"Three mortal hour/i~s": female Gothic in Joyce's "The Dead." - James Joyce

Studies in Short Fiction, Wntr, 1994 by Kelly Anspaugh

But Malachias' tale began to freeze them with horror. He conjured up the scene before them. The secret panel beside the chimney slid back and in the recess appeared . . . Haines! Which of us did not feel his flesh creep? He had a portfolio full of Celtic literature in one hand, in the other a phial marked Poison. Surprise, horror, loathing were depicted on all faces while he eyed them with a ghastly grin. (412)

And so on. Joyce's passage is in essence a parodic inventory of Gothic motifs: he sets them up in order to knock them over with laughter. This contrasts with Joyce's use of the Gothic in "The Dead," which is more serious-minded. (6) Florence Walzl is typical of those who discover in Joyce's conclusion evidence of regeneration: "The melting snow is seen as subtly paralleling the change in the hero, whose cold conceit has disappeared with his warming humanitarianism. The snow melting is thus a baptismal symbol, and as such offers renewed life not only to Gabriel, but also all the dead who lie here. . . . Gabriel's swoon is a symbolic death from which he will arise revivified" ("Gabriel" 442-43). Vincent Pecora, however, has recently offered a deconstructive reading of the Christian symbolism that informs the epiphany; he concludes: "Gabriel in no way overcomes or transcends the conditions of his existence. Rather, he merely recapitulates them unconsciously in this self-pitying fantasy" (242). (7) "Female Gothic" was coined by Ellen Moers. It is the title of Chapter Five of her 1976 study Literary Women. (8) Florence Walzl also observes that "the plot [of "The Dead"] progresses by a series of confrontations Gabriel has with women" ("Dubliners: Women" 51). (9) Joyce would parody this style in the "Nausicaa" chapter of Ulysses. Gerty's lips parted swiftly to frame the word but, she fought back the sob that rose to her throat, so slim, so flawless, so beautifully moulded it seemed one an artist might have dreamed of. She had loved him better than he knew. Light-hearted deceiver and fickle like all his sex he would never understand what he had meant to her and for an instant there was in the blue eyes a quick stinging of tears. (362) (10)Thomas Jackson Rice has also argued that the Fates are present in Joyce's story, but identifies their avatars as Gabriel's two aunts and their niece: "because Gabriel is sensitive to self-exposure, he could easily feel that associating his aunts with the malign figures of the Fates, even in a complimentary context, would betray his private opinion of them: they are only |ignorant old women"' (34). (11)Vincent Pecora, for example, observes that "in Gretta's story, Michael Furey acts out The Lass of Aughrim,' becoming the legendary figure previously identified as an abandoned girl"(241). (12)Joyce Critics have established that allusions to Dante abound in Dubliners and are especially thick in "The Dead." Thomas Jackson Rice, for example, argues that Joyce's story "shows direct traces of Dante's influence, particularly in the