Leda's importance in mythology primarily lies in her role as mother to Helen of Troy, whose capture from her Spartan King instigated the Trojan War, one of the greatest and most significant events in all Greco-Roman mythology. While it is Helen and Paris who are the direct instigators of the War, Leda acts as Mother and harbinger of this conflict. Out of the ashes of Troy and the war came Rome and thus the beginnings of modern society.
Leda in this poem, especially in this context, represents all women, from mothers to rape victims, and this representation is exceedingly important in the sociopolitical turmoil of the UK and Ireland during the 1920s. Despite Leda being stripped of power and literally laid bare as victim, she is also in a position of utmost power that may even rival the powers of Zeus. Out of her rape, out of violence and brutality is begotten more violence and more brutality on a much wider scale; her individual pain and suffering becomes the suffering of thousands for many years. Effectively, Leda's position as both Mother and victim allows an entire age, an entire world, to sympathize with her pain in the most literal sense. The Trojan War then acts as retribution for her marginalization and domination by Zeus, and without sympathy for women's similar position of economic, political, and social marginalization, our own modern society will suffer a similar fate.