From the beginning of “Araby,” Joyce clearly marks the Catholic Church’s overarching public presence in the daily life of the narrator’s Dublin. The narrator explains that his street is near “the Christian Brothers’ School” and that his house had once been inhabited by a priest who “died in the back drawing-room.” The priest’s papers and books are still “littered” about a back room, and the very air, “musty from having been long enclosed,” seems infused with the priest’s presence as it “hung in all the rooms.” Throughout, the narrator’s scant descriptions of religious institutions are suffused with much the same mustiness. Religion is the air the characters of “Araby” breathe and move through, but it is more associated with tradition and mundanity than with ecstasy.

It isn’t clear exactly how devout a Catholic the narrator may be, but it is apparent that he is attuned to spiritual experience in a more private sense. He describes the mystical experience of playing with his friends after winter dusk: “The cold air stung us and we played till our bodies glowed.” As he realizes his romantic feelings for Mangan’s sister, the narrator comes to revere her as one might a religious icon, and he uses extensive Catholic imagery in describing his care for her. He holds these feelings like a “chalice,” the ceremonial wine cup used for the Eucharist; he repeats her name as in “strange prayers and praises.” One evening, he goes into the room where the priest had died as one might go to a church, and he is overcome in prayer:

I pressed the palms of my hands together until they trembled, murmuring: “O love! O love!” many times.

When Mangan’s sister finally speaks to the narrator, they stand on opposite sides of “the railings” on Mangan’s steps, which are reminiscent of the altar rails at which Catholic churchgoers receive Communion. In this context, her bearing (“bowing her head towards me”) and the narrator’s light-saturated description are reminiscent of artistic depictions of the Virgin Mary.

The narrator’s clearly religious associations with Mangan’s sister seem derived from the dominance of the Catholic Church within his Irish upbringing. Because the Church of the time discourages and represses romantic and sexual feelings, particularly outside of marriage, the narrator is left with only religious language to describe such extremity of feeling. In fact, religious language is only used in the story as a point of comparison, as the narrator attempts to render his feelings about Mangan’s sister—never in description of ordained religious experience. Joyce may be making the point that love is more sacred than belief ritualized and made mundane by the Church.