James Joyce brings my #ReadingIrelandMonth24 to a close

J-LBRBSBLOGS

April 4

Bringing #ReadingIrelandMonth24 to a close with James Joyce

I read The Dead by James Joyce for Reading Ireland Month last year and thoroughly enjoyed it. So felt it only right to go back and read more from Dubliners this year.

Dubliners

In 1914 Dubliners was Joyce's first published novel. The book is a collection of fifteen different stories set against Irish middle-class life in Dublin in the early 20th century using protagonists of various ages the stories are arranged with child protagonists in the first few stories and older protagonists as the collection goes on. Irish nationalism and epiphanies, life-changing moments of revelation, often being common themes in the stories.

Joyce had supported Ireland's separation and independence from Great Britain depicting his love for Ireland and his growing frustrations with regressing nationalism throughout the fifteen stories. He wrote Dubliners in order to comment about the Irish identity at the time. During the early 20th century Ireland was in search of a new national identity but James Joyce did not like the direction the country was going in. He saw a paralysis in the national identity, arising from the Roman Catholic Church and England, as well as with many individuals whom he felt were experiencing it and he did not think the way forward to a new Irish identity would be gained through this paralysis. So Joyce took his characters that were stuck or stagnant, unable to change their lives despite being unhappy, and used epiphanies to pull them out of this paralysis.

The stories

The Sisters

The first story in Dubliners tells of a young boy who is awaiting the death of his mentor Father Flynn, who has already had two strokes, so when he had a third one it gave no hope for recovery. The youngster knows that when he sees the light from two candles in Father Flynn's room he will have died so he goes by the Father's home each day to see what is happening.

Coming downstairs one day he finds that they have company, Mr Cotter, has brought news of Father Flynn's death. The young boy, who remains nameless, feigns nonchalance but his uncle tells old Cotter of their friendship and how he had "taught him a great deal". Mr Cotter disapproves saying youngsters need to be out playing with their peers and his Uncle concurs. Whilst chatting Mr Cotter leaves some of his sentences unfinished which has the boy wondering what he meant. Later, in his room, a murmuring paralytic face that wants to confess haunts his mind.

He goes to the house, part of which is a Drapery, and reads the notice of Father Flynn's death. He feels a sensation of freedom. Recalling what he had learnt from the priest and that he had got to know him well, he remembers what Mr Cotter said but can't remember the end of the dream he had.

His aunt takes him in the evening to pay their respects. Here, at last, we meet the characters of the story's title - Nannie and Eliza - the Father's sisters. After seeing Father Flynn laid out and offering prayers with Nannie they go back down to the room where Eliza sits. She and the Aunt chat about Father Flynn. Bringing up an incident which appears to have been a tragic turning point in his life intimating that "something had gone wrong" with the Father.

There seems to be a sense of relief from Father Flynn's death. For the sisters which is, perhaps, expected as they have been looking after him through his illnesses and now feel unburdened as he is at rest. The young boy, as we know, feels relief as he is now free from any kind of commitment to Father Flynn. His maybe the more obvious epiphany but both the boy and the sisters are now equally free from the shackles, the paralysis of the Father and what he represents, the Church. A Church which was, as Father Flynn is also said to be in the story, corrupt.

This story was written a few years before the partition of Ireland leaving six counties as part of Great Britain with the rest becoming an Independent Republic. I'm not sure this was exactly what Joyce envisioned or hoped for but perhaps he felt it was a start and better than all of Ireland remaining under British rule.

James Joyce

Jacques-Emile Blanche, oil on canvas, 1935.
NPG 3883
© National Portrait Gallery, London

Author: James Joyce was born in Dublin on 2 February 1882, the eldest of ten children in a family which, after brief prosperity, collapsed into poverty. He was none the less educated at the best Jesuit schools and then at University College, Dublin, and displayed considerable academic and literary ability. Although he spent most of his adult life outside Ireland, Joyce's psychological and fictional universe is firmly rooted in his native Dublin, the city which provides the settings and much of the subject matter for all his fiction. James Joyce died in Zürich, on 13 January 1941.

James Joyce was an Irish novelist, short story writer, poet, teacher, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century. Joyce is best known for Ulysses (1922), a landmark work in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey are paralleled in a variety of literary styles, most famously stream of consciousness. Other well-known works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939). His other writings include three books of poetry, a play, his published letters and occasional journalism.

Books (fiction)

Novels

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
Ulysses (1922)
Finnegans Wake (1939)
Stephen Hero (1944)

Collections

The Holy Office (poems) (1905)
Chamber Music (poems) (1907)
Gas from a Burner (poems) (1912)
Dubliners (1914)
Pomes Penyeach (poems) (1927)
Collected Poems (poems) (1936)
Best-loved Joyce (2017)

Novellas and short stories

Araby (1914)
The Boarding House (1914)
The Dead (1914)
Two Gallants (1914)
Anna Livia Plurabelle (1930)

May Goulding (1921) | What is a Ghost? (1921)

Play – Exiles (1918)

Picture book – The Cat and the Devil (1957)

Anthologies containing works by James Joyce

Points of View (1966)
Great British Short Stories (1974)
A Century of Short Stories (1977)
The Book of Fantasy (1988)

Links

Blue plaque, 28 Campden Grove, Holland Park, London W8 4JQ

James Joyce Centre, Dublin, Ireland

James Joyce in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

The James Joyce Society

James Joyce – Poetry Foundation

James Joyce – British Library

Irish Times article

Irish Partition - National archive teaching resource

Ireland 1900-1925: Crisis, War and Revolution - A Resource for 'A' Level Student from PRONI (Public Record Office of Northern Ireland) partnered with the University of Kent and the History Teachers Association, Northern Ireland.