Edna O’Brien has often been reviewed as a feminist writer who deals exclusively with women’s emotional problems. Particularly disturbing to some critics has been the isolation of her characters from social institutions. Yet even within this restrictiveness, critics have praised her fidelity to human psychology and her perfectly realized characters. Her women, in particular, are independent and isolated creations searching for someone to love.

The theme of love has dominated her novels, especially The Country Girls, because, as Eckley writes, “love defines the entire range of one’s personality; it exposes a streak of masochism, describes one’s pathetic ideals, or reflects conditions of loneliness.” Yet the focus is not exclusively on the women. As Anatole Broyard points out, each sex sees the other as a “punishment for the ancient sin of desire.” It is the narrowness of her life, not of her sex, that forces Kate to “conceive, in self-defense, a sad romanticism, like a stillborn baby.”