Edna O’Brien’s Neglected Widows and Spinsters

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for this essay, a welcome contribution to studies of Edna O’Brien! Your focus on widows and spinsters is unique and compelling, and you demonstrate impressive engagement with her writing and relevant biographical sources. I have two suggestions for conceptual improvement, and two suggestions for strengthening the writing of this piece.

Conceptually, you could do more to distinguish “celibacy” in O’Brien’s fiction from what you call “celibacy” in her life. Early in your essay you point out that critics have been quick to typify O’Brien as a writer of salacious women's writing, and you mention “long-standing assumptions about O’Brien’s own wild sex life,” which you contradict with reference to an interview with Nell Dunn. Most of your paper focuses on characters from O’Brien’s fiction, but in your conclusion, you return to O’Brien’s own life before asserting “A muscular, unsexed celibacy enabled O’Brien’s long career.” This blurring of lines between your focus on the fiction and her biography might lead to some confusion about your argument.

Secondly, readers might appreciate clearer definition of some of your key terms, especially “celibacy.” You hint toward differences between lifelong celibacy and the chosen celibacy of those who have had an “active but disappointing sexual past.” Teasing out the different forms of celibacy you are analyzing would be helpful in clarifying your argument. It would also be interesting to see a more developed articulation of the different roles played by spinsters as opposed to widows. Terms like “witch” could also benefit from some elaboration.

In terms of the quality of your writing, your meaning is usually clear, but the pace is breathless and many of the sentences are lengthy and complex, with many clauses heaped on top of each other. I recommend breaking these up wherever possible and perhaps replacing certain commas with conjunctions. Secondly, your paragraphs could be improved with more intentional topic and concluding sentences. Rather than ending paragraphs with quotes, as you often do, close with analysis that underscores the purpose of the paragraph. Finally, I notice that overall, the essay is heavy on plot summary and quotation, and lighter on analytic and connective claims. The plot summary and quotations are often necessary given the fact that most readers will not be as familiar with O’Brien’s complete oeuvre as you are. However, condensing this material will make more space for you to clarify the conceptual significance of your claim.

I hope this feedback is useful as you revise!

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I was really interested to read this article on Edna O'Brien's celibate characters (widows and spinsters) and, in general, I think the idea for the special issue is great! The author has an excellent knowledge of O'Brien's oeuvre and is well-versed in critical debates on her work. The essay is also very elegantly written. However, there are a number of ways in which the essay could be improved. I would urge both the editor (of the special issue) and the author to take these seriously because this could be a really compelling essay if the changes are made. The essay is very short and I wondered if a word limit had been imposed on authors (I note that the journal itself does not but perhaps the editor did?) If there is scope for the essay to be expanded, here are my recommendations:

I think the author should think seriously about whether they wish to undertake an overview of EOB’s treatment of widows/spinsters or whether it would be better to focus on a particular period in EOB’s literary career. The difficulty with the current emphasis on her entire career is that it doesn’t allow for the kind of historical specificity which, I assume, the special issue wishes to promote. For example, EOB’s early work could/should be linked to discourses about bachelorhood/spinsterhood coming out of the 1950s (e.g. in John A. O’Brien’s essay collection The Vanishing Irish). In general, apart from a few rather superficial references to Kahan’s work on celibacy, there is little attempt to ground the analysis of EOB’s fiction in discourses of celibacy in the Ireland of the day – whether that’s the 1960s or the 1990s (the current emphasis in the article is on this later period). This aspect needs to be much stronger, whatever the author decides in terms of the historical span of the article. Ed Madden’s work on the Irish bachelor (two essays, I believe) might help the author to do some of this work.

Second, and relating again to historical specificity, I would advise the author to cite the original publication date of the short stories (i.e. not the date of the collection). “Green Georgette” is 1978, “The Connor Girls” is 1981 etc.

At the moment, I think the article struggles to assert a strong argument, partly because it has nothing against which to test its claims. For example, is later O’Brien different from early O’Brien in terms of the representation of celibates? (That would be one approach). Another might be to consider (albeit briefly, given it’s not the focus of the special issue) EOB’s representation of bachelors, including the recurring Hickey - - who deserves a lot more attention in EOB scholarship. Or are O’Brien’s widows radically different from (say) Mary Lavin’s?

In sum, the essay needs more robust framing, first in terms of historical detail/context/discourses; second, by inserting something/someone against which the author can position EOB’s fiction devoted to celibates. I want to reiterate my admiration for the essay. There’s such a lot of potential here. I hope the author will want to revise and improve it.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thanks for the opportunity to read a revised version of this compelling essay. It was also really helpful to see the author's response to my initial comments. I think this version is much improved and really benefits from the additional scholarly framing the author has provided in respect of celibacy / widowhood / spinsterhood etc. 

My only slightly lingering concern is the claim made towards the very end that "a muscular, unsexed celibacy enabled O'Brien's long career." Is the author implying that EOB was celibate for a long period of her (late) life? Is this a provable claim? I wonder if this can be slightly nuanced, so the author glosses the suggestiveness of the EOB quotations rather than implying that EOB was actually celibate.

Two typos: The Country (not County) Girls on 9 and Sasha (not Sascha) on 11.

Overall, though, I think this works a lot better with the additional framing and I am happy to recommend publication. 

Author Response

Thank you for your comments. I revised the last paragraph.