Menu
AWEJ for Translation & Literary Studies, Volume 4, Number3. August 2020 Pp.120-128
The rigid cultural and political environment of the 1940s post-independence era in Ireland placed a significant limitation on women by socially constructing and consistently implementing a strictly-defined Irish Catholic female identity. Over time, women could no longer stand this situation, and movements for women’s rights were set up. Political, social as well as cultural transformations in the country were accompanied by a necessarily urgent literary reaction, especially by female writers. Edna O’Brien, one of the most loved, and influential Irish women writers, published her first novel, The Country Girls (1960). She helped open discussion of the role of women and sex in Irish society and of Roman Catholicism’s persecution upon women. The present paper intends to focus on Irish women through The Country Girls. It explores the conflicts and compromises of Irish woman identity as this has been represented in the 20th-century Irish literature; concerning the more generalized categories of society, nation, and religion.
KADDOURI, R., & LOUAHALA, N. (2020). Edna O’Brien The Country Girls (1960): Deconstructing the Irish Women’s Myth. Arab World English Journal for Translation & Literary Studies 4 (3) 120-128 .
Byron, K. (2006). In the Name of the Mother…Reading and Revision in Edna O’Brien’s Country Girls Trilogy and Epilogue. In L. Colletta & M. O’Connor (eds.), Wild Colonial Girl (pp. 14-15) London: University of Wisconsin Press.
Casey, D. J & Casey, L. M. (1990). Stories by Contemporary Irish Women (Irish Studies). Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press.
Friedan, B. (1965).The Feminine Mystique(2nded.).Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Haule, J. (1987). Tough Luck: The Unfortunate Birth of Edna O’Brien. Colby Quarterly 23 (4) 216-224.
Ingman, H. (2007). Twentieth-Century Fiction by Irish Women: Nation and Gender. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited.
McCarthy, Á. (2004). Oh Mother Where Art Thou? Irish Mothers and Irish Fiction in the Twentieth Century. In K. Kennedy (ed.), Motherhood in Ireland: Creation and Context (pp. 95-107).Cork: Mercier Press.
O’Brien, E. (1986, May 11). Why Irish Heroines Don’t Have to Be Good Anymore. New York Times Book Review.
O’Brien, E. (1998). Speaking on the Book Show. New York State Writers Institute– Writers Online, 2(3). Retrieved from https://www.albany.edu/writersinst/webpages4/archives/olvn3.html
O’Brien, E. (1960). The Country Girls. London: Phoenix.
Pelan, R. (1993). Edna O’Brien’s “Stage – Irish” Persona: An “Act” of Resistance. The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, 19(1), 67-78.
Roth, P. (1984). Foreword A Fanatic Heart By Edna O’Brien. New York: Penguin.
Roth, P. (1984, Nov 18) ‘A Conversation with Edna O’Brien’, New York Times Book Review (pp.38-40) Retrieved from http://movies2.nytimes.com/books/00/04/09/specials/obrien-roth.html
Spivak, G. C. (1985). Can the subaltern speak? Speculations on widow-sacrifice’ Wedge 7/8 (Winter/Spring), 120–130.
Showalter, E. (1977). A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press
St. Peter, C. (2000). Changing Ireland: Strategies in Contemporary Women’s Fiction New York: St. Martin’s Press
Stuart, F. (1982). The Soft Centre of Irish Writing.In W. Vorm (ed.),Paddy No More (pp. 5-9). Dublin: Longship Press
Thompson, H. (2006).Hysterical Hooliganism – O’Brien, Freud, Joyce.In L. Colletta L, &M. O’Connor (Eds.), Wild Colonial Girl (p. 32)London: University of Wisconsin Press.
Rachida KADDOURI is a Doctoral student at University Djialli Liabes of Sidi-bel-abbes,
majoring in Comparative literature; she currently works as an assistant teacher of English at the
Department of Management at Mohamed Ben Ahmed University Oran 2, Algeria.
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1601-2463
Nadia LOUAHALA is a senior lecturer in civilization at University Djialli Liabes of Sidi-belAbbes, Algeria. She is interested in three fields of research, notably literature, culture, and
didactics. She would hope that her contribution to literature would encourage further studies.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5218-4564
Copyright © 2023 AWEJ-tls.org. All rights reserved.