Masaryk University

Faculty of Arts

Department of English
and American Studies
English Language and Literature

Andrea Bodnrov

Provincialism and its discontents in

James Joyces Dubliners
Bachelors Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Stephen Paul Hardy, Ph. D.

2013

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently,

using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.
..

Authors signature

Table of Contents
Table of Contents ................................................................................................................ 3
Introduction.......................................................................................................................... 4
1. The literary influences in Dubliners ............................................................................. 7
2. Childhood ....................................................................................................................... 15
3. Adolescence ................................................................................................................... 21
4. Adult Life ........................................................................................................................ 26
5. Public Life ....................................................................................................................... 31
Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 36
Bibliography ....................................................................................................................... 38
Summary in English .......................................................................................................... 41
Resum v etin .............................................................................................................. 42

Introduction
My thesis, Provincialism and its discontents in James Joyces Dubliners is
focused on the literary analysis of Dubliners and the way James Joyce portrays the
frustrated citizens of Dublin. The thesis will look at Joyces use of provincialism in
connection with the development of his realist aesthetic and its relation to his social
and political perspective. The main themes analysed in the thesis connected to
provincialism are paralysis, frustration, desire for freedom and passivity.
The thesis is divided into five chapters; the first one presenting some of the
major Joyces literary influences on Dubliners, the rest each presenting a section of

Dubliners Childhood, Adolescence, Adult Life and Public Life. The reason why I
decided to make such division is that the stories in Dubliners naturally develop a
certain intuitive, but also logical connection according to their narrative viewpoint,
characters and topics. The childhood stories The Sisters, An Encounter and
Araby all have a child as a first-person narrator; the adolescence stories
Eveline, After the Race, Two Gallants and The Boarding House all present
adolescent characters stuck at some kind of a life crossroads; adult life stories A
Little Cloud, Counterparts, Clay and A Painful Case present an adult person
dissatisfied with his/her life and feeling remorse about their past and the public life
stories Ivy Day in the Committee Room, A Mother, Grace and The Dead
each satirize a section of Irish society politics, culture and religion. The Dead
functions as a kind of masterpiece epilogue connecting the themes together. Each of
these chapters will be focused on one story, using which the main themes and
aesthetic will be presented. The first chapter The literary influences in Dubliners
presents some of the major literary influences and their impact and reminders in
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specific stories in Dubliners. The influences analysed in the chapter are the Celtic
Renaissance, Dante Alighieri, the Nineteenth-Century French Novel and Henrik Ibsen.
The secondary sources I considered the most important and useful while
writing this thesis are Robert Alters Imagined Cities: Urban Experience and the

Language of the Novel, Gregory Castles Modernism and the Celtic Revival, Marilyn
Frenchs Missing pieces in Joyces Dubliners, and Michelle Lecuyers Dantes Literary

Influence in Dubliners: James Joyces Modernist Allegory of Paralysis.

Robert Alters Imagined Cities analyses the way of depicting urban life by
various authors. The chapters I found particularly useful were Flaubert: The Demise
of the Spectator, Flaubert: Urban Poetics and Joyce: Metropolitan Shuttle. The
chapters are sorted chronologically and they are also tied together according to the
literary influences, which helped me find information about Flauberts impact on
Joyces work.
Gregory Castles Modernism and the Celtic Revival contains a detailed insight
into the Celtic Revival movement and its cultural context. It also deals with works of
James Joyce; although it is mainly focused on Ulysses, Dubliners are also mentioned
and the cultural background of the literary works presented in this chapter makes the
concept clear and easy to understand.
Marilyn Frenchs Missing Pieces in Joyces Dubliners is a detailed analysis of
each story in Dubliners; the scheme of the essay is logical and the remarks in it bring
psychological states from the stories back to their physical origins. This essay helped
me understand certain aspects of the stories better and also formulate some of the
thoughts I had myself.

Michelle Lecuyers Dantes Literary Influence in Dubliners is also a very

logically structured work, which deals with Dantean parallels in specific stories from

Dubliners. It also provides a detailed background on the state of the research and
direct connections between Dubliners and The Divine Comedy. This brought a new
level to the perception of the stories and showed me the whole range of Dantes
impact on Joyces work.
In this thesis I aim to create a clear, logical and possibly entertaining overview
on Joyces way of presenting the provincialism of the Irish society in Dubliners and
its effect on individuals.

1. The literary influences in Dubliners

This first chapter of my thesis is an overview of James Joyces literary
influences visible in his works with the focus on Dubliners. Its structure has four
parts the Irish renaissance, the impact of Aristotle and Dante, the influence of the
French novel of the 19th century and Scandinavian dramatic realism, mainly Henrik
Ibsen. These influences helped to shape Joyces writing style and contributed to the
shape of his works we know nowadays.
One of the most profound influences is unquestionably the Irish Renaissance,
also called the Celtic Revival, which raised the question of nation and nationality.
According to Leopold Bloom in Ulysses, A nation is the same people living in the
same place. (J. Joyce, 1961: 331) This statement somehow mirrors Joyces personal
view, as he was an open critic of Revivalism, which made his works relevant in the
context of Irish artistic production. The root of the feeling of isolation was the need
to separate and the way the patriotic pride was demonstrated. In his book

Modernism and the Celtic Revival, Gregory Castle comments: the pride and fervor,
and most of all the confidence of the men and women who rallied around the United
Irishmen in 1798 and later around the Young Irelanders, foundered on sectarianism,
which for some revisionist historians was artificially fomented in order to drive a
wedge between the Catholic Irish and their Anglo-Irish sympathizers. (Castle, 8)
Castle also views Ireland as a metropolitan colony of the British Empire, since both
Ireland and England share the same language, urban culture, geopolitical population
and legal code. Many of the Anglo-Irish began to feel isolated; among them some of
the most important figures connected with the Irish renaissance John Millington
Synge and William Butler Yeats: The Irish, through the later nineteenth century, had
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become one of the most deracinated of peoples; robbed of belief in their own future,
losing their native language, overcome by feelings of anomie and indifference, they
seemed rudderless and doomed. (Kiberd, 329) James Joyce was probably not as
burdened by questions of religious self-determination and authenticity. However, he
faced the problems of isolation and marginalization. He remained aloof from the
Revival and according to Castle, precisely in this way, he succeeded in redefining it.
Joyces work serves as a self-criticism of the Revivals way of representing
Irish culture with the use of self-reflexivity and counter-narratives. According to
Castle, some influential critics of Joyce assume that his antipathy toward nationalism
paralleled a similar antipathy toward the Revival. However, along with Yeats, Joyce
desired the creation of an imaginary Irish nation and race. Whereas Yeats did
indeed give up, to some extent, the deliberate creation of a kind of Holy City in the
imagination and replace it with images of enduring heroism and not-so-durable
authority, Joyce remained faithful to the original conception of the Revival. (Castle,
174) Unlike Yeats, Joyce chose to create a national literature by engaging in an
immanent critique of Revivalism by challenging the theories and practices by which
the Irish people are represented. He was not a Revivalist in the sense of trying to
preserve the essence of Irish folk life, but remained faithful to the idea, pushing the
self-critical impulse from Synges Playboy of the Western World and exposing the
Revivals investments in anthropological notions of primitive Irish race. (Castle, 177)
Like Synge, he deconstructs the anthropological methods used to get what was
essential and true about the Irish peasant life in production of patently inessential
and untrue anthropological fictions on two levels: the first one being an inquiry into
the conditions of Dublin and its inhabitants and the second one being a view of
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disaffected natives such as Gabriel Conroy in The Dead and Stephen Dedalus in

The Portrait of the Artist and Ulysses. He also refuses any authority other than his
own moral nature, which is emphasised in his letters to Grant Richards: I seriously
believe that you will retard the course of civilization in Ireland by preventing the Irish
people from having one good look at themselves in my nicely polished looking glass
(Gilbert, 64); the looking glass employs a metaphor used against Synge in the

Playboy controversy: A reviewer of The Playboy had lamented Synges refusal to

represent the Irish realistically, asserting that the Abbey Theatre directors were
expected to fulfill the true purpose of playing to hold as twere the mirror up to
Nature, to banish the meretricious stage, and give, for the first time, true pictures of
Irish life and fulfillment of that pledge. (Castle, 180) In his works, Joyce reveals the
vanity of people blinded by the true pictures and the consequences of their
ignorance.
The influence of Dante Alighieri and his Divine Comedy is also an important
element in Joyces work. In her masters thesis Dante's Literary Influence in

Dubliners: James Joyce's Modernist Allegory of Paralysis., Michelle Lecuyer analyses

Dantes literary influence in Dubliners and emphasises the allegories mainly between

Dubliners and Inferno. She also states that Dantes influence on Dubliners was
overlooked for a long time and even if the critics, who do find connections between
Dante and Dubliners, tend to interpret them superficially. For example, it has been
common for critics to analyse Grace as a miniature parody of The Divine Comedy,
ever since Joyces brother Stanislaus first suggested this interpretation in 1958: Mr.
Kernans fall down the steps of the lavatory is his descent into hell, the sickroom is
purgatory, and the Church in which he and his friends listen to the sermon is
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paradise at last. (S. Joyce, 228)1 In the end, critics have tended to identify one-toone correlations, in which a particular story in Dubliners was connected with a
particular canto in Inferno, which caused many Dantean connections to be
overlooked.
Joyce and Dante share a disapproving attitude towards their native cities of
Dublin and Florence and often expressed contempt for their inhabitants and
institutions. Joyces criticism of the people and institutions of Dublin is informed by
Dantes similar condemnations of the people and institutions of Florence in the

Inferno. Warren Carrier, one of the first critics to recognize the Dantean influence in
Dubliners, wrote in 1965: In a larger sense, Dubliners, like Dantes Inferno, is both
literal and allegorical. Joyce is presenting Dublin literally, realistically, but the state of
paralysis in which the characters reside is, as it were, the state of souls after death, a
state which they merit because of their betrayal of values. (Carrier, 214)2 According
to him, the sinners in both Dantes hell and Dubliners do not recognize their sins, but
know that they are trapped. This becomes more profound in the second part of

Dubliners as the characters become more and more passive. Ciln Owens also
mentions Dantes influence in his chapter Joyce and Dumas: The Count of Monte
Cristo and The Sisters, the author discusses the parallels and differences between
these two works, concluding that the chief was Dante Alighieri and In his powers
of language, his vision, and his subject, Joyce found a more sympathetic model than
Dumas, whose gifts were for dramatic plotting and not for poetic nuance. (Owens,
26) His conclusion is quite expected, as the influence of Dumas works on Joyce is
generally not considered to be of importance.
1
2

Cited in Lecuyer, 9.
Cited in Lecuyer, 34.

10

The 19th century French novelists also had a great impact on James Joyces
writing style. In his essay Flaubert to Joyce: Evolution of a Cinematographic Form,
Alan Spiegel analyses the influence of Gustave Flaubert on Joyces works using a
cinematic approach and therefore mainly concerning the visual perspective.
Flauberts visual perspective established two possible views of the object: the object
is rendered in specific time and space, or the object is rendered in perspective. In
the first case, the reader is locked in the mind of the beholder, in the second the
object is mediated through distortions of an eye that sees like a camera. He
describes the experience of seeing as voluptuous and manages to project it into his
work. A different perspective is shown in Robert Alters chapter on Flaubert in his
book Imagined Cities: Urban Experience and the Language of the Novel, which
focuses on the way he describes the urban environment. This is also directly
connected with Joyce, as his works are situated in a city and the main connecting
theme of Dubliners is the city of Dublin itself. In Flauberts works, everyone is trying
to get somewhere; everyone is frustrated by all the others, who are in the way and
this also somewhat applies to Dubliners, though the main trait of the majority of the
characters

is

passivity

and

self-isolation.

Flauberts

breakthrough

in

the

representation of the urban realm was to perceive the modern metropolis

simultaneously as a locus of powerful, exciting, multifarious stimuli and as a social
and spatial reality so vast and inchoately kinetic that it defied taxonomies and
thematic definition. The urban crowd as he understood it was the uneasy habitat of
the isolate individual. (Alter, 20) Isolation is also mentioned in Alan Spiegels essay;
according to Spiegel, Joyce reveals a close kinship with Flaubert and like him he can
also make an object seem to stand apart from the total visual field. It is the
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economy of Joyces visual notation, his apprehension of the object within the most
constricted of ocular frames that not only distinguishes him from the French master,
but from anyone of his (Joyces) predecessors. (Spiegel, 240) In Ulysses, we view
Stephen only in terms of his palm, his elbow and his cuffedge. The deathbed of his
mother is represented only by the bowl of white china with its contents of green
sluggish bile, which seemingly does not come together at all, but represents a kind
of visual aphorism. In the chapter of Paul Jones Styling hospitality: Gustave Flaubert
and George Moore in James Joyces The Dead in the collection of essays James

Joyce and the Nineteenth-Century French Novel edited by Finn Fordham and Rita
Sakr, the influence of Flaubert is mentioned once again in connection with his
collection of stories Trois Contes. In the letters of Ezra Pound to James Joyce, Pound
highlights the first story of the collection, Un coeur simple. The character of this story
Victor is a sailor with a frank, open look, who entertains by telling stories mixed up
with nautical language (Flaubert, 1991: 148), while in Eveline, there is a sailor
called Frank, who is a narrator of tall, nautical tales. Criticism discussing the links
between Flaubert and Joyce used to focus on a sense of the pervasive affinity of
mind and art which places both in a common literary tradition. (Block, 5)3 According
to Jones, Dubliners form part of a wider pattern of French influence on Anglo-Irish
literature of the early twentieth century that turned to French models. However,
these general accounts overlook some of the traces of Joyces reading of French
fiction in the text. One of the most significant differences between Flauberts and
Joyces view is the approach to vision. Flaubert is interested in describing the object
from the observers angle of vision; Joyce is more interested in the experience of

Cited in Jones, 147.

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vision itself. The passive, affectless eye is also characteristic for a Joycean observer
here and throughout his novels and short stories. (Spiegel, 242) The idea of no
assumptions origins from the art for arts sake philosophy, whose main idea is that
art should be complete in itself and is divorced from any didactic, moral or utilitarian
function.
Concerning other 19th century French novel authors there are many more or
less obvious parallels analysed in the collection of essays edited by Finn Fordham and
Rita Sakr James Joyce and the Nineteenth-Century French Novel. In his chapter
Balzacian ghosts in The Boarding House, Benoit Tadi compares Joyces Dublin to
Paris once again, this time it is Balzacs Paris. According to Tadi, The Boarding

House can be read as a variation on Balzacian narrative in both cases it works as a

site of entrapment by the unseen forces (mostly money) that reconstruct the
networks and relations. Both are also poised on as ambiguous social frontier and
present love for sale theme. A later reappearance of the Boarding House in

Finnegans Wake as boardelhouse confirms the centrality of the love for sale
theme. Tadi also compares Flauberts and Balzacs narrative; Flaubert reaches point
of endless repetition and exhaustion, while Balzac and Joyce work towards a
climacteric moment implying dramatic reversal and recognition of the excitement and
perils involved.
The last influence to be mentioned here is Henrik Ibsen. Besides languages as
Italian, French and German, Joyce desired to refine his Norse so that he might read
the great plays in the original. (Gorman, 13)4 Ibsens devotion to Aristotle and
Aquinas also sent Joyce in this direction and the analogy of the Norwegian National

Cited in Koch, 880.

13

revival with the character of the Irish literary revival fifty years later is also striking.
Joyces awareness of this is clear in his pamphlet The Day of the Rabblement, dated
October 15, 1901. It is a protest against the proposed National theatre for Ireland.
According to Vivienne Kochs The Influence of Ibsen on Joyce, it took Joyce less than
a year after his letter to Ibsen and less than half a year after The Day of the

Rabblement to take first steps toward the self-imposed exile that lasted until the end
of his life an exile which was never to be softened as was Ibsens, in his old age,
by a fervent recall from his countrymen. (Gorman, 28)

The influences mentioned in this chapter the Celtic Renaissance, Dante

Alighieri, the Nineteenth-Century French Novel authors and Henrik Ibsen helped to
shape James Joyce writing style to the state we read it now. The themes like
isolation, frustration, or passivity origin from the conjunction of the cultural aspects
the Irish nationalist movement and works of Joyces predecessors situating their
characters in urban environment. Dante Alighieris legacy contributes to the
profundity of Joyces works and helps create a complex image of the literary world of
James Joyce.

Cited in Koch, 884.

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2. Childhood
The first part of Dubliners is the childhood stories. The Sisters, An
Encounter and Araby are all first-person narratives, where the world is shown
through the eyes of children. Because of their young age, the children are not yet
completely drawn into the debilitating trap of society and their will and desire to
change something is still strong. In this chapter, I am going to focus on An
Encounter and present the way the strong themes of paralysis and desire for
freedom are expressed in this story.
The main characters, the unnamed narrator and his companion called Mahony
decide to go for an adventure after being introduced to adventure stories and it ends
up being their first encounter with the adult world. After a walk through Dublin,
which does not end up being such an adventure, they experience one on their way
home, when they meet an old strange man. His character is unpredictable and
represents the unknown: At times he spoke as if he were simply alluding to some
fact that everybody knew, and at times he lowered his voice and spoke mysteriously
as if he were telling us something secret which he did not wish others to overhear.
(J. Joyce, 1988: 26) At the beginning his attitude is liberal, however during the
course of the story it suddenly changes to strictness and almost perverse fascination
with physical abuse. The narrator is paralysed by this and he feels uncomfortable. In
the end he reaches his breaking point and manages to escape this paralysis in a way
by leaving the man. However, the effect still lasts: I went up the slope calmly but
my heart was beating quickly with fear that he would seize me by the ankles. (28)
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The old man seems similar to Christy Mahon of Synges Playboy of the Western

World, who was praised a hero for supposedly killing his father. They both carry the
same kind of vulgarity and crudeness, though unlike Christy, the old man is not
perceived a hero. He holds an eerie image, but his appearance and behaviour does
not seem unexpected and unfitting. It seems like brute characters like him and
encounters with them are quite common in the environment of Dublin and the
society accepts it. This acceptance of rudeness and twisted ill-mannered behaviour,
which is even emphasised by idolatry in Playboy of the Western World is
characteristic of the portrayal of the Irish society at the turn of the century and is
central to the resistance ideas of Celtic renaissance.
The scene in which the old man approaches the boys is also compared to
Dantes hell in Inferno. According to Michelle Lecuyer, it is also the physical
environment: Having skipped school in order to fulfil their desire for a real
adventure abroad, two young boys, after a long day of meandering through the city,
decide to stop and rest in a wide field. (....) Reynolds has identified this sentence as
an allusion to the opening of Canto XV, in which sodomites are among the sinners
punished in a plain of burning sand. (Lecuyer, 42) According to Lecuyer, the scene
is even more similar to Dantes eight circle, emphasised by Joyces repetition of
words slope, sloping and bank: Dantes eighth circle, called Malebolge, is a pit
consisting of ten separate ditches or valleys called bolgia that hold ten separate
groups of sinners who have committed various kinds of fraud. (43) She also
compares the old man to Dantes seducers, as they never stray from their eternally
circular path, just as the old man constantly speaks in circles. (44)

16

The fact that the narrator manages to escape in the end is a positive sign,
when compared to other stories in Dubliners, where the characters are unable to
escape their paralysis. It is a sign of childhood, as children can still develop out of
their paralysis and resuscitate. The narrator in Araby is also an adventurer in a
way, when he decides to go to a market to get a present for a girl he barely knows.
According to Marilyn French in Missing Pieces in Joyces Dubliners, Araby is crucial
to Dubliners because it sums up and builds on the confusing and destructive
associations presented in the first two stories The Sisters and An Encounter and
also shows a character willing his own blindness, thus leading into the rest of the
stories. (French, 452)
Other character traits of the narrator are his overconfidence and vanity
when the old man asks him about the books he read, he says he read them all, even
though it is not true: I pretended that I had read every book he mentioned so that
in the end he said: -Ah, I can see you are a bookworm like myself. Now, he added,
pointing to Mahony who was regarding us with open eyes, he is different; he goes in
for games. (J. Joyce, 1988: 25) His feeling of superiority towards Mahony is also
expressed in the very last sentence: And I was penitent; for in my heart I had
always despised him a little. (28) The unbroken confidence is visible among all the
younger characters and it gets weaker with age at the expense of vanity. Even
though the later characters are passive, at the same time they still manage to be
vain and proud of their non-existing accomplishments.
The religious theme also plays an important role in the stories of childhood.
The reader is exposed to it right at the beginning in The Sisters, with death of the
local priest Father Flynn overshadows the events of the story. The narrator
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contemplates about Fathers death, paralysis and their relationship. He feels

somewhat relieved, but at the same time fascinated by the priests death: I found it
strange that neither I nor the day seemed in a mourning mood and I felt even
annoyed at discovering in myself a sensation of freedom as if I had been freed from
something by his death. (J. Joyce, 1988: 11) This statement, the ambiguous
dialogue of the sisters in the end and more straightforward comment of Old Cotter at
the beginning of the story: I have my own theory about it, he said. I think it was
one of those... peculiar cases. ... But its hard to say. ... (8) give an odd air to
Father Flynn, similar to the pervert in An Encounter; the main difference being
relationship with the narrator. That something may be no more than loss of faith or
commitment, may be, since the boy calls him a simoniac, a selling out of self to the
power of the Church, but it is heightened by the mystery and ellipses to something
dark and fascinating and corrupt, something containing overtones of perverse power
and sex. (French, 448) According to French, there is also a narrative connection
between The Sisters and An Encounter, when the narrator of An Encounter
refuses to look at the old josser performing a queer activity and refuses to let the
act or any words for the act enter his consciousness. This boy has, in other words,
learned the lesson of The Sisters. (French, 449)
In An Encounter, there is also a situation when the narrator and his
companion face some ragged boys, who throw rocks at them and yell: Swaddlers!
Swaddlers! thinking that we were Protestants because Mahony, who was darkcomplexioned, wore the silver badge of cricket club in his cap. (J. Joyce, 1988: 22)
The Roman History teacher, Father Butler, also scolds a boy named Leo Dillon for
reading American detective stories. French connects this with the old man the boys
18

meet later in the story: The old mans monologue connects sex with both power and
punishment. The base for this association is laid earlier in the story, in the boys
frightened reaction to Father Butlers rebuke of Leo Dillon, in the reference to Mr.
Ryans physical punishment of his students, (...) (French, 449) She also compared
the old mans language with the dialogue of the sisters in The Sisters: This
language is euphemistic and elliptical and has the repetitive ritualistic quality of
pornographic writing, which builds by repetition and concentration and circularity and
artificial, fantastic reality. (French, 450) The religious undertone is also present in
Araby, when at the beginning the narrator comments on the previous tenant, who
was a priest and died in the back drawing-room. Some of his possessions were left
behind and remind the boy of the priest. According to Marilyn French, the priest even
overshadows the language of the story; it is pervaded by religious and liturgical
terms and the narrator is trying to overcome an unconscious repression.
The notion of freedom and a desire to find it connects all the stories in

Dubliners. In The Sisters, the narrator feels somehow free after the death of Father
Flynn, but the image of the priest still haunts him and keeps him paralysed. In An
Encounter, the boys seek freedom by going on an adventure, but they are
unsuccessful, when they do not manage to reach the end of their journey and are
reminded of the real world by meeting the stranger. In Araby, the narrator seeks
freedom in love and tries to gain affection of a girl by buying her something at the
Araby market, but in the end his intentions are spoiled by his uncle. In the end, he
feels anger: Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and
derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger. In later stories, the

19

emotions of this kind are less open and more suppressed. The childhood stories
present a less complicated viewpoint and remedy is still possible.

20

3. Adolescence
In the adolescent stories Eveline, After the Race, Two Gallants and
The Boarding House, the narrative view changes as well as the age of the
characters, when compared to the childhood stories. The protagonists face more
important, life-changing decisions and their lives become more restricted. Their
paralysis is growing stronger and although they can still escape it, it becomes more
and more difficult. The focus of this chapter is The Boarding House and the way
the paralysis leading to inability to revolt forces the characters to succumb to the
public opinion and forces them to keep a good public image under all costs.
The owner of the boarding house, Mrs Mooney, managed to escape her
unfortunate life situation an alcoholic husband, who ruined their business with his
own incompetence, and lives off the boarding house, where she hosts clerks and
tourists. Her underlying motivation is established at the outset with ironical
economy: All the resident young men spoke of her as The Madam. (Spinks, 62) Her
daughter Polly helps with the responsibilities and openly flirts with the residents.
While planning Pollys marriage, Mrs Mooney does not learn from her own mistakes
and let Polly marry out of love; she wants her to get to the higher society under all
costs. This attitude is similar to Eugne de Rastignacs attitude in Pre Goriot by
Balzac. Rastignac bears similarity to Polly (naivity, youth), but also to Mrs Mooney
(desire to get to higher class). According to Benoit Tadi, there are also other
similarities. In both cases good grammar and standard expression function as social
limitations rather than as assets. Both boarding houses constitute a favorable
breeding ground for the development of a heterogeneous and linguistically agile
21

culture which, in retrospect, may be read as a mise en abyme of the urban ethos out
of which modernist literature would eventually develop. (Tadi, 36) Tadi also
points out that Joyces boarding house is similarly divided into class of permanent
residents on one hand and, on the other hand, what he calls a floating population
made up of tourists from Liverpool and the Isle of Man and, occasionally, artistes
from the music halls. (Scholes and Litz, 62)6
Mrs Mooneys behaviour is similar to a chess player trying to win the game as
smoothly as possible, with Polly being her chess piece. Mrs Mooney believes that
men should carry the same responsibility as women, but she does not carry any
responsibility for her actions: Mrs Mooney's covert pursuit of her material objective
divorces appearance from reality; the boarding house is a place in which frankness
seems to be the presiding tone, but where vulnerable bachelors will be seduced and
outmanoeuvred. (Spinks, 62) Her all-seeing eye carefully monitors the situation and
she even begins to think of sending Polly back to typist school, as the young men
were only passing the time away: none of them meant business. (J. Joyce, 1988:
68) However, when Mr Doran appears and is made a likely suitor, Mrs Mooney plays
upon his lack of moral nerve to close the deal. The fact that she does not accept any
financial payment for her daughters reparation makes marriage an economic
commodity in this type of transaction. One's investment in a good moral image is,
after all, a serious business. (Spinks, 63) The public (moral) image is an important
feature of all adolescence stories and it shows the provincialism of the society
presented in them. In After the Race, Jimmy Doyle fakes his well-being to create a
fictional public image in front of his wealthy friends. This charade however ends up
6

Cited in Tadi, 36.

22

with his remorse over losing a lot of money in a card game. In The Boarding
House, there is no open expression of remorse, although Mr Doran is the most
insecure character, as his already existing good public image is at stake.
The character of Polly resembles Eveline (from Eveline), especially in the
scene where she sits in her room waiting to be called and dreaming: Her hopes and
visions were so intricate that she no longer saw the white pillows on which her gaze
was fixed or remembered that she was waiting for anything. (J. Joyce, 1988: 75) A
similar scene occurs in Eveline, when Eveline sits in her room thinking the decision
she is about to make and that might change her life. Eveline and Polly both have a
very vague notion of marriage; they see it in a romantic way similar to fairy tales.
These expectations are similar to Emma Bovarys in Madame Bovary, she also
expected her marriage to be romantic and then felt dissatisfied with her new life:
Before marriage she thought herself in love; but the happiness that should have
followed this love not having come, she must, she thought, have been mistaken. And
Emma tried to find out what one meant exactly in life by the words felicity, passion,
rapture, that had seemed to her so beautiful in books. (Flaubert: 2006)7 The
difference between Eveline and Polly is that in case of Polly, she is not the one
making the decision; it is already made for her by her mother. For Polly, marriage is
the price she must pay to gain some degree of respectability and status, and
(hopefully) economic survival; for Bob it is the price he must pay to guard his
respectable status and economic survival. (French, 456) However, Polly seems to
keep her face well; she exaggerates her emotions in front of Doran to make him feel
guilty and maintains throughout a pose of wise innocence: She understands
7

Web. 15 Apr. 2013. <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2413/2413-h/2413-h.htm#link2H_4_0001>.

23

exactly why she was brought home to work in the boarding house; she knows that
her mother is granting her tacit approval; she knows what she is expected to do with
her life. (French, 456)
Mr Doran is the main representative of paralysis in the story; his age of thirty
four or thirty five makes him the one to blame for his and Pollys incident he is the
mature one. His moral beliefs and conscience prevent him from running away,
although at the beginning he thinks about it. Mr Doran is so stressed about
worsening his public image that he even visualises losing his job: The affair would
be sure to be talked of and his employer would be certain to hear of it. Dublin is such
a small city: everyone knows everyone elses business. He felt his heart leap warmly
in his throat as he heard in his excited imagination old Mr Leonard calling out in his
rasping voice: Send Mr Doran here, please. (J. Joyce, 1988: 71) Even though he
seems to care about Polly, when it comes to worries, he is egocentric and only cares
about himself. He is not worried about her integration in his society; he is scared that
she would embarrass him with her vulgarity: He could imagine his friends talking of
the affair and laughing. She sas a little vulgar; sometimes she said I seen and If I

had've known. But what would grammar matter if he really loved her? (72) He also
denies responsibility for the incident; it was her who seduced him and his only fault
is that he yielded to it. Bob Doran is somewhat aware of his snobbery and his
double standard, if not of his vanity he clearly believes Polly seduced him out of
attraction and affection. (French, 456) He sees it as a sin and he knows that it
needs to be taken care of, but at the same time he wishes to ascend through the
roof and fly away to another country where he would never hear again of his
trouble. (74) His paralysis forces him to act the way Mrs Mooney wants him to. The
24

priest to whom Doran confesses also forces him to make amends and attacks his
morals. It is questionable, whether the religious morals are stronger than the social
ones, but they seem to work together effectively: The church, state, social, and
business worlds all participate in transforming erotic and affectionate feeling leading
to sexual union into an economic and political arrangement that stifles away the very
feelings it is intended to channel and control. (French, 457) The future marriage of
Bob Doran and Polly Mooney becomes an inescapable constriction that leaves the
protagonists unhappy and trapped.
The shift from childhood to adolescence becomes visible with the
commitments; the childrens worries are not permanent, however the issues
presented in the adolescent stories are likely to have a long-lasting effect. The
adolescents are facing an important decision and, unlike the characters in later
stories, they can still change their life path. However, their paralysis prevents them
from deciding, therefore they go where they are lead, they try to fit in the crowd and
keep their public image. Their inactivity leads to inescapable situations, such as
unhappy marriage in The Boarding House, make-believing in After the Race,
inability to live a decent life in Two Gallants and inability to be independent in
Eveline.

25

4. Adult Life
In the stories of adult life A Little Cloud, Counterparts, Clay and A
Painful Case, the paralysis and passivity is fully developed and the adult characters
lost the drive of adolescent characters. Their lives become monotonous and their
inability to leave the stereotype enforces their frustration. Frustration is also the main
theme I am going focus on in this chapter and I am going to manifest its impact on
A Little Cloud.
The main character of A Little Cloud, Little Chandler, is inwardly frustrated
with his life and marriage and feels dissatisfied and stuck in his stereotype. He is
meeting his old friend Gallaher, who left Dublin to pursue his journalist career in
London. Little Chandler never tries to follow any of his dreams and considers it
impossible, as he now has family commitments. His belief, that to succeed in life,
one must leave Dublin and Ireland just like Gallaher did, mirrors Joyces personal
views: The economic and intellectual conditions that prevail in Ireland do not permit
the development of individuality. The soul of the country is weakened by centuries of
useless struggle and broken treaties, and individual initiative is paralysed by the
influence and admonitions of the church, while its body is manacled by the police,
the tax office, and the garrison. No one who has any self-respect stays in Ireland.
(Mason, 171)

However, in the case of Little Chandler, his location is not his main problem.
His frustration is interconnected with his passivity; he always ponders the
possibilities, but he always makes excuses why he cannot try any of them. Although
he is an adult character, according to Marilyn French, his traits are not that mature:
8

Cited in Delany, 257.

26

His melancholy moods resemble those found in adolescents, who must also repress
their anger and desire. (French, 457) The difference is that he is no longer capable
of changing anything: Paralysis of will leads logically to that of action, for in a
society where individuals lack freedom in making the vital decisions of life, the result
is frustration and non-productiveness. These characters are already trapped by life,
having made constraining choices earlier. (Walzl, 225) His anger makes him similar
to Farrington from Counterparts, but unlike him he does not let it out either at
home, or in front of Gallaher. As well as Little Chandler, Farrington holds
autobiographical features he is an alcoholic clerk frustrated with his job.
When Little Chandler finally meets Gallaher, he feels uninteresting and
internally compares himself to the big world stories of Gallaher. He feels that the
connection with Gallaher makes him connected to Gallahers life: "Every step brought
him nearer to London, farther from his own sober inartistic life. A light began to
tremble on the horizon of his mind. He was not so old thirty-two. (J. Joyce, 1988:
80) Little Chandler feels ashamed of his family commitments and dreams of an
adventurous life like Gallahers. At first he wants to open to him, but in the end he
speaks briefly, which contrasts with Gallahers speech, which is very open and
flamboyant. Gallaher knows how to make his stories interesting; he always refers to
his life outside in a moderately positive way and is not overly emotional about it:
Beautiful? said Ignatius Gallaher, pausing on the word and on the flavour of his
drink. Its not so beautiful, you know. Of course, it is beautiful...But its the life of
Paris; thats the thing. (J. Joyce, 1988: 83) Chandler considers Gallahers life brave
and admires his courage to leave his hometown and pursue his dreams. Gallaher
presents himself as an important adventurer and exaggerates the significance of his
27

tales, which mostly consist of political gossip and experience with loose women in
various European capitals: Go to one of the students balls, for instance. Thats
lively, if you like, when the cocottes begin to let themselves loose. (J. Joyce, 1988:
84) Even though Dublin is also a capital, its character is more provincial and Gallaher
is mocking it, as well as the character of people, who live there. Ive been to the
Moulin Rouge, Ignatius Gallaher continued, when the barman had removed their
glasses and Ive been to all the Bohemian cafs. Hot stuff! Not for a pious chap like
you, Tommy. (J. Joyce, 1988: 83) Chandler feels arrogance in his speech, but it
does not weaken his fascination and jealousy of him and his actions. The character
of Gallaher is a pseudo-hero similar to the drunkard idol or, again, Christy Mahon of

Playboy of the Western World. Joyce once remarked that Ireland was an
aristocratic country without an aristocracy; the knights of Dubliners are neither
gentle nor gallant, and behind their pretentions to breeding and good manners a
mercenary motive usually lurks. (Delany, 261) According to Michelle Lecuyer, Joyce
himself likens Gallaher to Dantes Ulysses; just as Dantes Ulysses is Concealed
within this moving fire (Dante, 47)9; Gallaher emerges after some time from the
clouds of smoke in which he had taken refuge. (J. Joyce, 1988: 85)
Despite seeing Gallaher as a hero, at the same time Little Chandler angrily
looks down upon him and tries to persuade himself that he is better: He felt acutely
the contrast between his own life and his friend's, and it seemed to him unjust.
Gallaher was inferior in birth and education. (J. Joyce, 1988: 88) Chandler always
talks about what he could do, but he never does anything and his situation is only
the consequence of his actions. He blames the fate, his surroundings, his timidity

Cited in Lecuyer, 63

28

and his lack of money for his failures. Marilyn French comments on this: Chandler
cannot read aloud because of shyness; he cannot read silently because of the child;
he cannot write because he is in Dublin, he cannot leave because he is married,
because there is the furniture still to be paid for. Many of us create such traps for
ourselves, blind to their illogicality. (French, 458) He dreams of accomplishments,
he even invents sentences and phrases from the reviews his book would get. Mr
Chandler has the gift of easy and graceful verse... A wistful sadness pervades these
poems... The Celtic note. (J. Joyce, 1988: 80) He also expresses hope that he would
be more successful, if his name was more Irish looking. His nationalism is ridiculed in
the end, when Chandler reads an early poem by a very English poet Lord Byron,
which he wrote when he was fourteen years old. His love of poetry is superficial:
not only does he admire a bad poem (something not rare in professional artists) but
he blames his diminished interest in poetry on his wife, or at least on his marriage.
(French, 458) Chandler cannot deal with his creative problem because he does not
allow himself to express his real desires; he does not look at the world around him.
His frustrated epiphany at the end of the story is the only genuine expression of
emotion.
Little Chandlers frustration and insecurity projects itself in the relationship
with his wife. He feels that he is no longer important for her and that her attention is
now devoted to their son. Gallahers stories about the variety of exotic women
stimulate his fantasies and he starts to see his wife as too boring and simple. His
ambivalence is symbolised by eyes he fantasises about dark, exotic eyes of rich
Jewesses and imagines them full of passion and voluptuous longing. However, his
wives eyes seem to him as cold and impassionate: Certainly they were pretty and
29

the face itself was pretty. But he found something mean in it. Why was it so
unconscious and lady-like? (J. Joyce, 1988: 91) According to Marilyn French,
Chandlers real desire is for sexual experience. His poetic inclinations are merely an
illusion and a way to release feelings of anger and desire that he cannot deal with in
their raw state. This attitude also connects him with the character of Maria in Clay
she still thinks of herself as a young girl, still nubile, dependent, and subject to
others. Like Little Chandler, Maria retains her adolescent sexuality in childish form,
blushing at the mention of wedding cake, sparkling at the thought of getting a toy
ring in a children's game. (French, 460) The mistrust Little Chandler sees in his
wifes eyes encourages his feelings, when she returns to comfort the baby. His tears
of remorse might implicate guilt over his emotional outburst, but also his regret over
the events of the day and his life in general.
The characters in adult life stories represent the frustration created from the
inescapable life stereotype. Their own passivity traps them in unfulfilling life
situations, such as the unsatisfying marriage in A Little Cloud. The feelings of
remorse present in all four stories originate from their past inactivity and the
situations the characters are in in this stage of life are the outcome of the crossroads
situations the adolescents dealt with in previous stories. However, as the paralysis is
too long-term, there is no possible escape anymore.

30

5. Public Life
The main difference between the public life stories and the rest of Dubliners is
the narrative focus. While the rest of the stories focus on one or two major
characters and their point of view, Ivy Day in the Committee Room, A Mother and
Grace each present and satirise an aspect of Irish society politics, culture and
religion. The Dead profits from the discoveries made in the course of writing earlier
stories, it connects the aspects together and presents the dullness of the society. To
present the overall character of Irish society and its discontents, I chose Ivy Day in
the Committee Room, as politics is probably the most representative and influential
section of the public life.
The story is centred on members of the Nationalist party meeting, which is
supposed to be focused on the upcoming elections and future candidacy of Richard
Tierney, the representative of the party. Tierney himself is not present, his character
is only mentioned a few times and from the story, the reader gets the impression
that his candidacy is not that important. The story takes place rather than unfold an
action; plot and narrative development are replaced by an implicit drama of
consciousness. (Spinks, 69) The men meeting in the room Old Jack, Mr OConnor,
Mr Henchy and later Crofton and Lyons do not seem too enthusiastic or even
bothered by Tierneys political view or any political programme; the only active
person is Hynes, who criticises Tierney for betraying the ideals of the party and
supporting the British. He now supports Colgan, the representative of the opposition
party and a working-class member: The working-man is not looking for fat jobs for
his sons and nephews and cousins. The working-man is not going to drag the honour
of Dublin in the mud to please a German monarch. (J. Joyce, 1988: 136) The other
31

men are indifferent to this accusation and they only agree, when Hynes states that
there would not be such a talk if this man was still alive, pointing to the ivy leaf on
his lapel and thus referencing Charles Parnell. Their indifference and inconsistency in
their opinions is enforced later in the story, when Henchy declares, that Tierney is in
favour of whatever will benefit this country. (...) Hes a prominent and respected
citizen and a Poor Law Guardian, and he doesnt belong to any party, good, bad or
indifferent. (J. Joyce, 1988: 147) He also concludes that the coming of the King of
Britain would actually benefit the citizens of Dublin because of the influx of money
into the country. According to Lee Spinks, their passivity and inactivity is strong
because for the assembled company no political action is really possible; their
politics is determined by an emotional investment in the past that renders
meaningless any present intervention. (Spinks, 69)
The statements of the party members show that their attitude is exactly the
same as the attitude of Tierney, the party representative they are there only for
the money. The story shows political life to be, like marriage, an economic
arrangement, and one with short goals, to boot. (French, 463) Moreover, it seems
that the said supporters do not even need money; at first they are impatient because
of Tierneys promise to pay them for his campaign, but when a boy brings bottles of
stout from a pub, they forget about the money and they are satisfied, as long as
they can drink. Porter is the highest good in this world because the people who
inhabit this world cannot even aspire to money. (French, 463) The benefit-hunt is
similar to Mrs Kearneys attitude in A Mother, when she does not care about her
daughters musical performance or her presentation; the only thing that matters is

32

money. Together with the politician and his supporters from the common folk she
represents the indifference and blindness of the Irish nation.
Ivy Day in the Committee Room is said to express of Joyces disillusion in
politics. The character of Hynes has autobiographical features and represents Joyces
loss of political ideals. Hynes is the only character left to hold on to Parnells ideals
and the poem he reads in the end marks the ignorance of the rest of the men they
do not realise they are also traitors responsible for the loss the fading of nationalist
ideals and yet they applaud. Parnell had fought and died for Irish independence, yet
his sacrifice counts for nothing with the hangers-on of the committee room; for
them, the determining fact is that they are all hard up. (Delany, 262) Gabriel
Conroy, the main character in The Dead is also accused of being a traitor, by Miss
Ivors, when she finds out he is contributing to The Daily Express, a conservative
paper. Similarly to Hynes (and Joyce), he is disillusioned and disappointed with his
country, but unlike Hynes, he does not feel as the right person to change something.
However, Hynes enthusiasm also seems to fade by the end of the story.
The supporters of the Nationalist candidate, Mr Tierney, know that he does
not care for the ideals of the party and that he will only do what is personally
beneficial to him; that elections merely serve the end of the financial and clerical
establishment, and that the ostensible issues are just window-dressing. (Delany,
262) Their political engagement ends with the money and the free beer they get
from it. The original patriotism fades as they discuss trivial things and the strongest
connection with the authentic ideals is the Hyness poem, which is more relevant
than ever. The sound of the cork popping out of the beer bottle after Hynes finishes
reading enforces the irony of the situation. As Mr Henchy says, Parnell is dead, and it
33

is implied that if a new Parnell arose, he would meet the same fate as the original
one, since everyone in the story except Hynes (who is largely a surrogate for Joyce
himself) would sell his country - for thirty pieces of silver, for an English title, for
four-pence, or for a bottle of stout. (Delany, 263)
During the course of the story, there is a brief appearance of a priest, Father
Keon. He looks like a poor clergyman or a poor actor (J. Joyce, 1988: 140) and his
behaviour is rather confusing. This adds him to the category of inconsistent priests
together with Father Flynn and Father Butler. He abruptly leaves, as he does not find
the person he was looking for about a business matter. Mr OConnor and Mr Henchy
discuss him and his behaviour and they conclude that they do not have any verified
information about him. I think hes what you call a black sheep. We havent many of
them, thank God! But we have a few...Hes an unfortunate man of some sort. (J.
Joyce, 1988: 142) Father Keon is ambivalent, mysterious and unattached to
anything. His instability is similar to the one of the committee room residents and
makes the political corruption connected to the church. Mr Henchy concludes, that it
might be financially beneficial to become a priest: I think I know the little game
theyre at, said Mr Henchy. You must owe the City Fathers money nowadays if you
want to be made Lord Mayor. Then theyll make you Lord Mayor. By God! Im
thinking seriously of becoming a City Father myself. (142) The business-church
connection is also mentioned in Grace, when Father Purdon reads a Scripture text
for business men and professional men and speaks to them in a business-like
way (197), though it is possible Father Purdon uses is as a metaphor.
The way the Irish society is presented in Ivy Day in the Committee Room
and the other public life stories is provocatively accurate and still up-do-date. In
34

these stories, Joyce faces the most important segments of Irish (and probably any
other) society and the conclusion is rather pessimistic. The characters in these
stories are indifferent to any higher beliefs and their only desire is to fulfil their
probably most basic need for money. Ivy Day in the Committee Room presents
the demoralised generation that does not care about the old nationalistic ideas
anymore and is not capable to reunite against the corruption of the nation.

35

Conclusion
In this thesis, I aimed to create a clear image on Joyces presentation of
provincialism and its effect on individuals in the Irish society and on the society as a
whole. At first I commented on the literary influences of James Joyce on Dubliners,
then I presented the short stories in four chapters Childhood, Adolescence, Adult
Life and Public Life, while focusing on one story in each chapter and presenting the
main themes and symbols on it. The main themes that connect the stories and their
characters are paralysis, frustration, passivity and desire for freedom; each of them
getting stronger as the stories progress and the characters get older.
When comparing the childhood, adolescence, adult life and public life stories
and chapters, the public life stands out because of its different viewpoint. While the
rest is focused on an individual character, the public life stories present segments of
the society through the eyes of an outside observer. This way it works as a
conclusion, or as a way to show how the themes and their effects presented in the
rest of the book work in real life. The childhood, adolescence and adult life stories
show a certain progress, where paralysis, passivity, but also vanity is getting
stronger with the age of the characters. The most influential of the character traits
and themes is probably ignorance, which reaches its peak in the public life stories,
where the characters only care about their personal benefits and nothing else. The
stories of individual characters also seem to get more serious with higher age, but
the public life stories and their satiric approach lightens the overall impression. Each
narrative in Dubliners tells a similar tale, of an impulse arrested or else enacted to a

36

point where it becomes self-negating: in either case, the gesture of revolt is fated
always to have the old, familiar tyranny inscribed in it. (Kiberd, 330)
The childhood stories show the innocence of childhood being exposed to
adult world situations and emotions such as love, death and perversity. The main
theme is paralysis that the children experience, when confronted with these
situations, but is much easier for them to overcome it at this point. The young adults
in the adolescent stories are forced to be a part of the adult world, but they are not
yet ready for it. Their indecisiveness when facing important decisions makes them
more paralysed than the child characters in earlier stories. In the adult stories, the
paralysis is fully developed, as the characters are bound to their stereotypical lives
and escape is made impossible by their own passivity. The characters feel remorse
over their past decisions and instead of looking forward (as the characters of the
earlier stories), they look into the past and do not realise, that this view makes them
paralysed and unable to face real life. In the public life stories, the focus moves from
individuals to a more overall view and it shows the general dysfunction of various
aspects of the society originating from unsatisfied and paralysed individuals. Their
only goal is money as a key to life success and satisfaction.
The provincialism Joyce presents in Dubliners serves as a social critique of the
Irish society. The literary influences presented in the first chapter also serve as a
mode of understanding the text in a different way and also help to understand the
whole cultural image and background behind Dubliners. Dubliners is exhibiting
Ireland frozen in servitude and hopefully, my thesis managed to show a clear image
of the discontents present in it.

37

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Delany, Paul. "Joyce's Political Development and the Aesthetic of Dubliners." College

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Flaubert, Gustave. "Madame Bovary." Project Gutenberg. N.p., 25 Feb. 2006. Web.
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French, Marilyn. "Missing pieces in Joyces Dubliners."Twentieth Century Literature.

24.4 (1978): 443-472. Web. 1 Nov. 2012.
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Joyce, James. Dubliners / James Joyce ; the corrected text with an explanatory note

by Robert Scholes and fifteen drawings by Robin Jacques. London: Paladin,

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Joyce, James. Ulysses. New York: Vintage-Random, 1961.
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39

Framework." College English. 22.4 (Jan. 1961): 221-228. Web. 2 Mar. 2013.

40

Summary in English
This thesis deals with the criticism of Irish nation and portrayal of
provincialism in James Joyces Dubliners. It is divided into five chapters; four of them
deal with the four sections of Dubliners Childhood, Adolescence, Adult Life and
Public Life; the fifth deals with Joyces literary influences in Dubliners. It shows the
way the short stories are thematically connected and how the themes and characters
evolve within the collection. It also comments on how Joyces influences helped
shape his critical view on Irish nation and nationalism and how they reflect in

Dubliners. The main themes analysed paralysis, desire for freedom and passivity
are present in all of the stories and reflect the desolation of Dublin, Ireland and the
people living there. Each of the four chapters containing literary analysis of Dubliners
is focused on one story and presents the themes and motifs on this story, while also
mentioning connections with other stories from the same section.

41

Resum v etin
Tato bakalsk diplomov prce se zabv kritikou irskho nroda a
zobrazenm provincialismu v Dublianech Jamese Joycea. Je rozdlena do pti
kapitol, tyi z nich se zabvaj tymi tematickmi sekcemi Dublian Dtstvm,
Dospvnm, Dosplost a Veejnm ivotem, pt komentuje literrn vlivy Joyce pi
tvorb Dublian. V prci je prezentovn zpsob jakm jsou jednotliv povdky
tematicky propojeny a jak se mn mylen postav v rmci sbrky. Prce taky
poukazuje na to, jak se pomoc literrnch vliv formoval Joycev kritick pohled na
irsk nrod a nacionalismus a jak se tyto vlivy projevuj pmo v Dublianech. Hlavn
tmata, ktermi se prce zabv paralza, touha po svobod a pasivita, jsou
ptomna ve vech povdkch a odrej beztnost Dublinu, Irska a lid, kte tam
ij. Kad ze ty kapitol zabvajcch se literrn analzou jednotlivch sekc

Dublian je zamena na jednu povdku, na kter ukazuje tmata a motivy a taky

spomn spojitosti s ostatnmi povdkami stejn sekce.

42