SOURCE: Thompson, Helen. “Uncanny and Undomesticated: Lesbian Desire in Edna O'Brien's ‘Sister Imelda’ and The High Road.” Women's Studies 32, no. 1 (January-February 2003): 21-44.

In the following essay, Thompson provides an interpretation of “Sister Imelda” and O'Brien's novel The High Road in terms of lesbian desire and female sexuality.

In an anonymous review of a different version of this article, a critic wrote that lesbian readings of Edna O'Brien's fiction are nothing new. I was and still am troubled by this assessment of O'Brien criticism because within this limited critical canon—one book and roughly fifteen articles—there is only one published study, by Jeanette Schumaker, that acknowledges lesbian sexuality in O'Brien's writing. Schumaker focuses on one short story and only mentions the possibility of reading “Sister Imelda” in lesbian terms. No critical work exists on The High Road, unless we consider book reviews, and even then, reviewers decentralize the...