*Dublin

*Dublin. Ireland’s capital city, which had a population of some three hundred thousand people in the early twentieth century. Joyce, who grew up in Dublin, once told a publisher that no writer had yet presented the city to the world, a situation that he hoped this book would rectify. Dubliners does indeed give a strikingly detailed picture of the city, with attention to its topography and the texture of its daily life.

In many stories, characters traverse Dublin on foot, and Joyce carefully records their movements, naming actual streets, bridges, public squares, churches, monuments, shops, and pubs along the way. In “Two Gallants,” for example, he creates a kind of verbal “map” of central Dublin, tracing the long, circuitous route that the aging Lenehan follows—first with his friend Corley and then alone—during a warm gray August evening. Lenehan’s wanderings give texture to the story, helping create a sense of Dublin as an actual place. He and Corley hear a harpist playing mournful music for a small group of listeners on Kildare Street. Later, Lenehan visits a shabby shop where he eats a solitary meal of grocers’ peas and ginger beer. Near the end of his wanderings, he watches the late-night crowds dispersing on Grafton Street, one of Dublin’s most fashionable shopping areas. Such details not only give the story a strong sense of place, they also allow Joyce to suggest the frustration and futility of Lenehan’s life as a “paralyzed” Dubliner; his route is essentially circular, his journey lonely and pointless. After eating his meager supper, he feels his own poverty of purse and spirit.

Joyce himself was an avid stroller and often spent hours with his friends roaming the streets of Dublin. His walking knowledge of the city is evident not only in Dubliners but in all his fiction, especially Ulysses (1922), a novel built around the wanderings of Leopold Bloom on a summer day in Dublin.

*North Richmond Street

*North Richmond Street. Principal setting of “Araby,” one of the three stories about childhood that open Dubliners. The Joyce family lived at number 17 on this street during the mid-1890’s, and Joyce incorporates many experiences from that time into his fiction. The unnamed boy narrator of “Araby” describes North Richmond as a quiet street, whose houses gaze at one another with brown “imperturbable faces.”

Joyce also evokes scenes of childhood play in the surrounding area—the dark and muddy lanes behind houses and the dripping gardens where odors arose from the garbage dumps. On Saturday evenings, with his aunt, the boy goes marketing in the “flaring streets,” jostled by drunken men and “bargaining women.” Such passages capture the rough, run-down character of north central Dublin in the 1890’s, a poor part of the city with crowded streets and dilapidated buildings. In “Araby” and in the other childhood stories—“The Sisters” and “An Encounter”—these gloomy surroundings weigh heavily on the sensitive young narrator. While he is not yet “paralyzed” by his environment, he feels a growing disillusionment with Dublin and its citizens.

Committee room

Committee room. Wicklow Street center of political campaign operations for Richard Tierney in “Ivy Day in the Committee Room.” A few campaign workers and other men gather here, mainly to escape bad weather and to wait for the bottled stout that Tierney has promised to send. The room is dark, cold, and gloomy, warmed only by a small coal fire that needs constant tending. When one of the men finally lights two candles, the “denuded room” comes into view, its walls bare, apart from a copy of an election address. Joyce uses the bleak room to mirror the dreary lives of his characters, most of whom are poor, unemployed, and cynical about Tierney and municipal politics generally. Those who support the Irish nationalist cause seem ineffectual, more interested in drinking stout and talking sentimentally about their dead political idol, Charles Stewart Parnell (a real person), than in working to end British colonial rule in their country. The fading fire in the Committee Room seems to suggest the dim prospects for political renewal in Dublin.

Morkin house

Morkin house. Home of Kate and Julia Morkin; a dark and gaunt house on Usher Island, a quay running along the south side of the River Liffey, that is the main setting of “The Dead.” Joyce modeled this house on the residence of his great aunts at 15 Usher Island. In “The Dead,” the final story of Dubliners, Joyce somewhat softens the harsh picture of Dublin given in earlier stories. He makes the house of the Morkin sisters a symbol of what he came to regard as a notable Irish virtue: hospitality. The sisters open their house for a lavish Christmas party, with music, dancing, drink, and an ample supper. Nevertheless, for Gabriel Conroy, the story’s protagonist, the house becomes a stifling place. Nervous about the speech he must give and flustered by his unpleasant encounter with Miss Ivors, Gabriel twice imagines being away from the house, outdoors in the snowy night, enjoying the outdoor coolness and being able to walk alone. Like many of Joyce’s Dubliners, he feels trapped and longs for escape. At the end of the story, after learning of his wife’s girlhood love, Michael Furey, Gabriel recognizes his own self-deception and self-centeredness. Joyce hints that Gabriel might now be poised to live with great compassion and self-awareness, recognizing his connection with all the living and the dead.

*Galway

*Galway. City in western Ireland’s Connacht province and girlhood home of Gretta Conroy in “The Dead.” While the actual setting of “The Dead” never moves outside Dublin, the west of Ireland—Galway in particular—plays a crucial role in the narrative. Gretta’s husband, Gabriel, experiences a crisis of identity at the end of the story that is precipitated by Gretta’s disclosure of events from her girlhood in Galway. This revelation sharply focuses an east-west tension in the story, with Dublin (in the east) representing Gabriel’s once-secure sense of self and Galway (in the west) drawing him toward a new identity, one less certain and stable. Thus, in the final story of Dubliners, Joyce suggests an alternative to Dublin, a place Gabriel might go, if only in imagination, to restore his sense of self.

In his works, Joyce depicts Dublin as a city predominantly inhabited by lower-to-middle-class individuals burdened by financial struggles, foreign political control, internal conflicts among Irish nationalist factions, and the pervasive authority of the Irish Catholic Church. According to Joyce, these combined pressures left the average Dubliner with limited opportunities for self-expression or spiritual freedom, establishing his recurring theme of “paralysis.”

In the late 1800s, Ireland was still recovering from mid-century agricultural disasters and the subsequent mass emigration, primarily to the United States. Several references in Joyce's stories highlight the scarcity of well-paying jobs, indicating that even working-class Dubliners barely managed on subsistence wages. Characters frequently agonize over a crown or even a shilling, underscoring the widespread financial difficulties faced by most citizens.

Politically, Ireland was under British rule, and the Irish attitude towards the British occupiers ranged from skepticism and distrust to outright hostility. The British government not only disapproved of Catholicism but also looked down on the Irish for their general lack of education, particularly in rural areas, their superstitious beliefs, and the often squalid living conditions necessitated by the weak economy. The fact that the British profited from their presence in Ireland while holding its people in contempt only fueled Irish resentment.

In the 1880s, the prospect of Irish sovereignty gained momentum through the efforts of political leader Charles Stewart Parnell. His influence, political acumen, and steadfast support for home rule made Irish independence seem more achievable than ever. However, a romantic scandal in 1889 tarnished Parnell’s reputation, allowing his opponents and fervent Catholic groups (Parnell was Protestant) to discredit him and undermine his power. This reversal of fortune and betrayal by his closest allies broke Parnell, leading to his political downfall and eventual death in 1891.

Turn-of-the-century Dublin, as depicted in Joyce’s collection, remains haunted by Parnell’s legacy and the lost promise of Irish independence that died with him. Over time, many Irish came to realize their own role in allowing Parnell’s dream to fade, and themes of failed promise and betrayal are prevalent in the works of many Irish writers from that period, particularly Joyce.

During Joyce’s era, the Irish Catholic Church wielded significant influence in Ireland, given that the vast majority of the population were Catholics. Joyce's biographer, Richard Ellmann, notes that Joyce considered the Pope to be the “real sovereign of Ireland” (Ellmann, James Joyce, 256). Despite leaving the Church, Joyce continuously criticized the “deviousness of Papal policy” throughout his life, condemning the Church and the papacy as “deaf” to the pleas of the Irish people (Ellmann, James Joyce, 257). Joyce felt the Church failed to assist in alleviating the oppressive British presence and did not do enough to address Ireland’s literal and figurative poverty. He believed that Church teachings promoted docility and subservience among the Irish, which only furthered Ireland’s political exploitation and lack of independence.

While preparing to write Dubliners, Joyce kept a notebook of insights, or “epiphanies,” which are crucial for understanding the stories. Although the term typically refers to a religious revelation, Joyce interpreted an epiphany as the recognition of the essential nature of a moment, interaction, or experience. He described it as the sudden “revelation of the whatness of a thing,” and in Dubliners, an epiphany signifies a character’s realization about themselves, even if the realization is painful (Ellmann, James Joyce, 83).

Joyce wrote the stories in Dubliners with considerable ease, drawing from his experiences in childhood, adolescence, and adult life. In a 1905 letter to his brother Stanislaus, Joyce emphasized Dublin’s significance as a world capital and expressed his intention to present it to a global audience (Ellmann, James Joyce, 208). Despite living abroad while writing about his homeland, Joyce did not let nostalgia romanticize his depiction of Dublin. In a speech, he described Ireland as a nation “weakened by centuries of useless struggle and broken treaties,” where “individual initiative is paralyzed” (Ellmann, James Joyce, 258).

Unsurprisingly, publishers were hesitant to embrace Joyce's unflinching depiction of Dublin's citizens. It took him an arduous nine years to get Dubliners published. In 1905, Joyce wrote to prospective publisher Grant Richards, “I seriously believe that you will retard the course of civilisation in Ireland by preventing the Irish people from having one good look at themselves in my nicely polished looking glass” (Ellmann, Selected Letters, 90). Although Richards admired the collection and even signed a contract, his printer objected to the profanity and tawdry scenes within. When these concerns were brought to Richards' attention, he asked Joyce to remove the offending content. Joyce, however, refused, leading Richards to cancel his agreement. Dubliners moved from one publisher to another, each disturbed by the collection's pessimism, sordid scenes, profanity, and subtle sexual themes. The portrayal Joyce offered was far from flattering, but he firmly believed it was both accurate and necessary. Dubliners captures the essence of Dublin, documenting the moral decay and spiritual decline of its inhabitants by focusing on their psychological and emotional paralysis.

When Dubliners was finally published in 1914, its sales were disappointing. Although intellectuals like W. B. Yeats and Ezra Pound appreciated the work, most critics shared the reservations of the reluctant publishers. They found the stories depressing, highlighting only the unsavory aspects of Dublin. Additionally, they struggled to discern the "point" of the collection, failing to understand that Joyce's works, including Dubliners, require readers to seek symbolic meaning.

As Joyce's later literary works gained recognition, critics began to develop the symbolic reading skills necessary to truly appreciate the stories in Dubliners.

The title of the volume immediately underscores the significance of the setting—both the location and the era unite these varied stories. Joyce crafts a comprehensive view of Dublin through a series of depictions of its residents, who he believed were ensnared by a pervasive moral paralysis, which he considered the city's defining trait. In a 1906 letter to the publisher Grant Richards, he states, "My intention was to write a chapter of the moral history of my country and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the centre of paralysis. . . . I have written it for the most part in a style of scrupulous meanness and with the conviction that he is a very bold man who dares to alter in the presentment, still more to deform whatever he has seen and heard." Dubliners thus emerged from the author's discontent with his native city, aiming to present the indifferent public with an inevitably unflattering self-portrait.

Joyce's formative years in Dublin, during which he wrote much of Dubliners, coincided with a critical hiatus in the political movement towards Home Rule, a goal cherished by Irish nationalists. The 1889-90 downfall of Irish Party leader Charles Stewart Parnell, following a public scandal (he was named as a co-respondent in a successful divorce case and subsequently married the divorced woman, Parnell's long-time mistress, Katherine O'Shea), seemed to have once again derailed the Home Rule cause. Starting from the mid-1880s, a series of bills were introduced, culminating in one that was finally passed, though not enacted, in 1914. At the time of the scandal, there was at least some hope that a bill would be passed.

For many nationalists, the political void was partially filled by a renewed interest in and celebration of Irish culture. The Irish Literary Renaissance, linked to notable figures such as W. B. Yeats, Lady Augusta Gregory, and J. M. Synge, gained significant momentum during this period. However, there remained a great deal of bitterness and frustration following the perceived failure of the nationalist cause.

This cause was dramatically and violently reignited by the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916. Before that pivotal event, a sense of futility regarding nationalist aspirations often permeated Irish literature. W. B. Yeats's poem "September 1913" (published in The Irish Times and addressed to the Dublin public, much like Joyce's stories) scornfully compared Dublin's middle classes to the great nationalist heroes of a bygone Romantic Ireland. Another of Yeats's poems, "To a Shade," speaks to the ghost of one such hero, Parnell, imploring him to avoid the city that is unworthy of his presence.

James Joyce's critical portrayal of Dublin as a city trapped in paralysis can also be understood within the broader historical context of this period. The paralyzed capital, and the nation that Stephen Dedalus, the protagonist in Joyce's Portrait, saw as a series of confining nets, would, in Yeats's famous words, be "changed utterly" by the political events of the coming years.

Discussions about Joyce's early works, Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, often focus on the moments when characters experience an "epiphany" or sudden realization. Joyce used this term to describe some of his earliest prose fragments, and it literally means a "showing forth." In the Christian tradition, the feast of the Epiphany celebrates the Magi's arrival in Bethlehem to honor the newborn Christ. For Joyce, however, the term has a wider significance, representing a moment of insight when a truth is abruptly revealed. Most stories in Dubliners feature clear epiphanies: for example, the young boy in "Araby" has a poignant moment of understanding as the bazaar's lights fade, and Gabriel Conroy faces a profound self-reflection in the final moments of "The Dead." In some instances, like Maria in "Clay," the insight escapes the character and is instead grasped by the reader. Either way, it reveals another instance of Dublin's paralysis.

Joyce informed Grant Richards that he had written Dubliners in a style he famously described as "scrupulous meanness," intending to present Dublin with an unflinchingly truthful image of itself. While the stories are notably stripped down in style, this "scrupulous meanness" should not obscure one of their most distinctive qualities: how they bring a uniquely Irish English to the page. For instance, one cannot read Lily's line in "The Dead," "The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you," without hearing its Irish cadence. Joyce's impact on Irish literature in English throughout the twentieth century has been significant, and it is no surprise that there have been numerous recordings of these stories.

In a 1905 letter to Grant Richards, Joyce expressed his astonishment that "no artist has given Dublin to the world," despite its historical significance, considerable size, and status as the second city of the British Empire. Dubliners, an endeavor to address this gap, certainly offers a critical perspective on the city, yet Joyce's desire to "give Dublin to the world" suggests his intentions extend far beyond merely criticizing the city of his youth. Joyce's complex relationship with Dublin is unsurprising. He felt the need to leave the city permanently, only to spend his self-imposed exile meticulously writing about it. Dubliners, therefore, is a profoundly ambivalent collection, marked as much by Joyce's frustration with the city's flaws and its residents as by his deep sympathy and attachment to both. The volume is not uniformly generous to all its characters: Joyce ridicules the pretensions of Mrs. Kearney in "A Mother" and the superficial politicians in "Ivy Day in the Committee Room," among others. However, the empathy displayed in stories like "Araby," "Clay," and "The Dead" outweighs the satirical tones found elsewhere in the book. This empathy hints at the direction Joyce's future work would take, particularly in his epic Ulysses. Dubliners illustrates how profoundly individuals can be shaped and influenced, both positively and negatively, by the places they inhabit. The stories are filled with characters who feel constrained by Dublin's social, political, and religious institutions. Yet, these same institutions also left a lasting impression on the author himself—a Dubliner who left but always carried the city in his imagination.

One notable American work that can be compared to Dubliners is Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio (1919). This collection of short stories is inspired by Anderson's experiences in his hometown of Clyde, Ohio. Joyce, like many of his contemporaries, drew significant influence from the Russian short-story writer and playwright Anton Chekhov (1860-1904). Nearly all of Chekhov's short stories are available in translation. Two excellent recent collections are Early Short Stories 1883-1888 and Later Short Stories 1888-1903 (both edited by Shelby Foote, Modern Library, 1999). Additionally, Katherine Mansfield, a contemporary of Joyce from New Zealand, was also heavily influenced by Chekhov. Readers who appreciate Dubliners may also enjoy her works, particularly Bliss and Other Stories (1920) and The Garden Party and Other Stories (1922).

In 1987, director John Huston adapted "The Dead" for the screen, featuring Donal McCann as Gabriel and Anjelica Huston as Gretta. The film received two Oscar nominations, including one for Tony Huston's screenplay. More recently, the same story was adapted into a musical by Richard Nelson and Shaun Davey. The 1999 Broadway production, starring Christopher Walken as Gabriel Conroy, garnered five Tony nominations and won one award for Best Book.

Numerous audio recordings of the Dubliners stories are available. The latest (HarperCollins, 2000) features all fifteen stories read by various narrators, including Stephen Rea ("The Dead"), Fionulla Flanagan ("A Mother"), and Colm Meany ("Araby"). This recording has received high praise. Other complete recordings include those by Jim Norton (two volumes; Naxos, 1999, 2000) and Frederick Davidson (Blackstone Audiobooks, 1992). Gerald McSorley has also recorded two collections: Dubliners and The Dead and Other Stories (Penguin, 1993), which include eleven stories. The Dead and Other Stories from Dubliners (Audio Partners, 1989) features a dramatized recording of "The Dead" by Danny Huston and Kate Mulgrew, along with readings of "The Sisters," "Eveline," and "The Boarding House." The James Joyce Collection (Dove Audiobooks, 1996) offers a selection of stories from Dubliners and excerpts from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man read by Gabriel Byrne.

Ellmann, Richard. James Joyce. 1959. Revised edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982. This authoritative biography of Joyce is based on extensive research and provides a richly detailed narrative of Joyce's life.

Gifford, Don. Joyce Annotated: Notes for Dubliners & A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. Gifford's annotations are an essential resource for these two works, offering clear explanations of Joyce's numerous local references and allusions.

Joyce, James. Dubliners: Text, Criticism, and Notes. Edited by Robert Scholes and A. Walton Litz. New York: Penguin, 1996. This edition features comprehensive notes and commentary that are often extremely useful.

Tindall, William York. A Reader's Guide to James Joyce. New York: Noonday, 1959. Although older, this guide remains a valuable resource for understanding all of Joyce's fiction, including concise analyses of each story in Dubliners.

Quotations from Dubliners are sourced from this edition:
Joyce, James. Dubliners. (1916) Edited by Robert Scholes and A. Walton Litz. New York: The Viking Press, 1982.

Additional Sources:
Brandabur, Edward. “The Sisters.” In Dubliners, edited by Robert Scholes and A. Walton Litz. New York: The Viking Press, 1982, pp. 333-343.

Ellmann, Richard. “The Backgrounds of ‘The Dead.’” In Dubliners, edited by Robert Scholes and A. Walton Litz. New York: The Viking Press, 1982, pp. 388-403.

_____. James Joyce. New York: The Viking Press, 1975.

_____. Editor. Selected Letters of James Joyce. New York: The Viking Press, 1975.

Joyce, Stanislaus. My Brother’s Keeper: James Joyce’s Early Years. New York: The Viking Press, 1958.

Litz, A. Walton. “Two Gallants.” In Dubliners, edited by Robert Scholes and A. Walton Litz. New York: The Viking Press, 1982, pp. 368-387.

Stone, Harry. “‘Araby’ and the Writings of James Joyce.” In Dubliners, edited by Robert Scholes and A. Walton Litz. New York: The Viking Press, 1982, pp. 344-367.