James Joyce's darkly colored portraits of "mother" in Dubliners

Studies in Short Fiction, Summer, 1995 by Linda Rohrer Paige

She may appear, at first, a positive portrait, but the reader of Joyce's Dubliners soon discovers that there is something wrong with mother -- all mothers, whether they be real mothers or surrogates. Just as the priests of Portrait simultaneously convey contradictory impulses -- kindness and cruelty, for example -- the ambiguous mothers in Dubliners emerge paradoxical and enigmatic. Their "goodness" most decidedly tainted, Dubliners' mothers often seem ineffectual or hardened, sometimes even wildly or sadly perverted. Their positive feelings for their children become suspect when tempered by their harshness or selfishness. Usually paralyzed, either physically socially, or spiritually, the offspring of Dubliners' mothers suffer. Indeed, Joyce refuses to confine these negative portraits of "Mother" to this life: his mothers can reach far beyond the grave (as evidenced in Ulysses and in Portrait) to encumber and to handicap the living.

Critics still ponder Joyce's relationship with his own mother in hopes of gleaning insight into the writer's multifaceted treatment of females in his works. In "The Song of the Wandering Aengus: James Joyce and His Mother," Mark Shechner speculates that Joyce's surging creative impulse quickly fell upon the heels of his mother's death (75). Acknowledging the general agreement among critics that Joyce felt guilt because of his mother's death, Shechner adroitly, recounts the author's confession: "My mother was slowly killed, I think, by my father's ill-treatment, by years of trouble, and by my cynical frankness of conduct" (76). Perhaps this sense of guilt, exacerbated by his contradictory feelings about his mother, ultimately inspired Joyce to explore the veins of motherhood in Dublin. Whatever his reasons for polishing these portraits with ambiguity, Joyce establishes one irrefutable fact: though Dubliners mothers may seem, on the surface, supportive and loving, under this veneer of apparent benevolence lurks an ugly, darker side of motherhood.

Children of Dubliners' mothers often exemplify ambivalent or contradictory feelings about their mothers. The mother of Gabriel Conroy, though long dead, stirs such conflicting emotions in her son. Alone amidst the crowd and festivities, Gabriel's ambivalent feelings for his mother haunt him -- her support had provided the impetus for his career, she had pushed him to take his degree in the Royal University, but then, she also had reproached him "sullen opposition") for his marriage -- a "contract" with another woman, perhaps, threatened her (187). Gazing at his mother's picture while at his aunt's party, "a shadow pass[ing] over his face," Gabriel remembers her "slighting phrases" -- they still "rankled in his memory" -- and he recollects her ingratitude for Gretta's care during her long illness (187). Though no visible contract or verbal promise exists between him and his mother, nonetheless, this Dubliners son feels compelled to ensure the "dignity of family life" -- an endeavor that his mother earlier had considered "sensible" (186). Gabriel's delivery of the "address" at the Christmas party seems but one manifestation of his effort to fulfill his responsibility to the dead. Adhering to tradition, he preserves family "dignity," carving the turkey for the guests -- visitors whom he personally dislikes. Thus, a Dubliners mother reaches from beyond the grave to repress her son. With Gretta's revelation about Michael Furey, Gabriel comes to understand that the voices of the dead demand to be heard.

A major assault upon "family dignity" appears in the unflattering portrait of mothers found "Ivy Day in the Committee Room." Though Joyce mentions mothers in but a few passages, two twisted portraits viciously emerge, those of the Queen and of a discontented wife. Mr O'Connor, whom we first meet at the Committee Room, complains of the difficulty of "bring[ing] up children" (119), and he attributes his son's inflated ego to the influence of his wife, whom he also claims is the cause of his becoming a useless drunkard. Further, the old man insinuates that his loss of manliness is the result of his wife's perverted relationship with her son. Due to her rearing of the child, he deduces, the family has disintegrated: she tempted the boy to "rise up" and to displace his father. According to the father's account, sexual perversion surely lies at the core of this "incestuous" union of mother and son:

-- Only I'm an old man now I'd change his tune for him. I'd

take the stick to his back and beat him while I could stand over

him -- as I done many a time before. The mother, you know, she

cocks him up with this and that . . . . (120)

The mother's encouragement of her son -- "cock[ing] him up" -- results in a kind of Oedipal displacement of the father by the son. Unlike Jocasta's inadvertent, incestuous relationship with her son, however, this mother purposely connives to displace the father, thus fomenting his impotence. This Dubliners mother instigates the symbolic castrating and "killing" of the patriarchal father (subverting and depriving him of his male power, the phallus). In her examination of the Oedipus myth, Barbara Walker explains how the Jocasta figure has come to be linked to the castration of the male: