The Theme of Motherhood In Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls

Motherhood is one of the main themes of Edna O’Brien’s novels. She has depicted her characters from their childhood, and in that phase of life, the mother plays a vital role in the formation of their children. O’Brien has shown the girl children in many of her fictional works. She has crafted how the formation of a girl child becomes a woman by their upbringing in a patriarchal social setup, inadequacy of higher education, subordinate position in broken families, and the bad and fearful influence of their alcoholic, abusive fathers. In such a weak social structure, her protagonist feels lonely and loveless human beings. They dare to fight with their counterparts, but at the same time, their rigid patriarchal tradition leaves them alone and helpless. The author O’Brien has raised her voice to feel these female characters and their silent suffering throughout her work. She is recognised as the first woman writer from Ireland who has taken the charge to make her female characters express themselves and tried to take some actions to respond injustice that happened to them. In her early novels, O’Brien has focused on the girl children, where she has proven that the image of a woman depends on her upbringing in her childhood phase.