Dubliners

In the closing section of the collection, Joyce focuses on characters with relative privilege that lose it due to their own personal failings of character. “A Mother” provides a dramatic example of this tragic self-defeat. The story follows a downward trajectory—opening with the Kearney family being given a new opportunity to increase their social standing and influence, and ending with the mother and daughter having lost everything. Joyce uses the opening paragraphs to establish Mrs. Kearney’s wealthy family background and preference for acting as the master of her own fate. Her forced marriage highlights the social and economic Imbalances of Power she faces as a woman. Although her marriage isn’t one of love, Mrs. Kearney acknowledges her husband’s role in her social status, echoing the sense throughout the collection of marriage as primarily an economic proposition, pointing to The Futility of Love and Infatuation. She uses this status, as well as the rising popularity of Irish culture, to elevate her daughter Kathleen. Joyce continues to evidence her desire for independence and control through her micromanagement of every detail of the upcoming concerts. When the concerts don’t do as well as expected, she becomes entrenched in the pursuit of her short-term goal (to the detriment of her long-term one). In framing Mrs. Kearney’s aggression as her tragic flaw that ultimately leads to her downfall and pushes away any potential allies, Joyce accentuates the imbalances of power that would frame that same aggression as ambition and initiative in a man.

In “Grace,” Joyce presents this self-defeating cycle in the passive protagonist of Mr. Kernan who begins the story already having fallen figuratively and literally to his lowest possible point establishing an upward trajectory for his character. Alone for the first few pages, Mr. Kernan lacks a defined identity, and eventually, due to an injury that leaves him mute, lacks a voice. Throughout the story, Mr. Kernan is lifted back up (again, figuratively and literally) by his family and friends, eventually rediscovering his spirituality. Unusually for Joyce’s work, he presents religion as an avenue of healing rather than oppression. While there is some discord among the people regarding their individual religious paths (notably the conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism), the story emphasizes the idea of a universal faith in the divine: “we worship at different altars […] but our belief is the same” (163). This sense of unity, along with the “spiritual accounting” discussed at the close of the story, suggests that there is a case to be made for spirituality in one’s life as long as it is separated from the mess and discord of politics.

In the final story of the collection (and one of Joyce’s most famous works), “The Dead,” Joyce grapples with the complicated nature of the Irish identity, following a flawed protagonist who sees Ireland as a regressive country and attempts to distance himself from it by associating himself more with “continental” pursuits. Joyce depicts Gabriel as outwardly sophisticated, but inwardly obsessed with the validation of others—a characteristic immediately apparent in his interactions with Lily, and later in his hostile conversation with Miss Ivors. Joyce juxtaposes his character against the other partygoers, such as Freddy and Mr. Browne, both of whom Joyce portrays as socially inept and entitled, representing everything Gabriel believes is wrong with his country. However, Miss Ivors’s political baiting and suggestion that Gabriel is disloyal to Ireland makes him immediately defensive despite his earlier disdain, underscoring the complexity of Gabriel’s relationship to his national identity. While Miss Ivors’s approach is direct, it is also open-hearted and potentially flirtatious. Gabriel, however, takes it as a personal attack.

Through Gabriel, Joyce explores an inherently contradictory relationship to one’s own Irishness—even when attempting to distance himself from Irish culture and sensibility, Gabriel instinctually rebels against the idea that he is anything but fundamentally Irish. In fact, the suggestion makes him feel immediately disempowered. As the event continues, Gabriel attempts to reclaim his sense of control, by asserting dominance over Mrs. Ivors—a scene that highlights the imbalances of power inherent to the gender dynamics at the party. During a debate about female singers in church choirs and the gender dynamics in organized religion, the women hesitate to express their negative views on the way women have been treated, because social conditioning demands they keep their animosity to themselves. Miss Ivors’s chooses to remove herself from the scene rather than disagree with a man—a moment Gabriel sees this as a victory, affirming a sense of his own power through the disempowerment of the women around him.

Joyce presents Gabriel’s romanticization of his relationship with his wife as a fantasy constructed to reinforce the sense that he matters—that he is the center of at least one person’s life (echoing the pursuit of control explored in “Counterparts”). However, this romanticization only serves to convey a deeper sense of disconnection when Gretta tells him the story of her first love. Consistent with his need for control and dominance, Gabriel immediately sees the other man as a threat to his marital power: “A vague terror seized Gabriel […] as if, at that hour when he had hoped to triumph, some impalpable and vindictive being was coming against him” (217). The choice of the word “triumph” (similar to Mrs. Mooney’s repeated use of the word “win”) demonstrates Gabriel’s view of power as something to be won and wielded against others in order to be maintained—highlighting another key aspect of toxic masculinity. In the book’s final paragraphs, Gabriel finally matures enough to see his wife as a person that exists independently outside of himself. With this maturity comes a loss of innocence, mirroring the themes of the opening stories and bringing the collection full circle.