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Edna O'Brien's Lesbian Novel: THE HIGH ROAD
Lesbian sexuality permeates Edna O'Brien's entire canon. Hints of the possibilities and actualities of same-sex unions between women can be found in much of her writing. In her first novel, The Country Girls, she presents women's love for women in the context of the convent school and intimate female friendships. For O'Brien, integral to a Catholic education is the experience of lesbian love, whether in fantasy or in practice. Lesbian desire is also the subject of "The Mouth of the Cave," a short story from her collection entitled The Love Object. In this story, a fantasy of lesbian seduction does not materialize for the protagonist. In the 1971 film version of O'Brien's screenplay "Zee and Co", Zee seduces her husband's lover in order to save her marriage and "spoil Stella for Robert." However, it was not until the 1980s that O'Brien made lesbianism a more prominent concern in her work.
In 1981 O'Brien produced a "lesbian play," "Virginia," based on the life of Virginia Woolf, placing at the centre of the drama Woolf's intimate relationship with Vita Sackville-West; in 1982 she published "Sister Imelda" in her collection called "Returning," a story which examines the adolescent desire of a convent schoolgirl for a nun. Finally, in 1988, O'Brien explored the reality and mythology of women's cultures and communities as well as lesbian desire in her novel The High Road. The High Road's central concern is the protagonist's, Anna's, search for a woman-identified community and more specifically for a female sexual partner. In fact, the narrative development utterly complements Anna's growing awareness of her attraction to women because all events are filtered through her consciousness. The non-linearity of this narrative is as subversive as Anna's disavowal of heterosexuality. Anna's consciousness creates a subjective narrative, a thread linking her previously heterosexual existence with her new lesbian identity. In other words, Anna, through her narrative, suggests the inevitability of her sexual re-orientation.
The narrative climax of The High Road occurs simultaneously with the consummation of Anna's lesbian love affair with Catalina. Anna's thoughts show her leaving her native Ireland, her adopted England, and moving again to another foreign location, a small Spanish village. As a divorced woman, a recently-dumped lover, and the...