Thematic Transgressions and Formal Innovations in Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls Trilogy and Epilogue

Abstract

The paradigmatic literary work of Edna O’Brien, The Country Girls Trilogy and Epilogue (1986) narrates the coming of age of two young women from rural backgrounds in the Ireland of the mid-twentieth century and their progressive entry into an adult world, passing through the capital, Dublin, to finally leave their country and arrive in London. Censured in its day, the trilogy is now acknowledged as a feminine Bildungsroman, above all, because of its open allusions to the awakening of female sexuality. However, most criticism has overlooked the political implications of its central theme, as well as the structural and formal innovations that the author employs to represent the impossibility of a feminine Bildung form. Polyphony, fragmentation, and ultimate disintegration are some of the elements that evidence the need to reconsider the place of the trilogy within the panorama of Irish literature.