Dubliners by J.Joyce (riferimento a 'Eveline' e 'The dead')

“Dubliners” is a collection of fifteen short stories written by James Joyce in which the author analyses the failure of self-realisation of inhabitants of Dublin in biographical and in psychological ways.

The novel was originally turned down by publishers because they considered it immoral for its portrait of the Irish city. Joyce treats in “Dubliners” the paralysis of will in four stages: childhood, youth, maturity and public life. The paralysis of will is the courage and self-knowledge that leads ordinary men and women to accept the limitations imposed by the social context they live in.

In “Dubliners” the style is both realistic - to the degree of perfectly recreating characters and idioms of contemporary Dublin - and symbolic – giving the common object unforeseen depth and a new meaning in order to show a new view of reality. Joyce defines this effect “epiphany” which indicates that moment when a simple fact suddenly explodes with meaning and makes a person realise his / her condition.

Let’s focus on two significant stories belonging to “Dubliners”: “Eveline” (youth stage) and “The dead” (public life stage).

Eveline

“Eveline” is the fourth story belonging to the group of short stories which treat youth. The story is set in two different places: in Eveline’s house, where she observes the world and thinks about her past, and the local harbour, where Eveline should leave Dublin with her lover Frank.
Eveline is a girl of nineteen years who spent a miserable and sad childhood in a Dublin neighbourhood.
The death of her mother caused by madness forces Eveline to take on responsibility for the management of house and family.
The death of her beloved brother Ernest, the departure of her brother Harry and the lack of love of her father, poverty and frustrating job are painful experiences that mark Eveline and preclude her from final redemption, leading her to passive and alienated life conditions.
In front of the perspective of escaping with her beloved Frank, a good and generous sailor, and the project of a more fulfilling life, Eveline is unable to choose and does not know how to exit from family prison, which crushes her like dust.
In fact, Eveline is surrounded by dusty and incinerated things: house objects, old photos, the background, so that through the smell of cretonne, dust penetrates her hearth, crushing it.
Eveline is attempting to go to Buenos Aires with Frank where they could create a new life and Eveline could be treated as a respectable woman, but she is afraid of leaving her violent and miserable father, who represents a safe shelter and food against the uncertain will.
Like dusty and incinerated house objects, Eveline is dead inside: she can not love and live. So, she will not leave Dublin and she will still see her lover go away by boat.
In this vision, the oppressive dusty layer becomes a metaphor of the human condition in the 1900s in which men represent the ineptitude of will and the inertia to life’s definitive choices.

The dead

“The dead” is the last story belonging to the public life section of “Dubliners”.
Joyce treats the culmination of the moral crisis of Gabriel Conroy, a teacher and a writer.
It snows in Dublin and Gabriel and his wife Gretta are invited to an annual ball organised by his aunts Jane and Kate Morkan and his cousin Mary Jane.
During tha party, Gabriel knows different guests: from Mrs Ivors, who has a bigoted nationalism, to Mr Browne and Freddie Malins, who are cheerful.
Gabriel must speak about his rhetorical speech to other guests, in which he emphasises the hospitable character of Irish people and the past.
At the end of the party, Gabriel and Gretta come back to their hotel.
Gabriel has been drinking and physically desires his wife; he fantasises about how best to approach her when, suddenly, Gretta comes up to him and kisses him.
But Gabriel notices that Gretta is lost in her thoughts and asks her why she is sad. She explains the reason for her sadness: during the party, she has heard a song that has reminded her of her first lover, Michael Furey, she met in Galway before arriving in Dublin.
Michael was so in love with her that he defied his own illness, standing in the rain to meet her, just before she left. So, he died because of tuberculosis.
The sense of anger of Gabriel about Gretta’s lover soon turns into a sense of defeat and sadness, which reveals the fall of his moral values, the sense of mediocrity and the failure of himself.
Gabriel thinks he has full possession of his wife’s affections and knows her completely. But when he is aware of the object of her wife’s thoughts he is shocked and terrified. His self-confidence is broken down and feels a mixed anger of jealousy because of his wife’s first lover.
However, he feels respect and humiliation because the young Michael Furey really loved Gretta and he would have done everything for love (also to die).
The song heard by Gretta represents the “epiphany” that reveals how Gabriel does not fully know his wife’s affections and the fact that Gretta makes her memory the centre of her existence and her marriage with Gabriel.
So, Gabriel becomes aware of the death of his own soul, while snow falls on Dublin, covering the living and the dead between whom there seems to be very little difference.