Who is Irish writer Edna O’Brien? How had I not heard of her before spotting her obituary, titled Edna O’Brien, Writer Who Gave Voice to Women’s Passions, Dies at 93, in the New York Times this past July?

Browsing, I discovered that O’Brien’s first novel, The Country Girls, published in 1960 was banned. I hightailed it to the library because clearly, it’s a must-read.

What’s Up with the Men?

Initially, I suspected The Country Girls was banned because of the pathetic and unacceptable behavior of the male characters. Although the men’s behavior is not entirely unusual, it seems uglier and more damning on the page.

For instance, the main character Caithleen is beaten by her rageful, drunkard father, when her mother isn’t around to take the blows.

In this scene, young teen Caithleen is home with her friend Baba (Bridget) when her father who has been absent for some days reappears:

“I ran down and stopped dead in the kitchen doorway, because there he was. There was my father, drunk, his hat pushed far back on his head and his white raincoat open. His face was red and fierce and angry. I knew that he would have to strike someone.

‘A nice thing to come into an empty house. Where’s your mother?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Answer my question.’ I dreaded looking at those eyes which were blue and huge and bulging. Like glass eyes.

‘I don’t know.’

He came over and gave me a punch under the chin so that my two rows of teeth chattered together and with his wild lunatic eyes he stared at me. ‘Always avoiding me. Always avoiding your father. You little s–. Where’s your mother or I’ll kick the pants off you’(33).

Not new or unusual, but especially appalling relayed by the victim.

Further in the story, following the untimely death of her beloved mother, fourteen-year-old Caithleen is pursued by two much older men. One is Jack Holland who previously pursued her married mother! Now that she’s died, he seems to have set his sights on young Caithleen.

“Out in the shop Jack filled me a glass of raspberry cordial and I wished him a happy Christmas.

‘Thank you for your letters,’ I said.

‘You have caught their full implication?’ he said, raising his eyes so that his forehead broke into worried lines.

‘What implication?’ I asked, foolishly. So very foolishly.

‘Caithleen,’ he said, as he breathed deeply and caught hold of my hands. ‘Caithleen, in time to come I hope to marry you,’ and the red cordial in my throat froze to ice.

“I got away somehow. There was a threat that the chapped, colourless lips would endeavor to kiss mine, so I put the glass on the counter and said, ‘My father is waiting outside, Jack, I’ll have to run. ‘ I ran and the little latch that clicked as I closed the door clicked on Jack’s face that was transformed with a vague, happy smile. I suppose he thought that he had made a success of it.”(103-104).

This is a middle-aged man attempting to court a fourteen-year-old. That he thinks he’s been successful in laying a foundation for future relations is baffling.

The other middle-aged man is married and more successful in luring young Caithleen into his arms. Mr Gentleman, as he is known, is French and good-looking. (His last name is de Maurier, but the locals choose not to pronounce it. Due to his distinguished looks and ways, he is called Mr Gentleman.) He pursues Caithleen, or rather, stalks her. In this scene, he manages to take her to lunch in Limerick where she had planned to school shop:

‘So you tell me you have never kissed anyone?’ he said. He had a way of looking at me that made me feel innocent. He was staring now. Sometimes directly into my pupils, other times his eyes would roam all over my face and settled for a minute on my neck. My neck. My neck was snow-white and I was wearing a silk dress with a curved neckline. It was an ice-blue dress with blossoms on it. Sometimes I thought they were tiny apple blossoms and then again I thought the pattern was one of snow falling; but either way it was a nice dress and the skirt was composed of millions of little pieces that flowed when I walked.

‘The next time we have lunch, don’t wear lipstick,’ he said. ‘I prefer you without it’(64).

What? He’s already pushing his preferences onto her? But Caithleen is attracted to Mr Gentleman because he’s so unlike the many uncultured men in her life. She is also flattered by his attention and gifts, so, yes, there are many next times.

I cannot help myself from sharing one more appalling scene. Following her mother’s tragic death, Caithleen and Baba are sent to boarding school at a convent. Unable to bear it there, Baba masterminds their expulsion and soon the eighteen-year-old girlfriends are shuffled off to Dublin.

Here’s what Caithleen’s father has the gall to say to her before she leaves:

‘You’re to behave yourself in Dublin. Live decent. Mind your faith, and write to your father. I don’t like the way you’ve turned out at all. Not one bit.’

‘Tis mutual, most mutual,’ I thought, but did not say so. I was afraid of getting struck and all I wanted was to get quickly out of the smoky kitchen. Even my eyes were hurting, and the damn’ smoke made me cough’(126).

Wait, Caithleen’s irresponsible, terrorizing father doesn’t like how she’s turned out?

Why The Country Girls Was Banned

The abysmal behavior of many of the male characters in the novel is not what caused the outrage. I suppose that sort of behavior wasn’t considered as outrageous in the 1950s. That it stands out as abhorrent now is a good thing, perhaps indicative of progress made.

But the focus of this novel is not on the men, rather it’s on the girls and hence the big to-do.

The young female protagonists have desires and make decisions for themselves and this instigates harsh and lasting censorship in Ireland. In writer Edna O’Brien’s “ultra-conservative, ultra-religious and institutionally misogynistic society” (McBride), The Country Girls is considered blasphemous, the devil’s handiwork.

Irish writer Eimear McBride, in her article “Banned, burned and reviled: What was so radical about Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls?” explains the power of the book and why it was so threatening:

“O’Brien’s invocation of female characters who dared desire more from life than domestic and sexual servitude, emotional disaffection and intellectual abnegation, was nothing short of revolutionary.”

Yes, The Country Girls gave voice to Irish girls’ and women’s experiences, and that was indeed revolutionary.

Edna O’Brien was born in County Clare, Ireland in 1930. In 1954 she married Irish writer Ernest Gébler and they moved to London, where O’Brien would live for the rest of her life. They had two sons, but divorced in 1964, not long after O’Brien established herself as a notable writer. Awarded custody, she raised their two sons, Sasha and Carlo. Over her 60-year writing career, O’Brien wrote 17 novels, 8 short story collections, 8 dramas, 1 screenplay, 8 nonfiction works, 4 children’s books, and 1 poetry collection! Her most recent novel, Girl, was published in 2019.

Upon O’Brien’s passing, Ireland’s President Michael D. Higgins shared: “Edna was a fearless teller of truths, a superb writer possessed of the moral courage to confront Irish society with realities long ignored and suppressed. Through that deeply insightful work, rich in humanity, Edna O’Brien was one of the first writers to provide a true voice to the experiences of women in Ireland in their different generations and played an important role in transforming the status of women across Irish society.”

What’s Up with the ‘Girls’?

Caithleen and Baba board a train to Dublin:

‘Chrisake, where’s there a smoking-carriage?’ Baba asked. Her father had put us on the train, but we didn’t let on that we each had a packet of cigarettes in our handbags.

‘We’ll look for one,” I said as we went down the corridor, giggling and giving strangers the ‘So what’ look. I suppose it was then we began that phase of our lives as the giddy country girls brazening the big city. People looked at us and then looked away again, as though they had just discovered that we were naked or something. But we didn’t care. We were young and, we thought, pretty’(130).

Oh horrors. The girls are having some fun and plan to have more.

Once settled in the city, Baba arranges dates with rich men, young or old, whoever can show them a good time. Caithleen is less into these arrangements but is willing to play along.

Sean O’Hagan, in his article “Edna O’Brien: I want to go out as someone who told the truth” states that the novel:

“articulated what, until then, had remained relatively unspoken in staunchly Catholic Ireland: female sexual desire, active and acted upon. It was expressed gleefully by her [O’Brien’s] young female protagonists, whose determination to enjoy themselves was, in itself, an instinctive act of rebellion against parochialism and patriarchy.”

Friends Baba and Caithleen are in search of something not found in a church or convent, or even their stodgy rural village:

‘Look, Caithleen, will you give up the nonsense? We’re eighteen and we’re bored to death.’ She lit a cigarette and puffed vigorously. She went on: ‘We want to live. Drink gin. Squeeze into the front of big cars and drive up outside big hotels. We want to go places. Not sit in this damp dump,’ she pointed to the damp patch in the wallpaper…

‘But we want young men. Romance. Love and things,’ I said despondently. I thought about standing under a street light in the rain with my hair falling crazily about, my lips poised for the miracle of a kiss. A kiss. Nothing more…his kisses. On the mouth, and on the eyelids, and on the neck when he lifted up the mane of hair’(155).

Although Caithleen seems satisfied with romance, Mr Gentleman wants to turn their love affair up a notch so he schedules a trip away for them. After dinner in Dublin one evening, they return to the somewhat regulated boarding house where Caithleen and Baba reside. Alone in the living area, Mr Gentleman asks Caithleen to undress:

‘Your skin is whiter than your face. I thought it would be pink,’ he said and he kissed me all over.

‘Now we won’t be shy when we get there. We’ve seen one another,’ he said.

‘I haven’t seen you.’

‘Do you want to?’ and I nodded. He opened his braces and let his trousers slip down around his ankles. He took off his other things and sat down quickly. He was not half so distinguished out of his coal-black suit and stiff white shirt. Something stirred in the garden or was it in the hall? I thought what horror if Joanna should burst in in her nightdress and find us like two naked fools on the green velveteen couch. And she would shout for Gustav, and the ladies next door would hear her and the police would come. I looked down slyly at his body and laughed a little. It was so ridiculous.

“What’s so funny?” He was piqued that I should laugh.

“It’s the colour of the pale part of my orchid,” I said and I looked over at my orchid that was still pinned to my cardigan. I touched it. Not my orchid. His. It was soft and incredibly tender, like the inside of a flower, and it stirred. It reminded me when it stirred of a little black man on top of a collecting box that shook every time you put a coin in the box. I told him this and he kissed me fiercely and for a long time.

“You’re a bad girl,’ he said.

‘I like being a bad girl,’ I replied, wide-eyed.

‘No, not really, darling. You’re sweet. The sweetest girl I ever met. My country girl with country-coloured hair,’ and he buried his face in it and smelt it for a minute

‘Darling, I’m not made of iron,’ he said and he stood up and drew his trousers up from around his ankles. When I got up to fetch my clothes he fondled my bottom and I knew that our week together would be beautiful” (175).

No doubt this endearingly awkward scene added fuel to the fiery reception of the book.

According to McBride, the novel was “banned by the Irish censor for sexually explicit content, publicly burned by a local parish priest in search of some post-rosary drama, and O’Brien herself subjected to a series of anonymous, malevolent letters.”

O’Brien weathered an enormous amount of criticism for her courage to share her own and other girls’ experiences growing up in Ireland post-World War II. This harsh and lasting backlash didn’t stop her. She continued to write women’s stories for another sixty years.

Spotlight: Female Friendship

Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls also highlighted another phenomenon previously omitted in literature: the power and beauty of authentic female friendship.

In the novel, Baba’s father is a veterinarian and due to class differences, she is often cruel to less fortunate Caithleen. Yet, as time unfolds, it becomes clear that the girls care for and complement one another, and their friendship deepens.

I have yet to read the other two books in what became a trilogy, but it is relayed that their friendship endures. (The successive books are The Lonely Girl (1962) and Their Married Bliss (1964).)

Irish writer Anne Enright shares her early takeaway:

“What endures is the way she portrays the friendship between the two girls. When I first read it at 16, what really chimed with me was their adventurousness, their defiant spirit. Female friendship had not been written about in that way in an Irish context until she came along” (O’Hagan).

Edna O’Brien says she wrote The Country Girls in three weeks. Partially autobiographical, the book seemed to  tumble from her. Her then-husband, writer Ernest Gébler, was displeased with her newly discovered writing talent and success and before long, they divorced.

Following the publication of this first book, O’Brien never made Ireland her home again (except when she was recently buried there), never remarried (but dated many men, some high profile), and never stopped writing (thank goodness).

One more quote from Eimear McBride, who wrote the introduction to the most recent edition of the ‘Girls’ trilogy:

“By turns beautiful and bawdy, funny and haunting, The Country Girls, often referred to as the quintessential tale of Irish girlhood, is not the novel that broke the mould, it is the one that made it.”

I plan to read much more written by this mould-making Irish woman writer!

Edna O’Brien is a Nasty Woman Writer.

© Maria Dintino 2024

Works Cited

DePalma, Anthony. “Edna O’Brien, Writer Who Gave Voice to Women’s Passions, Dies at 93.” New York Times, 28 July 2024. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/28/obituaries/edna-o-brien-dead.html

McBride, Eimear. “Banned, burned and reviled: what was so radical about Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls?” The New Statesman, 29 July 2024. https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2024/07/banned-burned-and-reviled-what-was-so-radical-about-edna-obriens-the-country-girls

O’Brien, Edna. The Country Girls. Penguin Books, 1963.

O’Hagan, Sean. “Edna O’Brien: ‘I want to go out as someone who spoke the truth.’” The Guardian, 25 August 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/aug/25/edna-obrien-interview-new-novel-girl-sean-ohagan

President of Ireland. “Statement by President Michael D. Higgins on the Death of Edna O’Brien.” Media Library, 28 July 2024. https://president.ie/en/media-library/news-releases/statement-by-president-michael-d-higgins-on-the-death-of-edna-obrien