Hospitality as Liminality in James Joyces The Dead

Joyces story [The Dead] dwells on hospitality

as a legal and political categorylargely by
inviting the [Dickens Christmas]Carols face-toface ethics of hospitality into the political
space of occupied Dublin (Saint-Amour 93).
On the one hand liminality involves a potentially unlimited freedom from any
kind of structure. This sparks creativity and innovation, peaking in transfiguring
moments of sublimity. On the other hand[it]involves a[n]unsettling
situation in which nothing really mattershierarchies and standing norms
disappearsacred symbols are mocked at and ridiculedauthority in any form is
questioned, taken apart and subverted; in which, as Shakespeare said, degree is
shaken (Thomassen 1).
Hospitalityrather Joyces grasp of itis intrinsic to the The Dead. This paper centers on
that singular Joycean hospitality and reads it as a variety of liminality to borrow the subtitle of
Breaking Boundaries1. For in The Dead, characters enter into the Morlans world of manners
and mannered behavior holding on to hospitality as a requisite social structure and yet, within
that world, hospitality is freely subverted, its boundaries like the boundaries between the living
and the dead in the story are porous and shaken. It manifests in tevery faux pas It examines the
textual manifestation of hospitality in the story, cross-referencing at times to explore how
Joyces invocation of that text in two other Dubliners talesThe Boarding-House and
Counterpointsinterplays in the shaping of the terms meaning. Finally, it will focus upon
four key liminal moments in the narrative involving the protagonist Gabriel Conroyhis
interactions with Lily and Molly Ivors, his guest-of-honor speech and his finale with Gretta,
Michael Furey and snow (in general).
Liminality, as a len to view and analyze events, is sort of the new black in the literary
theorists world. In 1909, a liminal period for James Joyce and his Dublinersbetwixt and

1 Breaking Boundaries: Varieties of Liminality (2015) edited by Agnes Horvath, Bjrn
Thomassen and Harald Wydra.

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between his initial Dead-less completion of his anthology circa 1905 and its actual publication
in 1914, ethnologist Arnold Van Gennep explored, in the words of Jenny Hockey:
the structural similarity of a whole variety of rituals and transition[which]
include the rituals which make and mark the passage of societys individual
members through the life coursebirth, initiation, engagement, marriage, healing
and death, as well as calendrical transitions such as New Years and Solstice
(Hockey 212).
This resulted in Van Gennep formulating a tripartitie structure comprising rites of separation,
threshold rites and rites of aggregation or, more expansively, a formulation of first, separation,
passage out of a previous phase or social status; then, second, a threshold or liminal phase, an
ambiguous time and space betwixt and between fixed positions; and, third, an aggregation or
incorporation point, providing re-entry into a new social position or period(Hockey 212).
Central to Van Genneps schema was the central point, the transitional or liminal2 phase,
the catalyst that leverages the separated to the third phase of aggregation. This movement can be
illustrated by a woman who begins the first phase as a wife, an identity with personal and
societal significance that instills in the woman a certain status. The death of her husband triggers
a move to a newly incorporated social space: widowhood. The process of getting there,
however, requires the woman to go through a liminal period where she drifts in a netherworld
without identity and status, before, finally, being reintegrated into society anew, with a new
identity and social status: a widow (Hockey 212-13). The example of the woman as illustrative
of liminality works, metaphorically, for the understanding of hospitality as liminality.
Personsoutsidersare separated, to differing degrees, from their singular spheres of
outsider-ness acquire an invitation to access to the home of (or social space procured by) the
host(s) of some social event. Significantly, they are bestowed with a sense of welcome, of care
2 Derived from Latin limen meaning threshold.

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giving. The outsiders, thus, win license to re-entry into a new social position for the duration of
the event, that position being guest. Hospitality serves,then, as the threshold, a variety of
liminality, that incorporates outsiders as guests. But only for a duration; only for a span of time
within a breadth of space.
***
Joyces The Dead, is, perhaps, destined for the application of liminality to its text,
regardless of the prominence of a liminal hospitality. Death is, in itself, a liminal trope,
probably, the ultimate one. Unlike the woman who might have had a possibility of remarriage,
of reclaiming her wife-status, there is no going back to literal life from literal death. There is no
comeback tour from the hereafter. (Though metaphoric resurrections abound in religion and
literature.)
The editors of The Critical Writings of James Joyce, Mason and Ellmann, in their preface
to the writers 1907 speech in Trieste, Ireland, Island of Saints and Sages, observe:
His Triestine audience was anticlerical and mostly agnostic, attracted by the
Irredentist3 movement, which wanted to oust the Austrians and return the city to
Italy, but not wholly carried away by it. Joyce had no need to point up the
parallel between Ireland and Trieste, both living under foreign domination, both
claiming a language distinct from the conquerors, both Catholic. But he felt
compelled to point out that his country had its history of betrayals, of eloquent
inactivity, of absurd and narrow belief. His attitude, though he calls it objective,
wavers between affectionate fascination with Ireland and distrust of her (Mason
and Ellmann 153).
Joyce, the writer, was betwixt and between this reported objectivity and attitude, balancing
between affectionate fascination and distrust, of his Eire irredenta that truthat least a
truthteeters. The very liminal line be walks in the case of The Dead, runs between the
rational (objectivity) and the emotional (attitude) and, thus, cannot truly define his relationship

3 I talian I talia i rredenta, l iterally, u nredeemed I taly, I talian-speaking t erritory n ot
incorporated i n I taly M erriam-Webster.com

ROBINSON/4
with Ireland from any one point along that line. His creative position lies ambiguous at any
particular time or space between those two fixed positions of rationality and emotionality.
In his seminal treatment of hospitality in The Dead and Dickens A Christmas Carol,
Paul Saint-Amour observes:
That colonial setting hosts an encounter among three forms of hospitality: the
social codes of invitation and limited welcome; the ethics of limitless welcome to
the absolute stranger; and the call within cosmopolitan political philosophy for a
universal right of hospitality. The Dead thinks about how these hospitalities
inform, delimit, and critique one another and asks whether they can still be
thought of in a political context of forcible occupation (Saint-Amour 93).
Picking up on the second point first, Joyces relationship to Ireland is conflicted precisely
because his heart and mind are constantly informed, delimited and critiqued within him. It
should not surprise that such active ambivalence carries over to, and is addressed by, the artist in
the way Gabriel is characterized and, to varying gradations, all the Dubliners populating
Dubliners are as liminal characters trapped in a paralytic loop, continuously betwixt and
between.
The three forms of hospitality (and Saint-Amours insight cited at the top of this paper
that Joyces hospitality functions as a legalistic-political quantity), expands our perspective on
the four key liminal narrative points involving Gabriel enumerated earlier. The first, Lily and
Gabriels interaction, fits rather comfortably under the umbrella of the social codes of invitation
and limited welcome rubric as she undermines Gabriels welcome by the vehemence of her
retort to one of his inquiries and, simultaneously, given what one can intuit from the unwritten
codes of invitation, unbalances his place on the pedestal of invited guest. It is something of a
stretch to shoehorn the Gabriel-Molly Ivors interface within the confines of limitless welcome
to the absolute stranger for, clearly, Molly out-stays any limitless welcome with Gabriel. On
the other hand, she does behave more the absolute stranger than professional colleague. It

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should be kept in mind that Gabriel is a guest himself, though he plays host-light on a few
occasions. He did not initiate the invitations to the dance, extending, in the process, an implied
invite to enjoy his hospitality. It is a social event planned and orchestrated by the Morkans, not
the Conroys and, as such, it is not for Gabriel to welcome or unwelcome. Lastly, the call for a
universal right of hospitality can be construed to come at the intersection and blurring of the
threshold between the living and the dead at the storys conclusion. The dead and gone respond
to a conflation of the three hospitalities: asserting a right to be welcomedwithout caveats
despite their alterity within the ambiguity of liminal space and time; Thomassens comments on
the unsettling nature of liminality and, by extension, its variant, hospitalitynothing really
mattershierarchies and standing norms disappear.
Sean Murphy, responding to Joyces early division of Dubliners into four sections
childhood, adolescence, mature life and public life (Joyce and et al, Letters II 111)in his James
Joyce and Victims postulates:
the organization of Dublinerstraces Irish indifference from its beginning in
childhood to its consequences in public life. As characters confront authority,
they engage their powers to resist, assimilate, or negotiate positions in civil
society at the same time that they counter-productively endorse the unity of self,
Church, and nation. The stages of life in Ireland correspond to a lessening of
charactersconscious awareness of political and economic oppression, and of
possibilities of escape or change (Murphy 40).
This liminal positiona gloomy landing between stairs one only dimly apprehends
fixes Ireland on a threshold betwixt and between a misty past of self-determination and a future
that cannot be seen for ghosts of the past. Put another way, Joyce saw the Irish of 1907 straining
to find steps forward towards home rule but, simultaneously, out of long practice, staring back at
the marginally less-dim, myth-filled past that the Irish Revivalist found empowering and
purposeful and Joyce found irrelevant and illusionary. Ancient Ireland is dead, he would say

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in Trieste, just as Ancient Egypt is dead. Its death chant has been sung, and on its gravestone
has been placed the seal (Joyce, Critical Writings 173). It is at liminal points, thresholds, that
hospitality is engaged or not engaged. Liminality, along with ideas of place and space,
inescapably conflate with hospitality.

Saint-Amour visualizes Dickens A Christmas Carol as:

a tale obsessed with thresholds, be they doors or doornails or doorknockers or
doorsteps, invitations or arrivals or entrances or visitations. If the Carol is a
friendly ghost, it also claims to be friendly to guests, setting itself up as a textual
house whose walls, no less than its doors, were made for walking through. This
hospitality, I would add, is not incidental to the text but one of the gestures it most
hopes to extend (Saint-Amour 94).
Saint-Amours discussion conflates thresholds and hospitality.
Similarly adopting Van Genneps liminality to hospitality, one sees that the nature of
hospitality is a small rite of passage: invitees transubstantiating into guests after a liminal
moment of, quite literally, walking across a threshold and being ritually greeted, an invitee must
always be welcomedaccepted as a guestin order to achieve the social status of a guest.
And the invitees must change places, spaces, from beyond the walls of the inviter (the host once
the invitee becomes a guest) to within. In The Dead, Lily is run off her feet shuttling
arrivals through the Morkans threshold, making them welcomed guests. With her back
answer to Gabriels greeting and attempt to show interest in her non-work life, Lily fails her
part of the rite of passage process for Gabriel. In a sense, she betrays the ritual.
Joyce felt compelled to talk about his homelands history of betrayal in Trieste.
Rabat illuminates why that might be. The Dead, according to him, deals directly with the
two related issues of hospitality and betrayalthe perversion of hospitality (Rabat 155). If
Lily, then, betrays the ritual, she perverts hospitality. Indeed, it can be argued that, after being

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welcomed by Lily, Gabriel is put off-balanced, made to feel ill-at-ease. Under close reading
and under the Morkans roof, he, importantly, never seems like a guest defined as one who is a
somewhat pampered participant in a hosted event.
Rabat also approached the early Joyce through his letters, finding an artistic limitation of
Dubliners that The Dead was intended to counterbalance in the following:
the main feature of Dublin Joyce felt he could not adequately convey or
represent was its hospitality, that is, in fact, its openness to strangers. [A]
letter to Stanislaus [Joyce] expresses this idea very well: Sometimes thinking of
Ireland it seems to me that I have been unnecessarily harsh. I have reproduced (in
Dubliners at least) none of the attraction of the city for I have never felt at ease in
any city since I left it except in Paris. I have not reproduced its ingenuous
insularity and its hospitality. The latter virtue so far as I can see does not exist
elsewhere in Europe (Rabat 154).
Joyce here links his (1907) notion of Irish hospitalityan ironic virtue?to a sense of ease
and, possibly, a function of place or space unique in Europe. His observation of ingenious
insularity relates Ireland both physically as an island and also as an island, politically and
culturally.
In the Trieste lecture, Joyce sets up the many ways, to use a post-Joycean phrase in
currency, Ireland saved civilization. One can make the argument that it did so through
ingenious exploitation of its isolation, allowing Ireland to self-create a unique identity and
culture free of European (and for a time, English) influence. A line, which I take out of its
context from his essay, Ireland at the Bar, underscores this separation: St. Georges Channel
makes an abyss deeper than the ocean between Ireland and her proud dominator (Joyce, Critical
Writings 199) and, by extension, Europe, though, in context, Joyce was describing how far apart
Ireland, the unhappy colony, and England, its proud dominator were and had been over the
centuries.

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The Trieste talk spotlights the politically-articulate Joyce that Joyce the artist kept from
the forefront of his prose, out of sensitivity, as Gabriel indicates, that literature was above
politics (Joyce, Dubliners 163). Joyce says as much and more in his 1902 review of Sinn Fein
activist and poet William Rooneys Poems and Ballads, which he saw published (along with
Sinn Fein founder, Arthur Griffith) in the Daily Express:
These are the verses of a writer lately deadpreceded by two introductions
wherein there is much said concerning the working man, mutual improvement
illustrative of the national temperso [their] writersclaim for them the highest
honours. But this claim cannot be allowed, unless it is supported by certain
evidence of literary sincerity. For a man who writes a book cannot be excused by
his good intentions, or by his moral character (Joyce, An Irish Poet 84-5)
Joyce felt that the writers of the introductions failed to support Rooneys work with literary,
rather than patriotic, sincerity and he, himself, also could not find such support in the verses.
Griffith would reprint the review and add one, bracketed word to the reviews lines: And yet
he might have written well if he had not suffered from one of those big words [Patriotism] which
make us so unhappy (Joyce, An Irish Poet 84). (Substitute West Briton for Patriotism and
you have Molly Ivors dismissal of Gabriel in The Dead.)
It should be added that there is ample evidence that Joyce was sympathetic to Sinn Fein.
But his 1907 bottom-line was that literature could be politicalDubliners is proof of a fervent
concern for the working man, mutual improvementyet it ought not to be politics. In
Dubliners, the on-stage, politically-articulate Joyce moves to the wings for the politically-savvy
fictionist to work magic.
Joyces hospitality as narrowly defined as openness to strangers, is a less cumbersome,
manageable conception than Derrida or Saint-Amours. Saint-Amour does lay out Derridas
more grounded expression of hospitality: conditional, dependent upon conditions, a matter of
codified obligations that one would grant to a guest, stranger or foreigner possessed of a social

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status and its implied and excluding counter, unconditional or radical hospitality that
overwhelms those codes and duties by offering hospitality to figures who have zero social
status, whose alterity can be described as absolute. These are ghosts, figurative or literal, and
The Dead is well-stocked in them through memory (Gabriels mother), evocation (how many
dead singers were evoked around the dinner table?), sightings (the tapestries of the dead
princes) and, of course, sightings/hauntings (Gabriels vision of Furey at storys end).
The Dead, on its surface, reads as a tale of a night out with the wife to a traditional
family affaira Christmas season dance. The word "hospitality" is used eight timessix times
in "The Dead." "The Boarding House" and Counterparts account for the other incidences. In
The Boarding House, the word occurs as follows:
Mrs Mooney glanced instinctively at the little gilt clock.It was seventeen
minutes past eleven: she would have lots of time to have the matter out with Mr
Doran and then catch short twelve at Marlborough Street. She was sure she
would win. To begin with she had all the weight of social opinion on her side;
she was an outraged mother. She had allowed him to live beneath her roof,
assuming that he was a man of honour, and he had simply abused her hospitality"
(Joyce, Dubliners 52).
Here, is a legalistic, almost contractual, hospitality, one starkly in line with Derridas definition
of conditional hospitality or Saint-Amours first tier codified invitation/limited welcome
model.
Mrs. Mooneys mind seems to balance events and her reaction to them on internal scales;
there is nothing like the openness to strangers that haunted Joyces memories in Italy, though,
is it odd that Doran means exile or stranger in Irish (Gifford 64)? One might anticipate
hospitality of the kind Gabriel had in mind when he wrote the outline for his dinner speech. But
this is not Gabriel and not his hospitality. This is the hospitality with virtue in quotes.

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Mrs. Mooney is the daughter of a butcher and she deals with moral problems as a
cleaver deals with meat (Joyce, Dubliners 51). For her, the violation of hospitality is a moral
problem to be dealt with a butchers precision and cold dispatch, cutting through flesh and bone.
Commerce and provision for the future, these underpin Mrs. Mooneys hospitality for its
codified invitation, its liminal point, is contractual. Mr. Doran lived beyond Mrs. Mooneys roof
and by signing a contract crossed a threshold to be under it and under her as a tenant; its limited
welcome rendered for fifteen shillings a week for board and lodgings (beer or stout at dinner
excluded) (Joyce, Dubliners 50). This hospitality is an object of another sort; a perverse
hospitality, a betrayal.
In less than 75 words, one feels a mystery behind the circumstances, a sense that however
Mrs. Mooneys hospitality was abused, there was an unspoken goalthe opening up of an
opportunity for a possibility of achieving an endand, suddenly, the formidable Mrs. Mooney
had the cards to achieve it. She was sure she would win. And do so in under a half hour or so
if she expected to get to short twelve in time. She was the outraged mother. But not so
outraged that she couldnt plan her day: settle the matter, get to church. And not so outraged that
she, for even a moment, grieves for her daughter who, one would think, is as abused as the
mothers hospitality.
The "abuse" alluded to is sexual (consensual); the consequence of it, a pregnancy. And
now Mrs. Mooney seeks appropriate reparations: Some mothers would be content to patch up
such an affair for a sum of money: she had known cases of itFor her only one reparation could
make up for the loss of her daughters honour: marriage (Joyce, Dubliners 53)
There should be no doubt, despite his avowed complicity in the matter, that Doran has
been set-up. He was not expressly targeted but Mrs. Mooneys intention was not hunting, but

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trapping: he was the unlucky one to enter the trap the other young men of the boarding house
stayed clear of. The trap was the boarding house, the social space on the inside of the threshold.
Polly was the bait. She did housework there but, strategically, shed been given the run of the
young men.
[Polly] flirted with the young men but Mrs. Mooney, who was a shrewd judge,
knew [they] were only passing the time: none of them meant business. Things
went on so for a long time and Mrs. Mooney began to think of sending Polly back
to typewriting when she noticed that something was going on between Polly and
one of the young men. She watched the pair and kept her own counsel (Joyce,
Dubliners 51)
Beneath those lines lies a fly fishers patience and knowledge of fish: keep watch, be quiet, let
nature take its course, reel the fish in when its hooked.
Rabat notes that Joyces pleasure in exploring the city in the Dubliners Two Gallants
does not blunt the sharpness of Joyces scalpel; the pairs perverted gallantry is condemned
and their attitude betrays once more the prevalent simony: like all Dubliners, they survive by
exploiting weaker people and their values are indissociable from an overarching economic and
moral prostitution (154-55). In other words, oppressed and marginalized people oppress one
anotheras a point of survivalusing what tools they have.
Openness to strangers is risky as any number of global peoples can attest. But such
hospitality, perverted, betrayed, can be used to advantage if one is patient and looks for and
exploits weakness. So while Gabriel will speak of an Irish hospitality that has been transmitted
by the forefatherslike a watch or a plot of landin The Boarding House Joyce suggests the
sort of hospitality passed down by foremothers: a pragmatic hospitality aimed to better their lot
in a thrice patriarchal hegemonythe Catholic Church, the English dominion and the Irish male
prerogative (in that order)that disagree about much but invariably agree on the subjugation of
women. Pollys wise innocence knows this shadowy terrain well.

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Polly could feel her mothers eyes on her and Mr. Doran during their affair but her
mothers persistent silence could not be misunderstood. There had been no open complicity
between mother and daughter, no open understanding butstill Mrs. Mooney did not intervene
(Joyce, Dubliners 51).
When she did finally intervenedconveniently too lateMrs. Mooney interviewed
Polly, as Joyce phrased it, to confirm that things were as she had suspected, they had both,
mother and daughter, been frank with their questions and answers.
Both had been somewhat awkward, of course. [Mrs.
Mooney] had been made awkward by her not wishing to receive the news in too
cavalier a fashion or to seem to have connived and Polly had been made awkward
not merely because allusions of that kind always made her awkward but also
because she did not wish it to be thought that in her wise innocence she had
divined the intention behind her mothers tolerance (Joyce, Dubliners 52).
As a man, Doran has intrinsic power over Mrs. Mooney and her daughter. Fight or flight
is his options; more options than Polly under normal circumstances. Mrs. Mooney knows, due to
her shrewd judgement, that Dorans male prerogatives will not protect him. He is a good
Catholic and has a steady English-derived job that will not stand scandalous publicity. Between
fears of economic ruin and Catholic guilt, Doran paralyzes himself; is nullified by the dual
colonial power of The Vatican enshrined in churches and pro-Cathedrals and the English Crown.
Mrs. Mooney will win but it will be due to the calculated manipulation of the social space of her
boarding house to put her in power as a host over her more powerful male guests.
The limits of power of Irish men in an Ireland too-long under the dominion of the English
is revisited in Counterparts. Farrington, a large Irish Catholic scrivener in the service of a
Protestant law firma man in a state of frustration and anger from the first page of the storyis
the protagonist of this story. Hospitality shows up in a bar after a hard day at the office.
Again, it is not the hospitality of Gabriels speech.

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Leonard introduced them to a young fellow named Weathers who was performing
at the Tivoli as an acrobat and knockabout artiste. Farrington stood a drink all
aroundThe talk became theatrical. OHalloran stood a round and then
Farrington stood another round, Weathers protesting that the hospitality was too
Irish. He promised to get them in behind the scenes and introduce them to some
nice girls (Joyce, Dubliners 78).
In the above, the hospitality that was too Irish was that of buying rounds of drinks,
something Weathers, the acrobat, who we later learn is British, seems to side-step by promising
to introduce the men to some nice girls. The true hospitality here is in the taking of Weathers
under their wingbeing open to his alterity. As in The Boarding House, hospitality is abused.
Here, however, its abuse is in the workplace and in the tavern rather than in living spacesuntil
the last page. It is also, as Weathers indicates a rejection of hospitality. The hospitality is too
Irish and throughout the story there is no hospitality to be found. Farringtonagain until the
last pageis made the butt of circumstance in Counterparts.
Unlike Gabriel, who doesnt seem to feel the sting of British occupation of Ireland,
Farrington suffers from daily abuse at his job. At one point he snaps and embarrasses his boss
forcing him to apologize or lose his job. He sneaks out to the pub during office hours just to get
through, a functional alcoholic. Weathers, the Brit, will beat him in a test of strength
Farrington holding up the honor of Ireland--and a attractive woman will dismiss him. His
manhood diminished, in the final page, Farrington does not pass on hospitality to his son.
Instead Joyce has him pass on his self-loathing and violence to him:
A conqueror cannot be casual, Joyce told his Trieste audience, and for so many
centuries the Englishman has done in Ireland only what the Belgian is doing today
in the Congo Free State She persecuted the Roman Church when it was
rebellious and stopped when it became an effective instrument of subjugation.
Her principal preoccupation was to keep the country divided (Joyce, Critical
Writings 166).

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Whereas, The Dead can be said to be about hospitality, it is a nostalgic thing, Gabriel looks
back to and sees no future in it if the Molly Ivors are the future. In both Counterparts and
The Boarding House the single mention of hospitality gives it a powerful, ironic standing in
the inhospitable worlds of their stories.
Gabriel says of hospitalitywell past halfway into The Dead as he gives tribute to
the evenings hosts, his aunts Julia and Kate and cousin Mary Jane:
I feel more strongly with every recurring year that our country has no tradition
which does it so much honour and which it should guard so jealously as that of its
hospitality. It is a tradition that is unique so far as my experience goesamong
the modern nations. Some would say, perhaps, that with us it is rather a failing
than anything to be boasted of. Butit is, to my mind, a princely failing and one
that I trust will long be cultivated among us. As long as this roof shelters the
good ladies aforesaidthe tradition of genuine warmhearted courteous Irish
hospitality, which our forefathers have handed down to us and which we in turn
must hand down to our descendants, is still alive among us (Joyce, Dubliners 1767).
A key phrase in the above is Some would sayit is rather a failing than anything to be boasted
of.
Gabriel is aware that a nervous energy emanates from the body of Irish hospitality. And
Derridas use of hostis as guest and enemy, guest-enemy might perfectly capture,
metaphorically and literally, the sense of the British presence in Ireland in many quarters of the
society. Certainly, The Boarding House and Counterparts argue that guest-enemies have
expanded beyond the British camp as the imperial power effectively found ways to keep the
country divided by keeping the Irish divided. But closer to the text, Gabriel will come across
guest-enemy.
Gabriel, himself, foreshadows Derridas dual view of guest in the opening of his speech
when he quips, it is not the first time that we have been the recipientsor, perhaps I had better
say, the victimsof the hospitality of certain good ladies (Joyce, Dubliners 176). The contrast

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is an interesting one: recipients, being a far more neutral word choice than victims. And
Gabriel, indeed, has felt victimized prior to his speech.
In his first interaction under the roof of the Misses Morkans, with Lily, he begins a goodnatured conversation, which was meant to be of no consequence with the young woman as she
does her job, attending to him in the little pantry-turned-cloakroom on the first floor. He asks in
a friendly, light manner about her future, which he presumes will be the one common for women
of the time: marriage. Lily responds out of kind, oppositionally. As the text puts it, she glanced
back at him over her shoulder and said with great bitterness: The men that is now is only all
palaver and what they can get out of you (Joyce, Dubliners 154).
Gabriel feels that he has made a mistake and suddenly cannot look at her. He
participates in nervous actions of taking off his galoshes, flicking his shoes and, finally, comes
up with recourse to his taken up a wrong tone with her. He forces a coin into her hand as a
Christmas present and then almost trotting to the stairs and waving his hand to her in
deprecationdeflects Lilys thanks of resigned acceptance of the token (Joyce, Dubliners 155).
There are many levels to read thisas a class tension, a gendered patriarchal exchange,
for instancebut, keeping to Gabriels expectations of Irish hospitality, the tradition seems to
fail, is betrayed.
Lily should have, if for no other reason than to keep a guest and beloved family member
of her employers at ease, come up with a comfortable lie, as Gabriel will do when he pronounces
Freddy Malins not so bad when asked by his Aunt Kate about his level of intoxication. This is
an aspect of hospitality, a liminal aspect to grease the move to the guest level. Perhaps it is the
part not worthy of boast but there are times situations are whitewashed to maintain the smooth
surface of congeniality.

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That Lily doesnt try to smooth her way around the rocky moment may indicate the
confluence of several pressures impacting her: that she is being run off her feet, that the
Morkans annual dance is a great and stressful affair, that shes not herself (Kate alludes to this
later when she compares her, unfavorably, to the Conroys housemaid, Bessie, who is entrusted
with Gabriel and Grettas children for the night). Regardless, the manner in which she replies to
Gabriel is not in keeping with a housemaid that knows the only thing [her three mistresses]
would not stand was back answers (Joyce, Dubliners 153), especially not to a favorite family
member. It is a discourteous slip for Lily.
Gabriels reaction to her discourtesy, however, is odd. He never reflects on her
momentary rudeness. Rather, he seems to think it results from his behaviorsome sort of
mistake or wrong tone. He then proceeds to fix the situation via monetary remuneration, as
though he needs to pay her off, to quiet her about his indiscretion. This creates a secondary
issue, a point of discomfort for Lily.
Lily is not expecting a Christmas anything from Gabrielthe gesture clearly surprises
her, as if in the years they have been doing this Christmas season dance, Gabriel has never before
given her a gift. She suddenly finds herself in the uncomfortable position of refusing to accept a
gift from himan insultor accepting it, though she feels it might be inappropriate given she is
already being paid for the nights work. It is a liminal moment resulting from Gabriels feeling
of awkwardness that spreads the awkwardness to Lily. Thus, the social space they end up in is
not one of hospitalityhospitality has been compromisedit is another liminal point, one which
Gabriel seems stuck in until his aunts task him with Freddy.
Molly Ivors partners with Gabriel for a dance and once again off-balances him or, likely,
maintains his disequilibrium from his run-in with Lily. Molly does not go for the whitewashings

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of situations to front a smooth surface hospitality. She is as traditionalist as Gabriel but her Irish
tradition is more Celticin an Irish Revival veinthan English. She does not wear a lowcut
bodice and does sport a large broochfixed in the front of her collar [that] bore on it an Irish
device (Joyce, Dubliners 162). In a real sense, she wears her politics, just not on her sleeve.
Molly teases Gabriel by calling him a West Breton for publishing in the conservative
Dublin newspaper, the Daily Express. As was the case with Lily, Gabriel cannot find a suitable
retort. He thinks but doesnt say that his writing for the paper, expresses a belief that literature
is above politics, eventually muttering something which must have played in his mind as less
confrontational that he saw nothing political in writing reviews of books (Joyce, Dubliners
163). By the time Molly confesses that she is only joking, Gabriel is in a spin and is relieved to
get out of that conversational loop. Molly, however, hits him with an invitation to the Aran Isles,
which she delivers as a demandshe makes the invitation, then presses for an answer on the
spot.
Like Lily, earlier, Gabriel has the opportunity to defuse the situation by not saying what
surely would be seen as confrontational. He, initially, tries to. Molly tries to bolster the appeal
of the invite by noting that Gabriels wife is from the area, correct?implying that Gretta might
enjoy seeing her side of Ireland again. (Gretta would later prove her correct.) But Joyce writes
the following response: Her people are, said Gabriel shortly (Joyce, Dubliners 164). What is
the function of that Shortly? Does it imply that there is normally an interval before he replies
and this time that interval is short? Or that he replies curtly? I think the latter, though it could be
both (Gabriel spent some time in his previous discussion with Molly blinking and smiling before
saying something).

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Here, Joyce circles us back to Gabriels mother and her assertion that his love was
country cute and Gabriels counter-assertion that that was not true of Gretta at all (Joyce,
Dubliners 162). Gabriel is not ashamed of Gretta, but could he be ashamed of where she comes
from? Western Ireland is historically less accommodating to the idea of British rule than the east
(or elements in the north). Is there a hospitality issue for Gabriel with regard to the regiondoes
he not feel at ease in that space?
Furthermore, because of that possibility, is he unwilling to go there even for his wifes
sake, for the sake of their love and affection? The answer to the latter seems to be yes. When
Gretta asks Gabriel what words he had with Molly, he responds that there were no words, she
wanted me to go for a trip to the west of Ireland and I said I wouldnt. Gretta is animated and
urges him to change his mind that she would love to see Galway again. Gabriels response is
described as cold. You can go it you like. Gretta then tells Mrs. Malins, theres a nice
husband for you and leaves her husband with Freddys mother (Joyce, Dubliners 166).
Again, circling back to the beginning when we first meet Gabriel and Gretta entering the
Morkans house, Gabriel makes an off-handed remark blaming their lateness on how long it
takes his wife to get ready for a night out. Not much later, Gretta takes a shot at her husband, by
playing off the aunts amusement of his solicitude, in recounting stories about galoshes and his
overprotectiveness. At the beginning this looks like purely innocent banter by a loving couple,
particularly as focalized through Gabriel. We do not get a feel for how Gretta might feel about
much until the final third of the story.
This is not Mollys problem. Though she holds back whatever true reservations she may
have about Gabriels publications in the Daily Express, she asserts herself, which seems
legitimate for a single professional woman in 1907 Dublin. But her assertiveness gives no

ROBINSON/19
quarter to Gabriel and the particular sense of hospitality he would articulate later in the evening,
after Mollys leaving. She can fairly be called rude in her constant pull for Gabriels reasons for
not going to the Isles. But it dissolves the veil of obligation to hospitality in him that we saw
lifted so briefly from Lily at the start, when he is forced to admit that he hates his countryor,
likely more to point, the country as perceived by the likes of Molly Ivors with the Irish devices
and distain for literature above politics.
Finally, Gabriel exhibits the same relational conundrum Joyce has for Ireland for Gretta
in The Dead. He wavers, liminal, between the point of seeing hergrace and mystery in her
attitudea symbol of something...listening to distant music in the gloom of the stairs at his
relatives (Joyce, Dubliners 182)yet, not much later, he stands upon a different point,
confronts her with cold suspicion, clearly feeling betrayed: Perhaps that was why you wanted to
go to Galway with that Ivors girl (Joyce, Dubliners 190)?
That sense of betrayal, of perverse hospitality; however, is immediately tempered.
Gretta eyes him and he feels awkward. Upon the reveal that Michael Furey is deadis but ghost
and memorythat awkwardness turns to humiliation, later, it becomes a humility that opens a
space within him for the change of season, not just the generality of snow throughout Ireland, but
that of Epiphany and his internal epiphany, lending him a new objectivity about hospitalitythe
Irish hospitality which he spoke of at the Morkans table, handed down (as if an object) by
forefathers, which he fears will be among those things the newer generation will lack qualities
of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humour which belonged to an older day (Joyce, Dubliners
176-77). Achieving this objectivity, negotiated through a quite human and, as such, inescapable
mix of affection and distrust is Joyces literary formulation of surviving foreign domination, a

ROBINSON/20
history of betrayals (read inhospitality), of eloquent inactivity (read paralysis) and
absurd and narrow beliefs.
Rooted in anthropology, liminality is a social, communal concept. Changes in status, of
identity, not only impact the individuals sense of personhood but are transmitted and conferred
by the individuals society. Rituals validate the transitions on both levels, personal and public.
As liminalitys influence expanded to an inter-disciplinary model, impinging upon the literary
sphere, the layers of personal and public now translate to how text is authored and how that text
is read, consumed. Its creation is a private concern but it becomes public (published) and, again,
becomes privatized (in its consumption by a reader) before, once more, becoming public as
readers become a community responding to the text in public ways. These varieties of liminality
as Bjorn suggests in the sphere of social science applications make liminality a versatile tool for
literary analysis, opening up possibilities for insight that might previously escape notice.
###
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. The Critical Writings of James Joyce. New York: Viking Press, 1959.

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Maitra, Dipanjan. ""Victims of Hospitality": Joyce, Colonialism and the Question of Strangers in
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