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

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

Paralyzed by her fears, Eveline equates departure with Frank to drowning in a sea of life, and, as a consequence, she remains helplessly engulfed on the shore amid waves of anxiety. The sea then, a traditional great symbol of regeneration, for Eveline, denies life. Even her religion provides no solace, no answer: 'she felt her cheek pale and cold and, out of a maze of distress, she prayed to God to direct her, to show her what was her duty" (40) . . . "She gripped with both hands at the iron railing" (41). Failing to serve as a guide for its children, religion, instead, incapacitates them. Similar to Kathleen Kearney, whose foot is not allowed to touch the stage platform, Eveline cannot step onto the boat ramp, a step which for her would mean escape, freedom, and life.

He rushed beyond the barrier and called to her to follow. He was

shouted at to go on but he still called to her. She set her white face

to him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of

love or farewell or recognition. (41)

Eveline's "marriage" to the dead ensures her constant suffering. A symbol of sacrifice, Eveline may be associated with the Blessed Margaret Mary, Alacoque, whose "coloured" print of "promises" hangs on Eveline's wall. This aged scroll represents a visible sign of Eveline's "contract" with the dead. In his analysis of the story, Gifford illuminates the tragedy of Eveline's adherence to these precepts: St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, a member of the Visitation Order of France, embodied both physical and spiritual suffering (49). Further, the name "Mary" implies an intricate tie between the saint and the Virgin Mary. Besides a shared bond of suffering and sacrifice with both spiritual mothers, Eveline's instantaneous "delivery" of children (upon her mother's death) insinuates a variation of the Virgin Mary's immaculate conception -- both the earthy and the spiritual "mother" "conceive" without a sexual relationship with man.

By relinquishing physical contact with Frank, thus circumventing a sexual relationship with man, Eveline retains her metaphorical status as "mother," all the while acquiring an added spiritual dimension. Thus, by perpetuating the sacrifice of St. Margaret Mary, Eveline embodies aspects of both saint and Virgin Mother. Religion then, a semiotic marker of Dublin's paralysis, provides the crucial link between Mother and death. Characterized by its future tenses, the list of St. Margaret Mary's promises represents a visible sign of a "contract" with the dead: "I will give them all . . . I will establish peace in their homes . . . I will comfort them . . . I will be their secure refuge (Gifford 49-50). Eveline's life, bitterly ironic, demands this constant sacrifice. Her only refuge (the only one she can or will accept) lies in death -- and, of course, the promise that she will be graciously received in another life. Both the promises to her physical mother (now absent) and her spiritual mother (equally absent for her) lock Eveline into a death-in-life vacuum.