The Unwritten Epilogues of James Joyce's Dubliners

Born in January 1882, James Joyce was known as a somewhat rebellious voice in terms of Irish current affairs, and is now regarded as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century (Budgen 9). The vast array of characters Joyce presents in "Dubliners," a collection of 15 short stories set in Dublin, Ireland, are representative of what Joyce saw to be the deterioration of Irish culture and society. Holding back nothing, the author wrapped pointed criticisms in neat, tidy packages like the characters of Maria in "Clay" and James Duffy in "A Painful Case." Discontent is often facilitated out of pure necessity; it's a way for an individual to take solace from the debilitating conditions into which they've been dropped. Joyce's work is a prime example of this; his characters, while overflowing with ironic stabs at society, also quietly and desperately sought to find something on which to place the blame for their plight. This common theme stretches far beyond the pages on which it's written, however, and the characters' struggles ultimately reflect those of their creator.

"Clay," in a few short pages, tells the story of a well-meaning, good-natured woman whose life seems to have passed her by. The character Maria now spends her days working at a women's home called Dublin by Lamplight. The center is, for all intensive purposes, a catchall for women who are sexually promiscuous, unmarried, or for some other reason deemed unfitting of a place in everyday society. The offense that landed Maria here is referenced only as "the break-up at home," (Joyce 96) a purposely ambiguous explanation that urges the reader to leave the reasons by the wayside and consider the issue itself; what act is so unfavorable that it justifies taking away one's opportunity to lead a normal life?

Maria has come to accept her fate at Dublin by Lamplight; in fact, she is even presented to have decided she quite enjoys the lifestyle that's been forced upon her. This is where the first bit of James Joyce's early life enters as a major influence on the story. As a young boy, Joyce was bounced around between many different boarding schools and academies, most of which were Christian-themed. The most prominent, Belvedere College, attempted to enlist him for a lifelong career in the clergy (Ellman 30). While he later came to reject the idea of Catholicism, it's not a stretch to infer upon further inquiries that Joyce resented being pushed to make life-altering decisions by the society that surrounded him.

Towards the end of the story, Maria is shown as playing a classic Irish Halloween game in which a player is blindfolded and made to pick from several different items, each symbolizing a different fortune for that player. On her turn, Maria draws a piece of clay. However, because of her blindfold, she only perceives it to be a "soft, wet substance." (Joyce 101) This single event which inspired the name of the story is central to defining Maria's character, and subsequently Joyce's perception of the Irish people.

The defining characteristic of the substance clay is the unique manner in which it is formed. Taking the clay from the ground and mixing it with water essentially sets a timer on its current form; the shape the clay is molded into in the ensuing moments is the shape it will harden into, and it is destined to hold that pose for eternity. Applying this characteristic to the story, and to Maria's character, it's easy to see where Joyce is going with the reference. Due to decisions Maria made in a relatively small amount of time, she has set in stone the way she will live forever.

In the game Maria was playing with a group of children, clay is said to symbolize impending death. The fact that she fails to recognize the most ominous and dreaded of all the items symbolizes the ignorance she has come to embody. When confronted with a character flaw, human nature will turn one's thoughts to the source of the problem. Unfavorable social skills are blamed on the family upbringing. Offensive actions are blamed upon the failure of the moral base, most commonly the church. Through Maria's character, Joyce launches an outright assault on the Irish Catholic school system in which he was raised, laying the blame for her ignorance squarely on the shoulders of her lack of education. It's no coincidence that the first publication of "Clay" in 1914 came at a time when Joyce found himself drifting between professions, from one failed attempt at making a living to the next (Ellman 271).

When it came to the norms of Irish society at the time, this author was a man who found himself on the outside more often than not. While Maria represented everything Joyce saw wrong with the system around him, it was another character, pulled from a story in the same collection, that epitomized the shortcomings he saw in the mirror.

The character of James Duffy in "A Painful Case" is the very definition of irony. The opening paragraph rather snobbishly states that Duffy lives in a suburb of Dublin because he found the city itself to be "mean, modern, and pretentious." (Joyce 103) Without wasting any time, this self-contradictory statement smacks the reader in the face with the portrait of a man quick to see the flaws in anything save himself. Because of the nature of the stories in "Dubliners," it does not take much to see that James Duffy is a man who at the very least would sympathize with James Joyce's view of Ireland. A very small step in the same direction should have readers questioning whether the men's shared first name holds a particular symbolic significance.

If indeed Duffy is a self-portrait of his creator, he is at the same time an attempt to exorcise the spiteful and pessimistic demon that plagues his personality. The irony in the opening paragraph gives off such a stench of pretense that it seems nearly cartoonish, but it appears that the characteristic has been purposely overstated for a reason; if Joyce was going to point out a character flaw in himself, he was not going to undermine its importance by turning it into a subtle reference or interesting footnote.

A further exploration into this character reveals that the walls of his bedroom are completely bare; a space usually utilized for displaying items of pride, passion or interest is left unfilled in a house that Duffy inhabits alone. This is when we first become aware that though the character is consistently critical of others' lifestyles, he is in fact devoid of one himself. He struggles to find a true passion; he has a soured view of the world, making it impossible to take enjoyment in any part of his life.

This characteristic is further fleshed out when he meets Mrs. Sinico, a woman with whom he immediately becomes enthralled. He takes solace in her company, and even seems to begin breaking free from his pessimistic bonds. However, when she finally reaches out to him in a profession of her affection, he is unable to react in any way but to close himself off. It's important to note that never once in this part of the story is Mrs. Sinico's status as a married woman mentioned. In fact, it appears Joyce purposely builds to a climax where readers are almost expecting the issue to be raised, and then lets it die seemingly prematurely. Of course, this doesn't appear to be without reason; he wants to make it painfully clear that the reason for Duffy's breaking off relations with her is decidedly not her husband. He is simply a man who is incapable of dealing with the notion of true affection. What began as a sliver of hope ends as just another chapter in the story of a man who can't bring himself to retain true happiness.

In the end of "A Painful Case," Joyce provides a forecast of what belies people like the one he created in James Duffy. Four years after his last contact with Mrs. Sinico, the lonely man reads of her apparent suicide in the local newspaper. He finds that soon after he broke ties she took up heavy drinking and fell into a deep depression.

Upon digesting this news, he is overcome by disgust at his former friend's actions. He begins to regret ever sharing a part of himself with her, deeming her unworthy of his thoughts like everyone else, whom he had previously described as "phrasemongers incapable of thinking consecutively for sixty seconds." (Joyce 107) In a bittersweet closing sequence, however, Duffy realizes that even though they ended their relationship, they continued on parallel paths until the very end of her life; neither succeeded in finding true happiness, and both having blindly let their best days pass them by. He is overcome by guilt and for the first time does not attempt to put himself above the rest of humanity, safely out of blame's way. The irony, of course, is that in his self-disgust he has finally broken free of the self-righteous bonds that imprisoned him.

In a collection of articles designed as a supplemental reading to Joyce's work, Florence Walzl notes her belief that the true victim in the death was in fact Duffy (Walzl 179). This conception certainly holds merit, as the story leaves off with Duffy a broken, hopeless man in a state of disarray. However, there is much to be taken from the things that go unsaid. Mrs. Sinico's death, while painful to endure, changed Duffy in a way that her life never could have. In all likelihood, the feelings he had would never again have been brought to the front of his mind, leaving him unchanged and wholly the same as he was before Mrs. Sinico entered his life. James Duffy is destined to walk away from this tragedy as a different person.

Taken at face value, the stories in "Dubliners" are a piece of history. They manage to freeze time in a way no text book ever could, and champion the story of the individual rather than the society as a whole. Of course, no part of the equation is absent from the collection. Society plays a decided role in the stories; it serves as the backdrop and the setting, the cause and effect. Every word written on the pages of the book drips with meaning and the vivid symbolism jumps off of each new page.

It's worth noting, however, that many of Joyce's stories are just beginning when the pages come to an end. He simply sets in motion a chain of events that only have one potential outcome; this is the genius of his work. It's not until long after "Dubliners" has settled into one's brain that the realizations begin creeping in-the unwritten epilogues to each character's story. They're all destined to a predetermined end that carries a message about Irish society in the 20th century. Maria was a snapshot of the ignorant products of the Catholic school system in Ireland, destined to continue down the same self-deprecating path for the rest of her life. James Duffy served as an example of just how much it takes to change a person's pattern of behavior, especially one that's been programmed and locked in place by a suffocating societal rule.

At the time of its writing, Joyce had no way of knowing how far-reaching "Dubliners" would become. Prior to this, his only published works were theater reviews in newspapers he had written simply to scrape together a living. "A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man," the first piece he submitted for publishing consideration, had been rejected by Dana Magazine (Ellman 162).

It's clear that even with limited name recognition in the literary community, Joyce declined to water down his stories and bring the hidden meanings to the forefront in order to gain general appeal. His refusal to compromise his work has become the genius of his brand; "Dubliners" rewards the reader for looking beyond simply what is written while at the same time allowing for surface entertainment that will draw the eye in for another look. When the themes are as layered and plentiful and the irony as rich as in Joyce's work, that second glance could be the one that opens the floodgates of the mind and allows the full gravity of the stories to come pouring in.

Sources:

Budgen, Frank. James Joyce and the Making of 'Ulysses' and other writings. Oxford University Press, 1972.

Ellman, Richard. James Joyce. Oxford University Press, 1959.

Joyce, James. Dubliners. New York: Penguin House, 1993.

Walz, Florence L.. "Dubliners," A Companion to Joyce Studies. Greenwood, 1984.