' as a combination of two words, 'ecology' and 'feminism', rests on the basic principle that patriarchical philosophies are harmful to women, children, and other living things. Eco-feminists feel that the patriarchical philosophy emphasizes the need to dominate and control unruly females and the unruly wilderness. What is stressed in eco-feminism is to change the still prevailing idea that the male-dominated civilization must be justified: eco-feminists think that human beings came to recognize that such civilization can't be the source of happiness. Meanwhile we can find that in Yeats's and Heaney's poems land and landscape are personified as an oppressed woman, from which I drew a hypothesis that these two poets may offer the prominent examples of literature based upon eco-feminism. By contrast, we can also find that these two poets also reveal patriarchism based upon Catholicism. Therefore, if anything, we can suppose that many works of these poets are reflecting both eco-feminism and patriarchism. The Irish poems and poets cannot but reflect these two ideas: eco-feminism and patriarchism. Meanwhile, in Irish poetry, woman is mainly reflected as three types of human-sovereign, procreator and lover. In Yeats's and Heaney's poems, woman and nature are to be appraised as important materials. Women in Yeats's poems are faithful to the traditional image as the lover or rarely the sovereign. And also, we can find that the persona wants to use her as his poetic inspiration by admiring her beauty and seeking sexual energy and wisdom from her. By contrast, women in Heaney's poems are mainly described as procreators who are to survive the oppressed land. The two poets are to be appraised to reflect eco-feminism in that they both show their love for woman and nature. Strictly speaking, however, Heaney's poems are more declined to eco-feminism while Yeats's poems are more declined to patriarchism: in Heaney's poems land and landscape sometimes appear as the oppressed woman; in Yeats's poems the persona blames woman for her violence, emphasizing that woman should have courtesy, wisdom and sexual attraction, not the intellectual hatred, whereas in Heaney's poems the persona never blames woman but feels pity for her oppressed situation.