SOURCE: "'That Trenchant Childhood Route'?: Quest in Edna O'Brien's Novels," in Éire-Ireland, Vol. XIV, No. 1, Spring, 1979, pp. 74-83.

In the following essay, Snow explores the "journey" O'Brien's heroines make "to reclaimed innocence" in her novels.

At the close of Mother Ireland, Edna O'Brien defines her aim both as a writer and as a woman:

Ireland for me is moments of its history and geography, a few people who embody its strange quality, the features of a face, a holler, a line from a Synge play, the whiff of night air, but Ireland insubstantial like the goddesses poet dream of, who lead them down into strange circles. I live out of Ireland because something in me warns me that I might stop if I lived there, that I might cease to feel what it means to have such a heritage, might grow placid when in fact I want yet...