5
Foreword
As readers of Joyce’s Dubliners, we may at first be struck by the great sense of
reality that inhabits the stories of the collection. Especially in the opening childhood
trilogy, this realism is not achieved only through the naturalistic representation of
the social and historical Dublin, but also through the portrayal of the forming
childish consciousness that lives in this context. Joyce describes the inner world of
Everychild, decanted from the constant mixture of real life and fantasy, games and
readings, fancies and undiscovered desires, curiosity and expectations, the strange
alchemy in which the roots of our whole life are plunged, defining who we are and
who we will became.
Moreover, the first three story of Dubliners deal with the very moment in
which the world of childhood clashes with the adult one, representing the slow loss
of innocence and freedom and the birth of the mature and social consciousness. This
particular passage is seen with outmost importance in every human culture and,
likewise, on a symbolic plan, every inner spiritual growth has been always
associated with the moment of human life in which one dies as a child and performs
his/her own rebirth in a new form. This phase of passage and transformation is the
one that rites and practises of initiation of various periods, places and societies are
always meant to regulate.
Through the immense pool of symbolic, intertextual and linguistic
complexities that runs underneath the Joycean text, many hints to various initiatory
themes can be found. In her Rite of Passage in the Narratives of Dante and Joyce,
Margaret J. Fraser focuses on Joyce’s late and major works, studying the
importance of the general concept of initiation: oddly enough, she almost ignores
his early short stories. Comparing Dubliners’ opening triptych with the dense
cluster of initiatory themes from cultural anthropology, history of religions,
hermetic traditions and literature, it is possible to understand better some of the
typical ambiguities of Joyce’s narrative method, as well as the artistic formation of
one of the most prominent writers of the last century.
7
Introduction
Dubliners and the ‘Childhood Triptych’
The fifteen short stories that compose Joyce’s Dubliners, his prose work, were
written between 1904 and 1907. The book, originally conceived to be organised in
ten tales, gradually evolved during this period, in which the author added some
stories, redefining the structure of the collection (Fargnoli & Gillespie 2006, 45).
However, the purpose remained unchanged: Joyce wanted to describe common
episodes of the life of Dublin’s lower and middle class, using his city “not simply
as [a] geographical setting but as [an] emotional and psychological locus as well”
(Ibid.). In order to do so, the tales were arranged by the different stages of human
life
1
: childhood (the stories “The Sisters”, ”An Encounter” and “Araby”, the ones
that this study is going to analyse); adolescence (“Eveline”, “After the Race”, “Two
Gallants” and “The Boarding House”) and adulthood (“A Little Cloud”,
“Counterparts”, “Clay” and “A Painful Case”). The following three stories (“Ivy
Day in a Committee Room”, “A Mother” and “Grace”) deal with the public, politic
and cultural life of the city; “The Dead”, the longest and latest tale written for
Dubliners, represents a summa of the themes that Joyce treated in the rest of the
collection.
The stories of this collection were not only meant to be a plain representation
of the everyday reality in the Irish capital, but they were meant also to denounce
the degrading condition in which its population lived. Indeed, Joyce defined Dublin
as a “hemiplegia or paralysis which many consider a city” (LI 55), proposing
himself as the artist who could reveal to the world and to the Dubliners themselves
the uncivilized and oppressed condition of Ireland (LI 64). The editorial history of
this collection of stories, finally published in 1914, demonstrates how Joyce’s
critical spirit had profoundly understood the problems of the Irish society in his
time. For almost ten years, he tried to see his work published, fighting against
censorship and reluctant publishers (Fargnoli & Gillespie 2006, 45).
1
As Florence Walzl points out, this division is based on the Romans division of life in pueritia (from
birth until 17 years old), adulescentia (from 17 to 30), juventus (from 31 to 45) and senectus (from
45 on). (Walzl 1977, 410).
8
Certainly, the depiction that the young author made of the city from which
he exiled himself is not generous. Joyce’s “chapter of the moral history of [his]
country” (LII 134) demonstrates how the people of Dublin, and consequently of the
whole Ireland, are trapped in an economical and spiritual poverty from which they
seems unable to flee. The oppression of the decadent Church and of British
Imperialism are not the only nets that bound the Irish: their incapacity to rebel and
their submission to deceitful escapist illusions and customs are the real problem of
this society. Firstly, indeed, Dubliners describe “the life of fallen men who submit
their imaginations to false allegiances and force their children into chains of
paralyzed morality” (Feshbach 1965, 85).
Even if the seeds of the great use of symbolism and myth that will be the
main characteristic of Joyce’s modernism are already present in this early work and
often offer the key to fully understand the stories (Johnson, D xxxi), the style used
by the author is still realistic (Ivi, D xviii). In order to seal the tragic fate of his
characters, Joyce describes almost naturalistically the basest aspects of the
historical reality that surrounds them, combining them with the representation of
their various psychological reactions to the context (Fargnoli & Gillespie 2006, 46).
The narrator is a heterodiegetic one that studies and observes the characters
presented without directly commenting their actions and thoughts.
However, this is not true for what concerns the three stories that this analysis
will consider: here, the narrator is autodiegetic
2
, coinciding with the protagonist.
The three children who are allowed to tell their own stories in “The Sisters”, “An
Encounter” and “Araby” represent an exception in the narratological structure of
the collection of short stories, and define the first peculiarity of this triptych.
Besides, even when considered as characters, then, they seem to differ from the
dreary adult world that encloses them. First, the three boys seem to be sensitive,
intelligent and willing to learn, “afraid to seem studious or lacking in robustness”
(D 11). These characteristics tend to separate these characters from their fellows
3
,
2
An autodiegetic narrator is a homodiegetic narrator (a narrator who is a character in his story) that
is also the protagonist of the narrative (Genette 1980, 245).
3
“[O]f the number of these latter, the reluctant Indians who were afraid to seem studious or lacking
in robustness, I was one. The adventures related in the literature of the Wild West were remote from
my nature but, at least, they opened doors of escape. I liked better some American detective stories
9
revealing in them a strong sense of individuality and pride
4
. They are respectful
towards the adults
5
, but brave enough to fulfil their questing nature.
6
The characters
of the first and the third tales live with their uncles (D 3-4; 22-23), being perhaps
orphans, and no mention is made about his parents by the boy in “An Encounter”.
These common traits suggest that the whole triptych deals with the life of the same
boy, even if the narratives give no proofs of that. Indeed, “[a]lthough they appear
to be the same narrator at different ages, the reader is never allowed the comfort –
which could easily have been built into the stories – of actually knowing they are
one person.” (Robinson 1987, 393)
7
. Only conventionally, henceforth, will this
study refer to them as a single figure, that will be simply called the protagonist.
What can be surely stated is that the age of the protagonist seems to grow in
the succession of the stories
8
. Throughout the narratives, besides, this natural
growth is not the only development that is portrayed. Since the beginning, this boy
shows a great interest in books (D 6; 15; 19) and his inquiring attitude is almost
obsessive on everything that concerns language, signs and words
9
, which he often
fails to interpret correctly. Slowly, then, he will become much more aware of some
aspect of the world that surrounds him. In “The Sisters”, for example, he still
“[puzzles his] head to extract meaning from [Old Cotter’s] unfinished sentences”
[…]” (D 11); “Her brother and two other boys were fighting for their caps and I was alone at the
railings.”(D 21).
4
“I was angry with old Cotter for alluding to me as a child” (D 5); “I was afraid the man would
think I was as stupid as Mahony” (D 15).
5
The boy in “The Sisters” is obsequious towards Father Flynn (D 5; 7), the one in “An Encounter”
is respectful towards the old pervert of “An Encounter” (D 17-18) and, in “Araby”, the main
character is obedient with Mangan’s sister (D 19).
6
In the second story, the main characters plans “a day’s miching” from school (D 12), and in
“Araby” the protagonist decides to go all alone to the bazaar (D 21).
7
See also Benstock 1992, 155-156.
8
“The boy of “The Sisters” is certainly young. His timidity, position in the family, limitations in
vocabulary and understanding, and the fact that he is learning to be an altar boy give the impression
he may be ten to twelve years old. The boy of “An Encounter” seems older and bolder in skipping
school, but he is still young enough to play “Wild West” games; also, he is old enough to be asked
about the girl friends but seems indifferent to them and too naïve to recognize the pervert for what
he is. He seems pre-pubescent, perhaps twelve to fourteen. But the youth of “Araby” is clearly
pubescent. He entertains a secret romantic infatuation for a teen-age girl, and in a strict, authoritarian
society is old enough to attend a public bazaar late in the evening alone” (Walzl 1977; 410).
9
Just to quote some of the most explicative examples from each tale, cf. “[the word paralysis] had
always sounded strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word simony in
the Catechism.” (D 3); “I walked […] reading all the theatrical advertisements in the shop-windows”
(D 5); “I disliked the words in his mouth […]. As he proceeded I noticed that his accent was good.”
(D 16); “The syllables of the word Araby were called to me through the silence in which my soul
luxuriated and cast an Eastern enchantment over me.” (D 21).
10
(D 4), and, in “An Encounter”, he “trie[s] to decipher the legend upon [the vessel’s
stern] but, failing to do so, [he comes] back […]” (D 14). On the contrary, in
“Araby”, the boy is able to understand at once that his uncle is drunk, clearly saying:
“I could interpret these signs.” (D 22). For this reason, it is possible to state that
“[t]aken as a group, these three stories construct a metanarrative, an interpretive
Bildungsroman showing growth from interpretive naiveté toward self-conscious
interpretation” (Robinson 1987; 377)
10
.
This idea of positive development clashes with the main conception of
spiritual death and degradation that is usually associated with Dubliners (Feshbach
1965, 85). Indeed, this conventional interpretation, though legitimate, does not
consider all the complexities of the first three tales, which present, on the contrary,
the protagonist as a “[figure] of youth at the threshold of life” in “an initiation story
involving a quest for life’s meaning and the boy’s role is that of a neophyte”
11
(Walzl 1973, 402). Across the sea of critical writings about these stories, similar
references to the theme of initiation are continual
12
, even if never properly treated.
Certainly, even a brief glance to the major anthropological study
13
about this topic
may be enlightening to understand this triptych better.
The Ambiguity of Initiation in Dubliners
According to van Gennep, rites of passage are divided in three moments: preliminal
rites (or rites of separation), liminal rites (or transition rites) and postliminal rites
(or rites of incorporation) (Gennep, van 1981, 10). The liminal phase has a
particular meaning in initiations, the rites that regulate principally the passage in
this “time and space betwixt and between one context of meaning and another. It is
when the initiand is neither what he has been nor is what he will be” (Turner 1982,
113). Apart from the age of the protagonist of these three stories, which is more or
10
This consideration can but remind Joyce’s official Bildungsroman, that, after all, as in these three
tales, does not describe the development of the protagonist linearly, but following its topical
moment: “the narrative time […] is discontinuous, episodic, a sequence of portraits rather than a
flow of happenings” (Gifford 1982, 5).
11
Precisely, Walzl is here speaking only about the first story, but explaining how the final version
of “The Sisters” reunites the theme of maturation of the rest of the trilogy (Walzl 1973, 402).
12
Just to quote a few example, it has been said that“[t]he narrator's initiation in "An Encounter"
prepares for the last story in the first group” (Garrison 1975, 229); and the boy in “The Sisters” is
defined “a perceptive boy worthy to be initiated into sacred mysteries” (Leonard 1993, 36).
13
The ones that have been consulted are mainly Gennep, van 1981; Eliade 1958; and Turner 1982.
11
less the typical one in which a child faces his passage to adolescence, his
psychological attitude of ‘interpreter’ places him exactly in this liminal phase, in
which he tries for the first time to define himself before the complexities of the
surrounding reality.
Indeed, as Turner states, “[c]haracteristic of this liminal period is the
appearance of marked ambiguity and inconsistency of meaning, and the emergence
of luminal demonic and monstrous figures who represent within themselves
ambiguities and inconsistencies” (Ibid.). In this triptych, each story is always
centred on the relationship of the young protagonist with another character, older
than him, who fits perfectly in this description, as this study will try to explain. The
dead priest in “The Sisters”, the old man of “An Encounter” and the young girl of
“Araby”, all wrapped in the dense knot of associations and equivocal meanings that
the narratives produce, represent this relationship of the boy/initiand with liminality
and the ambiguous possibilities that the passage may represent in the modern world
described by Joyce.
In order to understand this ambiguity better, it may be useful to follow the
distinction of different types of initiation that Eliade proposes (Eliade 1958, 2).
First, the obligatory collective rituals for the transition from childhood or
adolescence to adulthood, that allow each child to be “recognised as a responsible
member of the society” (Ivi, x). In primitive culture, these ceremonies “[involve]
the tribe as a whole. A new generation is instructed, is made fit to be integrated into
the community of adults. And on this occasion, […] the entire community is
regenerated” (Ivi, 4). As said before, in the waste land of Joyce’s Dublin, where
each generation bounds the following to the same chains by which it is constrained,
as story as “Eveline” demonstrates
14
, the integration with the community does not
mean regeneration, but damnation. Joyce describes an uninitiated society in which
liminality remains “anomie, alienation, angst, the three fatal alpha sisters of many
modern myths” (Turner 1982, 46). Hence, a simple collective initiation has to be
14
Briefly, and even too simplistically, in this story, the fourth one of the collection, the protagonist,
Eveline, renounces to escape from Dublin’s life and from his violent father, leaving aside her dreams
of marriage and freedom because of the vow she made in front of her dying mother, which
constrained the girl to try to “keep the home together”(D 25-29).
12
considered ineffective: the Dubliner, for Joyce, has not transcended the phase of
non-being typical of liminality, remaining trapped into it. In A Portrait of the Artist
as a Young Man
15
Joyce’s clearly condemns the “uncreated conscience of
[Stephen’s] race” (P 213), describing so the condition of lack of identity of a
country trapped in a condition of estrangement and indefiniteness.
Nonetheless, other types of initiation are possible. In Eliade’s classification,
great importance is given to the rites for entering a secret society or a confraternity
and these that occur in connection with a mystical vocation, the one of the shaman
or of the medicine man, for example (Eliade 1958, 2). The last two categories, being
individually performed and not obligatory, “might even be regarded as two varieties
of a single class” (Ivi, 3). As said before, the protagonist seems to be portrayed as
in an ‘interpretive Bildungsroman’, because he is tracing, inside his uninitiated
society, a different and personal development that can be studied in relationship
with these individual initiatory rites.
Considering these tales as accounts of initiations that may give the critical
means to the young protagonist to overcome the permanent liminality that
dominates the life of Joyce’s Dublin, it is possible to read them in the light of
Turner’s idea of “liminoid”. More linked to the modern world and, in his analysis,
to modern theatre and literature, this moment of threshold is “different from the
liminal as being more often the creation of individual than the collective inspiration
and critical rather than furthering the purposes of the existing social order” (Turner
1982, 113). For Joyce, whose mission was that of renewing “the course of
civilisation in Ireland” (L I 64) by letting the Irish people have “one good look at
themselves in [his] nicely polished looking glass” (Ibid.), this liminoid development
of the critical spirit within individuals represents the only hope of regeneration for
a society.
Therefore, even if the primitive liminal passage is completely distorted in
the modern Dublin, whose citizens’ alienated condition is the result of failure of the
15
Obviously, in this study, some excerpts from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man will be
considered in order to understand better the stories, even if an exhaustive comparison, which would
be nevertheless very interesting, may not be proposed. Indeed, the first novel of Joyce describes
exactly the same process of birth of the critical and artistic spirit that is only sketched in these tales.
13
transcending of this medial phase, an individual liminoid passage may still happen.
Considering the complexities of the texts, it would be useless to try to demonstrate
if this liberating passage through ambiguity would be successful for the protagonist
of these three stories. These, being deprived of an external evaluation, and in some
way even of a proper conclusion
16
, give to the reader no hints about the future fate
of the protagonist. However, an analysis of the textual references concerning the
theme of initiation that Joyce employs in these three tales suggests how to
reconsider the idea of human failure that is usually associated with Dubliners, at
least by letting the attentive reader perceives the seed of a possible intellectual
liberation from the boundaries of an asphyxiating modern society.
16
“The Sisters”, for example, ends with an incomplete direct discourse (D 10), while the conclusion
of “An Encounter” occurs in the middle of an ongoing action of a character (“How my heart beat as
he came running across the field to me! He ran as if to bring me aid”; D 18) and of a sudden
revelation in the mind of the protagonist (“And I was penitent; for in my heart I had always despised
him a little”; Ibid.), which is totally unexpected, considering how the causes of this ‘penitence’
remain confusingly unexplained to the reader.
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