"Clay" excerpt from Dubliners by James Joyce, 1914

Résumé du document

The passage studied here is an excerpt from "Clay", one of the short stories of the book Dubliners, which was written by James Joyce in 1914. In this story, the main character Maria is invited to spend the Hallow Eve evening at Joe's, a man of whom she once was the nurse but who is now grown-up and has a family. This excerpt deals with the moment when Maria, while playing traditional Hallow Eve games with Joe's children, chooses by chance a piece of clay, which is a symbol of death. And whereas everyone around is dismayed, she does not seem to realize what this prediction means for her. As Maria has the most important place in this short story, it is necessary to first consider the duality of her character, because she seems to appear alternately as a saint and as a witch. Then there will be an analysis of the prediction itself, that is to say the significance of the clay but also the whole negativity which is present all along the narrative and which seems to have introduced the symbol of the clay.

Extraits

[...] And finally, it shows how powerful can be human consciousness, for it can make people believe incredible things, even about themselves, and once one started to believe in these products of imagination, it is hard for the others to distinguish what is real and what is not, especially when the narration of a story like this one plunges us directly inside the stream of consciousness of a character. And that is precisely what is interesting in modernism. WORKS CITED: Joyce, James, Dubliners (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). [...]

[...] But behind this sympathetic portrait of her as a saint, there are also in the text numerous elements that conflict this first description of the character. First, it appears that she is far from being as pretty as she said because, for instance, when she laughs "the tip of her nose nearly meets the tip of her chin" which gives her a witch-like appearance. This is also implied in the beginning of the story when the narrator says that she "was a very, very small person indeed but she had a very long nose and a very long chin". [...]

[...] So it is the same for her real identity: it is the reader's role to discover, thanks to the hints, who Maria really is and her hidden personality she tries to forget. Finally, there is a last element in the story that seems to help Maria to express herself, though very discreetly: this element is the song she sings for the children at the end of the story. It could seem meaningless but as she has chosen to sing this song, it has significance for her. [...]

[...] Her body seems to be rather disproportionate. Because of this repulsive appearance, Joe's children seem to instinctively reject her, from her arrival into the house up to the moment when they try to play a trick on her with the Hallow Eve games. The fact that the two next door girls are preparing the game is important because, as they do not belong to the family, they do not know Maria and they probably see her as an old nasty spinster because of her appearance, that is why they decided to play a joke on her. [...]

[...] Indeed, in this extract as in the whole short story, some elements could define her as a saint, a Virgin Mary, as her name could point out. First of all, we know that she is single and she has never had children, for the only family she visits is Joe's family. That means she is a pure, virginal woman, as the Virgin Mary. Then, considering her attitude and her thoughts, she also seems to be innocent, even naive, just like a child. [...]