The Country Girls Trilogy: An Analysis

In The Country Girls Trilogy by Edna O’Brien Kate and Baba are two young ladies who are looking for fun and adventure after leaving the convent they were sent to for schooling. Kate finds out in the beginning of the first novel that her mother died and there are rumors that she was with her lover when it happened. Kate is left to fend for herself without a mother figure to support her. Without a mother figure she makes bad choices in love and relationships; falling for much older men who do not take their relationship with her as seriously as she does. In the last book she cheats on her husband, Eugene, following in her mother’s footsteps. She found a man who is not affectionate toward her and seeks emotional support elsewhere, but in the end dies waiting for a hero to come and say her. Kate suffers greatly from the loss of her mother, she does not have anyone to guide her through the tough realities of love. She also does not grow up with a good example of a marriage, her father is violent and would beat her mother. This drove her away from him to seek emotional support, that she did not receive at home, from someone else. In the end it was discovered that she was having an affair with another man …show more content…
She is always left alone in the end, by the end of the trilogy she kills herself. She does so waiting for someone to stop her, to save her. Baba writes in the epilogue, “...Kate gashed her wrists, thinking daftly that someone might come to her rescue, a male Florence Nightingale might kneel and bandage and swoop her off to a life of certainty and bliss.” (551). Kate’s upbringing and lack of a maternal figure to guide her through life lead her to a fate worse than her mother’s. She cut her own wrists because she was no longer able to bear her life for what it was. She failed as a lover, a wife and a mother. She felt as if there was nothing left for her anymore, she would never find the love that would fill the hole in her