Edna O’brien

An Irish writer, famous for her rich and sensuous prose, O'Brien made her breakthrough with "The Country Girls Trilogy" (1960-64). Due to the historic, conservative and mythological writings of catholic authors, several of O'Brien's books, dealing with murder, childhood and disappointments in sexual love, have been banned in Ireland. Her works have gained wide acclaim, particularly among American readers.

"They used to ban my books, but now when I go there, people are courteous to my face,

though rather slanderous behind my back. Then again, Ireland has changed. There are a

lot of young people who are irreligious, or less religious. Ironically, they wouldn't be

interested in my early books - they would think them gauche. They are aping English and

American mores. If I went to a dance hall in Dublin now, I would feel as alien as in a

disco in Oklahoma." (Craig, 43)

Edna O'Brien was born in Twamgraney, County Clare. Her family was opposed to anything to do with literature and later she described her small village "enclosed, fervid and bigoted." When O'Brien was a student in Dublin and her mother found a book of Sean O'Casey in her suitcase she wanted to burn it. After finishing primary school O'Brien was educated at the Convent of Mercy in Loughrea (1941-46). In Dublin she worked in a pharmacy, and studied at the Pharmaceutical College at night. During this period she wrote small pieces for the Irish Press. In 1950 she was awarded a licence as pharmacist. Married in the summer of 1954, O'Brien moved with her husband, the Czech/Irish writer Ernest Gйbler, and two sons to London. In Ireland she read such writers Tolstoy, Thackeray, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Of the connection between her writing and her life, O'Brien says, "It is as if the life lived has not been lived until it is set down in this unconscious sequence of words." The first book O'Brien ever bought was Introducing James Joyce by T.S. Eliot. She has said that Joyce's Portrait of the Artist made her realize that she wanted literature for the rest of her life.

While O'Brien was gaining fame as a writer, her husband struggled with his own works. Carlo Gйbler, their son, writes in Father & I (2001), that he insisted she sign a payment from her publisher over to him - she did, and left him. Since her divorce in 1964, she has remained in England. Later she called her husband "an attractive father figure - a Professor Higgins." O'Brien published her first novel, The Country Girls, in 1960. The story is partly based on the author's own experiences being brought up in a convent. "The novel is autobiographical insofar I was born and bred in the west of Ireland, educated at a convent, and was full of romantic yearnings, coupled with a sense of outrage." (O'Brien in Writers at Work) The Country Girls continued in The Lonely Girl (1962) and Girls in Their Married Bliss (1964). The trilogy traced the lives of two Irish women, Kate and Baba, from their school days in the Irish countryside to their disillusioned adulthood and failed marriages in London. The friends have a strict Roman Catholic upbringing, which comes into conflict with their sexuality and their dependence on men. Kathy's relationship with a married man is fruitless. She starts an affair with Eugene, whom she considers a great lover but not much else. Her marriage with Eugene is unlucky, and they separate. Baba marries a man who offers her financial security. Because of the graphic sexual content of the story, the whole trilogy, and six of the author's subsequent works, were banned in Ireland. "While feminists have not been fond of her work because of her heroines' chasing after men, ''The Country Girls Trilogy'' is a powerful argument for feminism. To watch Kate and Baba and their various partners making war, not love, reminds us of ignorant armies that clash by night." (Criag, 33) In 1986, the three novels with an epilogue were published in one volume as The Country Girls Trilogy and Epiloouge. Edna O’ Brien has always been the subject of controversy and harsh criticism. She has been accused of writing about “yesterday’s Ireland.” One critic went as far as to calling her writing decrepit. In an interview with Alice Powers she fired back against critics.

“Those critics who are under the impression that my novels are yesterday's Ireland might like to visit the law courts throughout the country where land feuds are being