IRISH LINKS

Irish Culture

The Irish Economy

Literature of Ireland

Irish Theatre

Program Information

Registration

Faculty Directors

Know Before You Go

Getting Around Ireland

Points of Interest

Other Useful Sites

ENGL 4900
Independent Study Pages

ENGL 4700 ADVANCED COMPOSITION

ENGL 5550 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

NOTES ON O'BRIEN IN & ON IRELAND

O'Brien was born in Tuamgraney, County Clare, in the west of Ireland, and as a young woman, she worked as a pharmacist and spent time in both London and Dublin. But after the publication of The Country Girls Trilogy, she left Ireland for good and settled in London. When asked why so many writers leave Ireland, she responded, "I left Ireland because my first books were banned, I was frightened; and the climate of censorship was strangulating. But although you physically leave the country, mentally you bring it with you."
[Qtd. in Seattle Arts & Lectures: Edna O'Brien.]
___________________

Edna O’Brien was born on December 15, 1930, in Tuamgraney, County Clare. She was educated at the National School in Scariff, the Convent of Mercy at Loughrea, and the Pharmaceutical College in Dublin. She married Ernest Gebler in 1951, but the marriage was dissolved in 1964. She has two sons, Carlos and Sasha.

County Clare remains so much in O’Brien’s veins that the people there continue to find themselves in her works; of these a dominant figure has been a mother or several mothers (Mrs. O’Brien died in spring 1977). The content of her work has also been coloured by Irish lore and history and by distinctive geographic features such as Druids’ circles and the Holy island (Inis Cealtra) in Lough Derg. In 1959 O’Brien moved to London, where she maintains residence, but she often returns to Ireland.
--Clare People Edna O'Brien

___________________

You come from a country that many writers seem to leave. Is it better or easier to write about Ireland from outside?

EDNA O'BRIEN:  "My first book, The Country Girls, was a simple little tale of two girls who were trying to burst out of their gym frocks and their convent, and their own lives in their own houses, to make it to the big city. It angered a lot of people, including my own family. It was banned; it was called a smear on Irish womanhood. A priest in our parish asked from the altar if anyone who had bought copies would bring them to the chapel grounds. That evening there was a little burning. My mother said women fainted, and I said maybe it was the smoke. When I wrote my second book (The Lonely Girls), the opinion was the first was a prayer book by comparison. My mother had gone though the book and inked out any offending words.

"So I was made to feel ashamed, made to feel I had done something wrong. It's hard enough to write a book at all; you have to dig and dig and dig into your unconscious, come up with some kind of story, and language, emotion, music. And you'd like a small amount of support from someone you knew. So if you have any degree of self-protection at all, you get out of that place, if you're going to keep writing.

"James Joyce lived all his life away and wrote obsessively and gloriously about Ireland. Although he had left Ireland bodily, he had not left it psychically, no more than I would say I have. I don't rule out living some of the time in Ireland, but it would be in a remote place, where I would have silence and privacy. It's important when writing to feel free, answerable to no one. The minute you feel you are answerable, you're throttled.  You can't do it."
[SALON.COM, 2 Dec. 1995]
______________

RESOURCES

Edna O'Brien: biographical sketch (Books & Writers)