SOURCE: "Edna O'Brien's 'Lantern Slides' and Joyce's 'The Dead': Shadows of a Bygone Era," in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 32, No. 3, Summer, 1995, pp. 437-46.

[In the following essay, Pearce examines similarities between the works of O'Brien and James Joyce, in particular focusing upon O'Brien's "Lantern Slides," which Pearce characterizes as a "feminist rewriting" of Joyce's "The Dead."]

In 1974, Grace Eckley noted [in her Edna O'Brien] the similarities between James Joyce and then-emerging Irish talent, Edna O'Brien. Eckley specifically cites O'Brien's "Irish Revel" as "a West of Ireland version of Joyce's classic, 'The Dead,'" comparing the blanketing snow of Joyce's meta-phoric ending to the frost that comes "like the descent of winter on Mary's heart" at the end of the O'Brien story. O'Brien's diction and rhythm clearly bestow homage on Joyce: "Frost was general all over Ireland: frost like a weird blossom on the branches, on the river-bank from which Long John Salmon leaped in his great, hairy nakedness, on the ploughs left out all winter; frost on the stony fields, on all the slime and ugliness of the world" (in The Love Object). The title story of O'Brien's latest collection Lantern Slides places O'Brien even more securely within the Joycean sphere, for now setting has moved east to Dublin. Gone is the lush Irish countryside; gone are the proper Connor girls; gone are Cait and Baba. Gone, too, are the erotic but innocent prelapsarian longings of those protagonists reminiscent of Joyce's two West country women, Gretta and Bertha. In their stead is a dazzling display of Dublin's dinner "nobs." While richly resonant of Joyce's "The Dead," this party is not consumed with talk of politics, music, or lost loves, but rather with Gucci ties, tacky poetry, and lost lusts. O'Brien's feminist rewriting of "The Dead" is delightfully, searingly ironic, but the subtext is even more so, revealing a satiric pen that blots male and female alike with the same scathing ink, delivering an indictment that goes far beyond Joyce's.

From the opening paragraph of "Lantern Slides," O'Brien's extension of Joyce's story is glaringly apparent. Gabriel Conroy has become Mr. Conroy, hotel worker, whatever that means. Mr. Conroy's stories suggest that he is working in a brothel rather than a hotel. While "The Dead" evokes lyrical images of faintly falling snow, "Lantern Slides" opens with imagery more reminiscent of "Circe," in a "big hall" where in "a big limestone grate, a turf fire blazes." The next few sentences confirm the story's setting: "The surround was a bit lugubrious, like a grotto, but this impression was forgotten as the flames spread and swagged into brazen orange banners. In the sitting room, a further galaxy of people…. Here too was a fire…." We are in Hell, the hell of Dante's Inferno, where not only flames assail the body, but also noise (remember the din of Satan flapping his wings?). Waiters move "like altar boys among the panting throngs," while people ask "from time to time how this racket could be quelled, because quelled it would have to be when the moment came, when the summons for silence came." But no silence comes, unlike the beautifully haunting silence that ends "The Dead". Here, openly flirtatious Dr. Fitz will not shut up; outrageously sexist Mr. Gogarty keeps on joking. Even the chandeliers "seem[ed] to be chattering, so dense and busy and clustered were the shining pendants of glass." These "chattering" chandeliers set the tone of the story: we will judge and be judged by gossip, rumor, innuendo, and association.

O'Brien replaces Gretta's impassioned weeping for a lost Michael Furey with Miss Lawless's lustful desires for the newly resurrected appearance of a second Peter Abelard, her lost lover of 25 years earlier (and of course, invoking the original Abelard—twelfth century scholar, monk, and lover of Heloise). The Dantesque vision of Gretta/Beatrice enshrouded in the "dusty fanlight" (evoked more fully in John Huston's movie version, in which Gretta stands earlier in the stained-glass stairwell) gives way in O'Brien's story to "patches of sea like diagonals of stained glass," reminding us that the lantern slides are not infused with Dantean light, but clouded with mists of the sea, or shrouded in distant and disjointed memories. Instead of this vision conjuring up Gretta's heart-rending story of the young, rain-soaked Furey's stand beneath her window and its fatal consequences, O'Brien treats us to a panoply of twentieth-century soap operas. Miss Lawless's lost love is married, an adulterous bastard (a highly ironic allusion, considering the medieval Abelard's castration) who would "embrace her but did not want to know anything about her." who would "introduce her to his wife at some party," who would even allow his wife to invite her to their home, where O'Brien gives us a glimpse of his garden, complete with "tiny shrunken apples that looked as if they had some sort of disease, some blight." Whatever prelapsarian longings Joyce evokes with his story, O'Brien totally undercuts with hers. Indeed, even the Edenic moment of Ulysses—Molly and Bloom on Howth—is undermined in O'Brien's story. Mr. Conroy fantasizes stealing a kiss from Miss Lawless on the "Hill of Howth, with its rhododendrons about to burgeon," thinking she would not go "the whole hog," while she fantasizes about the old Abelard and how this new stranger is "enough for her," brilliantly exposing the totally separate lives of these two protagonists.

This interesting overlay of the Molly/Leopold relationship with the Gretta/Gabriel and Lawless/Conroy (and likewise Heloise/Abelard) one is reinforced by two earlier vignettes. The first, Mr. Conroy's public retelling of their early morning's "glorious walk," is undermined by his private recollection of his need to slop for breath and to speak of his varicose veins. The second, Miss Lawless's private reverie of first meeting Abelard in a newspaper office where she delivered a paper for competition, winning first prize but having her name misspelled, recalls the misspelling of Bloom's name at Paddy Dignam's funeral in the "Hades" chapter, reminding us once more where we are—in hell. Perhaps, the most telling remark of the evening is Miss Lawless's comparison of the sand on Dollymount Strand "being white as saltpetre," identifying clearly the sterility of this couple (of this whole dinner party) when compared to the fertility (and conventionality by these new standards) of Molly and Bloom and to the potential for renewed understanding with Gretta and Gabriel.

O'Brien's story explodes the moment of silence in "The Dead," destroying any notion of the epiphany. While Gabriel Conroy's feelings transform from sexual desire to self-pity, to, perhaps, understanding and empathy, Mr. Conroy's feelings remain rooted in a haze of unstated, but nonetheless lurid sexuality. He thinks not only of Miss Lawless, but also of his other "pinup," Nicola. His sexist musings allow him this dubious insight about himself—that his unhappy marriage had had "an excess of emotions … at the root of it. 'Too much love'…." Mr. Conroy "knew that emotions often blur pleasure, especially for a man." And what manly pleasure is Mr. Conroy seeking? A ludicrously adolescent revelation that his "lifelong dream" has been to kiss Miss Lawless. Not only is the Joycean epiphanic moment missing, but so, too, the biscuits and tea, the shortcakes and wine of Joyce's multilayered eucharistic imagery. Here, the bread of communion is replaced by "plates of sugared biscuits that were shaped like thumbs and caramelized at the edges"—a mutilated, paralyzed image more darkly evocative of the other stories of Dubliners.

This twisted/perverted eucharistic image is introduced earlier in one of Miss Lawlessness's "flood of childhood evocations," another potentially powerful image lacking epiphanic significance:

… A painted-cardboard doll's house with a little swivelled insert for a front door, which could be flicked open with a thumbnail; a biscuit barrel impregnated with the smell of ratafia essence; and a spoon with an enamelled picture of the Pope.

To us, her memory is foolish and inappropriate, foreshadowing not only the carmelized thumbs, but the ending image of the lantern slides. Instead of a cozy birthday gathering of friends, reviewing mutual memories, we have an odd assortment of transparently empty people with disconnected private musings—spoiled, rich people—"coiffured and bejewelled" nobs waiting to be seen. All the images are disturbing. Even the name Miss Lawless is hardly reminiscent of gracious, graceful Gretta or law-abiding, careful, dutiful Gabriel. The instances of O'Brien's scathing irony abound on every page.

O'Brien's story presents the natural extension of Joyce's, a Dublin party of the latter half of the twentieth century rather than the first half, a Dublin party of the "new generation." Gabriel Conroy, in his yearly address at his aunts' Christmas dinner, remarks on the "hospitable roof" under which they are gathered around the "hospitable board," recipients of the "hospitality of certain good ladies." Lest we miss the irony. Joyce has his verbose/modest speaker ("I am afraid my poor powers as a speaker are all too inadequate"), mention hospitality twice more, reminding the guests that Ireland "has no tradition which does it so much honor and which it should guard so jealously as that of its hospitality" and reminding the three hostesses of "the tradition of genuine warm-hearted courteous Irish hospitality." These five references to "hospitality" are succeeded by a sixth:

A new generation is growing up in our midst, a generation actuated by new ideas and new principles … and sometimes I fear that this new generation, educated or hypereducated as it is, will lack those qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humor which belonged to an older day.

While others have discussed Gabriel's character, particularly its epiphanic nature, my concern is with O'Brien's story where Gabriel's prophecy comes to fruition in the inhospitable behavior of O'Brien's dinner "nobs."

Say what we will about the drunken antics of Freddy, the sudden departure of Miss Ivors, or the cosmopolitan snobbery of Gabriel's dismissal of the Irish West, there is a genuine warmth of human camaraderie at Gabriel's aunts' house. The "new generation" (or two or three) celebrating Betty's birthday in O'Brien's story display an alarming paucity of humanity, hospitality, and kindly humor. Humanity is utterly lacking in this room charged with blatantly sexist remarks. O'Brien is writing no feminist defense of Irish womanhood, however; she condemns both her male and female characters. Not a single character elicits her sympathy, nor ours. Sinead's nearly hysterical description of her abusive husband hardly prompts a compassionate response from anyone in the story. And when we learn of her secret pregnancy as a ploy to trap Dr. Fitz in marriage, we, too, feel no compassion for her. Yet we feel little pity for Dr. Fitz either. His sexist views and those of all the male characters are constantly annoying, especially his winks at Miss Lawless about his good friend the "widda," identified knowingly by Mr. Conroy as "the floozie with the Jacuzzi." The female characters fare no better. Dot the Florist in a tightly-fitting, pink cat suit schemes to find a man to pay her bills before the bank's foreclosure, willing to dance with any man who "didn't have his wife with him." Sinead points to the "blown-up snapshots of Betty in a bathing suit and a choker" plastered all over the walls and wonders aloud how Betty's husband could leave her, "Why would any man leave a beautiful woman like that for a slut!" "Why indeed?" queries O'Brien's ironic narrator.

To return to the concerns of Gabriel's speech, there is no humanity and very little hospitality. Certainly, little hospitality exists for the "strange girl" who enters the party, prompting Dot the Florist's outburst, "Jesus, there's the queer one." Miss Lawless's "pity" and Mr. Conroy's lack of "worry" are the closest sentiments to hospitality. More vocal though is Dr. Fitz's castigation of those "who had let her in"; his angry, ugly retort, "It's a damn shame" is hardly indicative of the hospitality of Gabriel's bygone era. The only hospitable action toward the girl is the waiter's gift of a balloon, but any kindness seems undercut by the strange description of the balloon—"big silver kidney-shaped" and "clutched … as if it were a baby." Even the "hospitable board" of Gabriel's aunts is replaced by a ridiculous argument over whether the fish is trout or salmon.

And humor? Humor permeates nearly every line of O'Brien's dinner party. But of "kindly humor," again, there is none. While Joyce's story sparkles with multiple examples, the humor of O'Brien's "nobs" degenerates into coarse, sexist jokes by Mr. Gogarty (another Joycean allusion—the Dublin physician and writer who served as a model for Buck Mulligan):

With a glint in his eye, Mr. Gogarty brought it to the attention of the two other men that the city they lived in was a very dirty city indeed. They did not blanch, knowing this was a preamble to some joke.

"Haven't we Ballsbridge?" he said, waiting for the gleam on their faces. "And haven't we Dolly-mount?" he said, with further relish, hesitating before throwing in Sandymount and Stillorgan.

and

"Now, what is the difference between Northside girls and Southside girls?" Mr. Gogarty asked with pride.

Answers were proffered, but in the end Mr. Gogarty was pleased to tell them they were all dullards. "Northside girls have real jewellery and fake orgasms," he said, and laughed loudly, while Eileen Vaughan repeatedly blessed herself and, as if it were a maggot, lifted the streamer that joined her to Mr. Gogarty.

Self-righteous, puritanical Eileen Vaughan "thump[ing] her husband" as she wages her one-woman fight against smut is hilariously funny, but we laugh at her, never with her. Dot's mention of her "half" a florist shop nudges a laugh, but her intentions are hardly kindly. Perhaps, the funniest instance in the story is Mrs Vaughan's copying and distributing of the letter Mr. Vaughan's English mistress sends, detailing his sexual exploits, neatly paralleled by Sinead's flourishing of Dr. Fitz's love letter among the crowd of the party. Funny? Definitely. Kindly? Clearly not. The single kindness O'Brien allows her creations is demonstrated in Bill the Barrow Boy, whose innocence, whose cliches, whose malapropisms amuse us: "'Ah, it's the hors d'oeuvres that's at her,' Bill the Barrow Boy said, meaning the nerves." Of course, simply his name is humorous. But again, as kind as he may be, even he has his marital problems. He wants children; his wife does not—it will ruin her figure.

At the story's end, O'Brien takes the dinner nobs' collective longings for fulfillment and likens them to the "rapid succession" of lantern slides. As they all wait in mocked suspense to discover who is coming, suspecting that it is John, Betty's "vagrant husband, "hoping that it is John, "the wandering Odysseus returned home in search of his Penelope" (while Betty stands poised with knife in hand—to cut the birthday cake), a spell floods the room:

You could feel the longing in the room, you could touch it—a hundred lantern slides ran through their minds: their longing united them, each rendered innocent by this moment of supreme suspense. It seemed that if the wishes of one were granted, then the wishes of others would be fulfilled in rapid succession.

These two-dimensional people, transparent as glass in their mundane, selfish wishes, project no mythic connective, only a distant, diffused, disjointed collection of meaningless slides, evoking no pleasant nostalgic moments, no warm family or friendly portraits, no poignantly human memories, emitting no light of any real sort, only shadows of a bygone era, of another Dublin dinner party.

As the "spell" circles the room, O'Brien's ironic pen darkens, blackens the scene. Life is not "just beginning," is not "tender, spectacular, all embracing." These nobs cannot jump up to "catch it"; they are incapable of catching life; they have denied life. The story ends, the projector dims, and this dinner party is left in darkness.

Ironically enough, while winter talk abounds—"a turf fire blazing" and "a nippy evening"—it is nearly spring in O'Brien's story: "Yet by looking through the window Miss Lawless could see that lilac was just beginning to sprout, and small white eggcups of blossom shivered on jet-black magnolia branches." It may be the commencement of spring, but O'Brien's Dublin is more dead than the snow-covered, winter-world of Joyce's Dublin.