Dubliners is a gray cold book. The stories are related without emotion and the reader is left to infer from their stark telling the pain, helplessness, and hopelessness of people grappling with the mundane events of their lives.
I understood that each story had an epiphany which I had expected to be a moment of self-realization which could lead to hope and change. But there was no real possibility of change for the people so dispassionately described. To me it seemed that the epiphany was that, whatever their circumstances, they could or would not change.
Even when they could imagine change, they could not imagine effecting it. The entire story of Evaline is one of her imagining her life different. Yet she sits paralyzed as her opportunity passes. “She set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal.”
In “A Painful Case” the epiphany is clear to both the reader and to James Duffy as he slowly realizes his aloneness and his betrayal of Mrs. Sinico, but, as with other Dubliners, it comes too late. Even if his epiphany had come early, I doubted it would have made a difference.
By the time I got to "Ivy Day in the Committee Room" I was looking for tragic, useless, too late epiphanies. An argumentative discussion of the impending visit to Dublin by King Edward was particularly poignant.
Quote:
"But after all now," said Mr. Lyons argumentatively, "King Edward's life, you know, is not the very… "
"Let bygones be bygones," said Mr. Henchy. "I admire the man personally. He's just an ordinary knockabout like you and me. He's fond of his glass of grog and he's a bit of a rake, perhaps, and he's a good sportsman. Damn it, can't we Irish play fair?"
"That's all very fine," said Mr. Lyons. "But look at the case of Parnell now."
"In the name of God," said Mr. Henchy, "where's the analogy between the two cases?"
"What I mean," said Mr. Lyons, "is we have our ideals. Why, now, would we welcome a man like that? Do you think now after what he did Parnell was a fit man to lead us? And why, then, would we do it for Edward the Seventh?"
"This is Parnell's anniversary," said Mr. O'Connor, "and don't let us stir up any bad blood. We all respect him now that he's dead and gone—even the Conservatives," he added, turning to Mr. Crofton.
|
The great Irish leader was commemorated on Ivy Day, the first Sunday after the anniversary of his death, but he had been repudiated and scorned for his affair with Katharine O'Shea. “We all respect him now that he's dead and gone” was heartbreaking and epitomized what seems to be a constant theme in these stories.
I am happy to finally read Dubliners, but it made me sad.