James Joyce's "The Sisters": chalices and umbrellas, ptolemaic Memphis and Victorian Dublin

Studies in Short Fiction, Summer, 1995 by Susan Swartzlander

Critics, responding to the sisters' connections with funeral lamentations and libations, have found in the pair reflections of symbolic priests and nurses of the spirit (Magalaner), as well as allusions to Mary and Martha, the biblical sisters who sought the resurrection of their dead brother Lazarus (Spielberg, Kenner). Other critics have responded primarily to the sisters' desperate straits: "the one element of the story that is the most constant is the emphasis on their poverty, their hard work, and their unselfish support of their brother" (Walzl, "Dubliners" 209).

The brother they, support appears as a grotesque figure whose body has been ravaged by a physical and spiritual paralysis. Some have considered the priest a Christ or Lazarus figure for whom there will be no resurrection, but he also becomes Dublin's failed Osiris as well. Joyce invested in Father Flynn characteristics that play on the mythology surrounding this Egyptian god of the dead, a god synonymous with resurrection.(4) Undoubtedly, Joyce would have been aware of Osiris's similarity to Christ.(5) Archaeologists believe that Osiris, at one time a wise and benevolent king of Pre-dynastic Egypt, became the Egyptian equivalent of Jesus Christ:

His appeal lay in the belief that he lived on earth as a man who

brought nothing but good to mankind but who was betrayed and

murdered. His resurrection and the hope of eternal life that he held

out to everyone further enhanced his popularity. (Watterson 88)

Flynn's home, like Osiris's abode, faces west: "the window-panes of the houses that looked to the west reflected the tawny gold of a great bank of clouds . . . [the dead-room] was suffused with dusky golden light" (14). Ebers recalls that in Memphis, "as in all Egyptian cities, on its Western side lay its `City of the Dead'" (Ebers 7). Not only was the "West End" the "abode of the dead in Egyptian cities," but "to `go West' meant to die" (Durant 154). The only other light in the room emanates from the two candles, the "pale thin flames" of the dikerion, "reputed to signify `the advent of the Holy Spirit,'" Christian symbolism that some historians suggest emerged from the Egyptian funerary practice symbolizing "the descent of Ra the holy spirit on the inert body of Osiris" (Massey 222).

As the god of resurrection, Osiris retains the "words of power" that triumph over evil, darkness, death. Father Flynn we know is a man of few words and little power. In fact, the most stark images of his paralysis appear in descriptions of the priest's mouth and face. The boy dreams that the "heavy grey face of the paralytic" appears to him. Although the boy tries to think of happier events, like Christmas, there will be no birth, or rebirth, to celebrate, only a death to mourn. As he contemplates the threatening "grey face" that follows him with its "murmuring voice," the boy wonders why "it smiled continually and why the lips were so moist with spittle. But then I remembered that it had died of paralysis" (11).