Black and white photo of Kate O'Brien, a white woman with short hair. She looks into the camera with a neutral expression. She wears a sleeveless plaid button up with a black bow on the front.
“Out of the wind, my love. She was on her way, involuntarily, into horrid winds, whence no-one would call her back, come in, my love. But she knew none of that. She was on a trackless road. And she did not know that she carried armour.”
– Kate O’Brien
There are more ways to affect change than most will credit. For any queer person living in a society that villainizes and stigmatizes their very existence, simply living and finding moments of happiness can be enough to shift public discourse. Openness about one’s identity has never been a qualifier for this type of life, neither historically nor contemporarily. There have been, and still are, queer people who had a deep and lasting impact on their communities without ever being explicit about their identity and desires. While there is some part of this reality that is a tragedy, a life unlived, a possibility for radical acceptance never experienced, the whole of the situation is not bleak. Public knowledge of someone's sexuality or gender identity does not equate to happiness, and the reverse is just as true.
Kathleen Mary Louise O'Brien was born in Ireland on December 3, 1897, to a large family with whom she would remain close with throughout her entire life. One of ten children, she was also close to her extended family, including her two aunts, both of whom were nuns. Growing up in a very Catholic environment, her work would later reflect a fascination with religion and specifically the Irish Catholic belief system, though she herself was agnostic.
It was in the 1920s that she became a governess in Spain and found a deep love for the country and travel in general. She began to write fiction and she set many of her novels in Spain. She would be fascinated with the country for many years. While her Irish influences were clear, she did not return to her home country often or for long until the end of her life. Neither Ireland nor Spain, the countries that had such a profound impact on her writing and opinions, would entirely accept her in return. Both countries banned her novels for homosexual content, as well as a number of other complaints. One of the more famous instances was when one of her books was banned in Ireland for a single line that mentioned the existence of a side character who had a queer relationship. This would cause outrage in the literary scene of Ireland, due to the ridiculousness of the complaints and the literary worth of the work itself. This uproar helped to eventually change these laws.
Kate herself was hurt by the public rejection of her work and was worried about how this hit to her reputation would affect her family, who she was still close with. She said this of her aunt:
“When my first novel came out, Without My Cloak, she wanted very much to read it. Nance explained to her that it was not reading for nuns, and that it would only upset and puzzle her. But still she fretted. So my kind sister took a copy, went through it and pinned certain pages together at several points.
‘Now, Fan,’ she said, ‘If you don’t move the pins you ought to be all right.’
And Fan did not move the pins, and she was alright.”
Her own beliefs about the relevance of her queerness to her queer works came forth in a biography she wrote about a gay man, in which she wrote:
“He is said to have been homosexual, but that suggestion can be of little use to us in considering his work. More mighty than he have been touched with that peculiarity but the residue of all emotional experience tends in spirits large enough to be at last of natural and universal value, whatever the personal accidents of its accretion.”
It was in her friendships and romantic relationships that Kate was able to express queerness beyond her work. She would have numerous relationships with women, and though she married a man in 1922, the arrangement would last under a year and was fairly transparently a lavender marriage, with the other participant being a gay man.
Most of the women Kate formed relationships with, whether within or outside the English literary scene, would remain her friends after the romantic part of the relationship had ended. Kate would eventually settle down with Mary O’Neill as her life partner, who would also be her literary executor after her death.
Kate would write her final completed book As Music and Splendor in 1958, which had queer women as the central characters and explored their relationships throughout the novel. This was not her final contribution to the queer community though. Due to the banning of one of her early novels for the one line mentioning homosexuality, she had become quite well known within the queer circles of Ireland, and when she moved there later in life she was able to meet and form friendships with many queer men. Specifically, she was able to support and mentor many queer men who were starting out in the literary world. While many, like her, would never be open about their sexuality within their lifetimes, they are now known to have been queer, and often reference her as a connection they had to the queer community.
These references were later pushed thoroughly under the rug by her family. Eibhear Walshe wrote of one more notable event:
“During the 1988 Kate O’Brien Weekend, the keynote speaker, John Jordan, drew attack from O’Brien’s family on the subject of her sexuality. In an article entitled “Family defends writer’s reputation,” The Irish Times reported Jordan as saying that the novelist had certain problems of her own in that she was mannish in her ways and had difficulties in personal relationships. It was possible that she even had a child, and after her divorce from her Dutch husband she made more friends among women. At this stage, Ms Mary O’Mara, whose mother-in-law, she said, was Kate O’Brien’s sister, denied the implications of what Mr Jordan had said. She was in possession of all the relevant legal documents which dismissed such a possibility. Other speakers defended the Limerick novelist and the chairman of the session said that Kate O’Brien’s high status as an author will continue. (One wonders exactly what legal documents existed to dismiss the possibility that Kate O’Brien was “mannish”!).”
This incident reflects the reality that while Kate was fairly well known in her social circles as a queer woman, that is not the case for the wider public, and certainly not for her family. Having pinned together the pages to keep from seeing any part of her life story that would shock them, she is still often remembered as simply a feminist writer rather than a queer feminist writer. Still, even with this truth, the effect her life had on the wider world is obvious. Her works, now unbanned, are clear evidence of queerness before the 1960s. Beyond that, her mentorship of other queer authors remains a clear act of queer solidarity before many people believed the queer community even existed. Both in legacy and in her own time, she left an unmistakable imprint not only on her own community but on the wider world.
REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING
Disclaimer: some of the sources may contain triggering material
Anluain, C. N. (2020). Kate O’Brien: The Woman and the Writer - RTÉ Davis Now Lectures. https://www.rte.ie/culture/2020/0810/1158334-kate-obrien-the-woman-and-the-writer-rte-davis-now-lectures/
Celebrating the legacy of controversial Kate. (n.d.). Independent. Retrieved July 16, 2022, from https://www.independent.ie/incoming/celebrating-the-legacy-of-controversial-kate-26703385.html
Flynn, D. D. (2019, December 3). Letters and the archive: Kate O Brien and Mary O Malley. Irish Women’s Writing (1880-1920) Network. https://irishwomenswritingnetwork.com/letters-and-the-archive-kate-obrien-and-mary-omalley/
Jul 14, S. S. |, Press, 2015 |, Published, & was?, W. (2015, July 14). Kate O’Brien a Pioneer in Gay Literature. https://limerickslife.com/kate-obrien/
Kate O’Brien. (n.d.). Google My Maps. Retrieved July 16, 2022, from https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=13O3jJvZpAYFzsTDTcoTBhIzrXZc
Kate O’Brien and Spain // Articles // breac // University of Notre Dame. (n.d.). Retrieved July 16, 2022, from https://breac.nd.edu/articles/kate-obrien-and-spain/
Kate O’Brien and the Erotics of Liberal Catholic Dissent. (n.d.). 24.
Kate O’Brien—National Portrait Gallery. (n.d.). Retrieved July 16, 2022, from https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp05637/kate-obrien-nee-kathleen-mary-louise-obrien
Kate O’Brien—Resdiscovering a female literary trailblazer. (2019). https://www.rte.ie/culture/2019/0226/1033027-kate-obrien-resdiscovering-a-female-literary-trailblazer/
Matt & Andrej Koymasky—Famous GLTB - Kate O’Brien. (n.d.). Retrieved July 16, 2022, from http://andrejkoymasky.com/liv/fam/bioo1/obrien03.html
Murphy, N. (2021). Kate O’Brien: Queer Hauntings in the Feminist Archive. Journal of Feminist Scholarship, 19(19). https://doi.org/10.23860/jfs.2021.19.06
O’Neill, M. (2018). Kate O’Brien: A Portrait of the Author in Older Age. Nordic Irish Studies, 17(1), 161–174.
Reynolds, L., & Hourican, B. (2009). O’Brien, Kate. In J. Quinn (Ed.), Dictionary of Irish Biography. Royal Irish Academy. https://doi.org/10.3318/dib.006479.v1
The banned Irish feminist writer who took on De Valera. (n.d.). The Irish Times. Retrieved July 16, 2022, from https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/the-banned-irish-feminist-writer-who-took-on-de-valera-1.3529346
Tighe-Mooney, S. (n.d.). Sexuality and Religion in Kate O’Brien’s Fiction. Gender and Sexuality: Emerging Voices in Irish Criticism.
Walshe, E. (01/06). Invisible Irelands: Kate O’Brien’s Lesbian and Gay Social Formations in London and Ireland in the Twentieth Century. SQS, Queer-Scope Articles, 39–48.
Women’s Museum of Ireland | Articles | Kate O’Brien. (n.d.). Retrieved July 16, 2022, from https://www.womensmuseumofireland.ie/articles/kate-o-brien