How Young were you Made? A Writer's Memory Lane of Becoming

In the memoir collection "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl'', nine Irish female writers share their earliest memories as children- illustrating how childhood makes a person. In a quest of what makes a writer, reading through one’s life aid in understanding the thread which weaves an author’s words. In the chapter of the book, the author featured is Edna O'Brien who shares her path down memory, which is particularly rendered with fear.  Her autobiographical narration starts with the following exclamation,

''I am always astonished by people who tell me that they don't remember their childhood, or who think there is something ridiculous or perhaps shameful about memory. We are our memories. Memory and one's dreams constitute such a bulk of what we are, because as human beings, we live very much internally''.

With this sort of existential thesis, O'Brien describes her earliest memory which she introduces as ''an inability, or perhaps a fear, of getting down steps- possibly a parable for life!''. This fear as she states, was far more than just relating to her getting down the steps- rather it was a fear that permeated her whole life, setting its roots since her childhood. Starting with the tumultuous relationship she had with her father, the writer shares that she ''didn't feel easy with him. I was afraid of him''. A few lines after and referencing Herzen's memoirs, she says '' the relationships we form with people - whether we love or don't love them- are always chemical; but the fact that people happen to be your parents or your brother or your sister, doesn't necessarily mean that they are the people in the world to whom you're the closest''. Admittingly, the truth of this realization is one that forms a person's understanding of the realities of this world, a reality that is not always filtered with rose-colored effects. Sometimes children are born into families, parents, or siblings where love is missing. This lack of love, surely affects one's sense of safety and belonging and in the case of this writer- her sense of being in the world. Still, in the next paragraph, she reflects on how this parental failure marked her writing path. Specifically, she writes, '' I feel that to a great extent it was obviously that tension and that fear that were the sources of my becoming a writer. I don't think that happy people become writers. They wouldn't bother, because writing by necessity is a very gruelling and very lonely and very anxious occupation- that's if you take it seriously''. Though there is some partial truth in the idea that writing is a solitary and soul-shaping occupation, it is not necessarily a prerogative of being unhappy. However, this is the writer’s perception on writing and as such, she goes on to mention another fearful aspect of her life which rendered her writing faculties.

Another source of fear for her young impressionable mind was religion. As she observes in another part, religion was horrifying filled with terrors of the afterlife. Specifically, she notes, “religion permeated every aspect of one’s life. My mind was never not on the question- was I or was I not committing sin?”.  Following that, she mentions how the concept of hell was transmuting every aspect of life, and how the various punishments in purgatory were engulfing her every action. Based on that period of her life, she wrote the book “The Country Girls”, where an alter ego of her devout child self- Baba “was the other side of what it means to be good”.

Finally, the author also mentions how village life was enclosed and catastrophic. In the sense of everyone knowing everyone else’s business and also, in being an Irish person born into the fears of this country. As she says, “the sense of catastrophe is peculiar to a lot of Irish people (…) and of course, there was the fact of our history- what one was taught and read at school was dinned into one as the catastrophic story of what happened to our country.” This extract illustrates how people and in this specific example, a writer is made both on the micro-level or of one’s family, as well as the macro-level of one’s culture. So, O Brien is not just the sum of her memories, inasmuch as she is the sum of her ancestors’ memories, fears and longings. Thus becoming a writer comes down to the cascading effect of being born into and brought up by other people. This bringing up is what might shape an author’s words, stories and perceptions- especially depended on one’s childhood memories, the place where one is unconsciously made. From that portal spring one’s inspiration and even, meaning.

“I think that the people in this world who lose touch with their childhood have lost something really intrinsic and crucial (…) I hope that I have not lost my childhood sensibilities and I hope that I never will, because it is the fount and source of my writing”. (Edna O' Brien)

**Illustrations by Jessie Willcox Smith