Great Women Writers

I was fortunate to be born in a house full of books. In fact my father’s piles of scientific tomes used to drive my mother to distraction. They lay about in great teetering heaps collecting dust. The bookcases were already stuffed with travel books, books in foreign languages, history books and a comprehensive selection of the world’s great classics. In fact such ready access, while an incentive was no guarantee I would read them. Beside I had my own library reinforced by books my older sister had outgrown. Perversely the books that intrigued me the most were the ones I didn’t have easy access too.

My mother used to keep her sun hats and hats for weddings or other grand occasions in the top of a wardrobe in the spare bedroom. One day when she was searching for a hat I was intrigued to notice a pile of paperback books that fell out, which she hastily scooped up and stuffed back into the top of the wardrobe.

The books only lay scattered on the floor for seconds but they seemed to have such alluring titles, Girl with Green Eyes, The Country Girls and Girls in their Married Bliss……

That might have been that, but being inquisitive I asked what the books were about. ‘They are books about Ireland,’ my mother replied.

‘Can I read one? I asked.

‘You wouldn’t like them,’ my mother responded.

‘Can I see one?’ I insisted. Surely I should be the arbiter of what I liked.

‘They are too old for you,’ my mother said changing tack. It was the first time I had ever been denied access to a book.

That night before I fell asleep I kept thinking about the books. My mother is Irish and Ireland to me was one of those magical places we visited a couple of times a year, inhabited by veritable legions of slightly whacky relatives. Aunts who fed me milk still warm from the cow and pipe-smoking uncles with Guinness on their breath who took me to see where the fairies hid their money. I kept running through the titles I had seen………… Girl with Green Eyes and Girls in their Married Bliss seemed to conjure up all kinds of images. Besides there was something deliciously naughty about the book covers…..

The die was cast. The next morning my mother went shopping and with the aid of a chair I discovered Edna O’Brian. Several times over the next few weeks I became so engrossed my mother nearly caught me. At the time I had no idea the books were banned in Ireland because of topics like women’s attitudes to their bodies, their sexuality and criticism of the Roman Catholic Church.

What makes Edna O’Brians books so special is that they are nearly always from a female narrator’s point of view. Like most Irish people she enjoys language and savours and picks words like ripe plums. Her use of detail to build pictures is at times dazzling.

Edna was also a feminist before the term became fashionable. A feminist in the true sense of the word. She works to forward the lot of women while still maintaining a wider humanistic sympathy with all people without resorting to the man-hating which seems so in vogue with many modern feminists. Despite being fiercely proud of being Irish, if she harbours any latent bitterness it is for her Irish upbringing. Not surprising when not so long ago in Ireland a wife had to have her husband’s permission to use the local library.

Her books are not so much sexual as an expression of a woman’s sense of adventurism in a society where women were taught that looking at their body in a mirror was a mortal sin and that sex outside of procreation was an unwholesome activity.

Her books although potentially depressing are bolstered and kept alive by her ironic sense of humour and the skill with which she uses exquisite detail and roots her observations in the sensual details of the world.

Her trilogy Country Girls, Girl with Green Eyes and Girls in their Married Bliss is a good place to start to enjoy one of the world’s great women writers.
Enjoy!