Reading Ireland 2024: Country Girl by Edna O'Brien

In 17th century Scotland women who refused to toe the line were branded as witches and put to death. 

What had those women done? Sometimes they had simply spoken their minds, when men, especially powerful men, wanted them to keep those minds firmly focused on the kitchen and the children. Sometimes they had refused to marry, refused to be a man's possession and plaything.

In 20th century Ireland, Hutchinson published The Country Girls (1960), the first novel by Edna O'Brien. It's a wonderful book about Cait and Baba, two convent girls who aren't going to accept the roles that traditional Irish society wants to hand them. Instead they go off to Dublin and have a wild time, though Cait still hopes ultimately to meet The One, while Baba just wants to have fun.

Edna was writing about the real lives of young Irish women.  It was not what the then all-powerful Catholic Church, nor even its congregations, wanted to hear. Priests denounced the novel and its author from the pulpit; it must be banned (it was) and burned. Her own family were outraged; the shame.

Edna was by then married with two small children and living in London. Her controlling and jealous husband Ernest was a strange man, who used to read out articles on The Bowels at the breakfast table. He was also an aspiring writer, and told her that she could not write and might as well give up before she started. When The Country Girls was an instant success, he eventually deigned to read it, and said,

'You can write. And I will never forgive you.'

In 1962 Edna left him, walking around Wimbledon Common until a kind female friend of a friend offered her a bed. There ensued bitter custody battles over the boys, Sasha and Carlo (they eventually came to live with her), but from then on Edna was free. In Country Girl she chronicles her amazing, exciting, tumultuous life, and what a life it has been. 

As the youngest child of a farming family, Edna grew up at Drewsborouogh, the family home in Tuamgraney in County Clare. Her father was an alcoholic waster who lost most of the family's inherited land and money through gambling and drink. Her mother was a controlling woman who disapproved of literature of any kind and once tried to burn Edna's copy of a Sean O'Casey book. The family were strict Catholics and Edna was convent educated. She rebelled against the repressive strictures of home and school and as soon as she could she moved to Dublin, where she trained as a pharmacist (and met the awful Ernest) whilst reading Joyce, Tolstoy and F Scott Fitzgerald in the evenings.

The Country Girls - BBC Radio 4 adaptation (2019)

Once out of her marriage Edna's real life began, She has written seventeen novels, plus short stories, poetry, plays, non-fiction, children's books and screenplays. She has received numerous awards and honours. And she has met, hosted and partied with everyone from Sean Connery to Jack Nicholson, Marianne Faithful, Len Deighton, Dylan Thomas, Jude Law and Paul McCartney - nights at her house in Chelsea were legendary. And although she isn't explicit about the details of them, it's clear that her love affairs have been many. 

Edna has lived in London for years (though no longer in the grandeur of her former house in Carlyle Square), but she once also - and against local opposition - built a house in Donegal. Then she sold it when she realised it was impractical. And this is one of the many great things about Edna O'Brien. She makes mistakes, she admits to them, and she moves on. Sometimes her life has been far from good; she has suffered ill health, both physical and mental, she has had prolonged periods of writer's block; at one point (maybe more) she contemplated suicide but changed her mind. She was psychoanalysed by RD Laing (it didn't work, she says, because 'he was too mad himself...') She doesn't dress her story up, doesn't try to make herself look exceptionally good - but at the same time she tells it like it is, and she isn't afraid to lay blame where she considers it due, whether at the door of her ex husband or that of the Catholic Church. For the latter in particular no excuses are proffered.

Harris Hall, City College of New York
(By Jim.Henderson - Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=98059431)

She taught for a while at City College in New York City, living at the Wyndham Hotel and meeting  people like Martha Graham, Gregory Peck (with whom she recited poetry from the pulpit of St Patrick's Cathedral), Coral Browne, Neil Jordan and Jackie Onassis (who, Edna tells us, used to jog in Central Park without a bodyguard.)  Her observations of New York street life are vivid and memorable; being driven to work through Harlem,

'was like entering another country, the brownstones crumbling and dilapidated, the streets almost empty, the few children on the sidewalks and men, alone or in a group, staring out but looking inward....It was before the 'Renaissance', when Harlem would have soul food and Gospel trips. I thought of Lorca, who had walked there in 1930, when he was a student at Columbia, seeing it as a place eclipsed, sensing what he called 'the garnet violence' running in the blood.'

There are so many stories within this story, all of them fascinating, but for me two things stand out. The first is that Edna O'Brien has always ploughed her own furrow. She is not immune to the opinions of others, but having weighed them up she makes her own decisions and off she goes. The Catholic Church tried to silence her, her parents tried to silence her, her husband tried to silence her - but nothing did. To quote Pet Shop Boys;

'At school they taught me how to be

So pure in word and thought and deed

They didn't quite succeed'

(It's a Sin, 1987)

When her marriage ended she wanted custody of her sons more than anything else in the world, and she got it, but she has never sublimated her career to motherhood any more than to marriage.  When the boys were older, she sent them away to school (Bedales, one of the most liberal educational establishments in England.) For this she has also been criticised, but why?

I think it is pure sexism and misogyny. If a man was bringing up his children alone and decided to send them to boarding school - one that they liked and were happy at - people would say 'well what could he do? He had no choice.' When a woman does it, it is seen as tantamount to child abuse. Edna wept after she'd dropped those boys off for the first time. They seem to have been very happy at school and still to have a good relationship with their mother. But this is seen as Edna putting herself first - how wicked!  I see her as a brave and practical woman, who knew she must have her life and her career, who believed she had a right to flourish. Women should be grateful to her for forging a path, for showing us that we have a duty to ourselves to live our lives, and that it is neither selfish nor cruel to put ourselves first when we can. 

Similarly, some people have criticised the book for what they see as 'name dropping.' Edna has led a very colourful and sociable life, why should she not talk about the people she met? If a male writer did this, would he attract so much approbation? 

The second exceptional aspect of this book is, of course, the language. Edna handles words like few others, Her writing is lyrical, illuminating, immersive, astonishing. She quotes Kafka, who once said,

'A book must be the axe to the frozen seas inside us.'

And her work does just that; it splits open our preconceptions, about life and about perception itself. She makes us see so many things in different ways; her writing is never lazy, but it never feels forced or over-worked, it's as if these shafts of brilliance pour effortlessly from her pen, such is her genius. 

O'Brien in 2016. Image: Wikipedia.

Edna O'Brien is now 93 years of age. In 2022 she wrote a new play about James Joyce; it was performed at the Abby Theatre in Dublin. Speaking to Lara Marlowe of The Irish Times in September 2022, she said,

'If I don't write, I might as well not live.' 

Few people will ever cram so much living into one life. What a woman.

Country Girl by Edna O'Brien is published by Faber & Faber.