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

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

Maria of "Clay" represents another ineffective and powerless "mother," or surrogate-mother, with ties to a spiritual mother. Beck theorizes that Maria's "little life" (202) fueled no fire for those who came in contact with her, regardless of her fondly recalling Joe's saying that "Mamma is mamma but "Maria is my proper mother" (100). In "Virgin and Witch," Marvin Magalaner and Richard Kain note various parallels between Maria and the Virgin Mary,, both of whom hold reputations as "peacemakers[s]" (125). conclude that though Maria has some success as peacemaker outside the home, inside it, she falls to instill harmony within the family (125). Unlike the Virgin Mary, the somewhat grotesque-looking Maria appears alone and powerless -- the "clay" she touches does not come to life, and the family she fosters remains fragmented. Ultimately, she joins the ranks of other Dubliners mothers who are unable to generate life:

Hers is the quiet pathos of the unattractive, unclaimed woman who

must live out her life at the edge of other people's, effacing herself

lest she offend b;, intruding where she is superfluous and perhaps

not wanted, yet clinging to whatever attention comes her way and

making the most of it, and a bit more, just enough to avoid

acknowledging how little it really, is. (Beck 200)

Eveline, in "Eveline," furnishes the reader with vet another glimpse at the composite portrait of "Mother" in Dubliners. Her mission, like Maria's, of "Clay" involves the horrendous task of providing the glue that will hold together a crumbling family. In this story, verbal promises ("contracts") appear more binding than written ones, though each equally damns Dubliners children. In "Eveline," for example, a deathbed promise (more binding, perhaps, than any piece of paper) figures prominently in infusing paralysis in the story's protagonist. Here again, an absent (dead) mother exercises control over the living. Promising her mother "to keep the home together" for "as long as she [can]" (40), Eveline fulfills her mother's wishes at the detriment of her own desires:

Her time was running out but she continued to sit by the window,

lean her head against the window curtain, inhaling the odour of

dusty, cretonne. Down far in the avenue she could hear a street

organ playing. She knew the air. Strange that it should come that

very night to remind her of the promise to her mother, her promise

to keep the home together as long as she could. (40)

Death, of course, constitutes the strictest form of paralysis, and Eveline's compact with the dead (her promise) requires of her the abnegation of life. just as assuredly as a living mother possesses the capability of restricting her daughter's movement (Mrs Kearney's hold on Kathleen, for example) Eveline's dead mother demands a captive daughter: "She trembled as she heard again her mother's voice . . . . She stood up in a sudden impulse of terror. Escape! She must escape!" (40). The terms of Eveline's promise to her mother necessitate a constant regimen -- both now and in the future -- of hopeless drudgery.