[In the following essay, Gonzalez explores the symbolic, thematic, and technical similarities between "Her Table Spread" and James Joyce's "The Dead."]

One of Elizabeth Bowen's earliest published Irish short stories, "Her Table Spread" (1930), merits serious attention for two central reasons: not only is it an engrossing and rewarding work of art but it also reveals yet one more Irish fiction writer contemporary with James Joyce who was clearly influenced by him. Moreover, Bowen's story demonstrates surprisingly similar aesthetic and social attitudes—despite obvious differences in the authors' social classes and general cultural upbringing—which are a testament to how strong an influence Joyce was. Bowen's Court and the streets of Dublin are as strikingly diverse raw materials of experience as one may imagine in Ireland. At first "Her Table Spread" would appear to have nothing Joycean about it, since it involves Ireland's Protestant upper class during the twenties; Dublin's slums and middle-class neighborhoods are nowhere in sight. However, further connections do exist once we consider certain significant subtleties of symbol, theme, and technique—all of which Bowen successfully adapts to suit her own purposes.

Not much has been written on Bowen's short stories, and precious little is dedicated to the study of her Irish stories. Antoinette Quinn, the only recent scholar to focus specifically on Bowen's Irish stories, unfortunately restricts herself to the period 1939 to 1945. Heather Jordan, however, not only lists Joyce among those authors Bowen most admired but also reminds us that Bowen's first published book, a volume of short stories, was titled Encounters—a fact of some significance for two fairly obvious reasons: it echoes the title of Joyce's second Dubliners story, "An Encounter," and it suggests Joyce's epiphanic method in his collection, a method utilized by Bowen in "Her Table Spread" to imbue the story with significant depth and poignancy. Mary Jarrett has noted Bowen's use of paralysis as spiritual metaphor in another of her stories, "The Dancing Mistress," likening it to something out of Dubliners; the same metaphor is clearly at work in "Her Table Spread," whose protagonist has much in common with Gabriel Conroy of "The Dead" both in terms of character traits and in the narrator's rhetorical stance toward the protagonist.

Bowen makes it very clear throughout her story that she is criticizing not only a handful of upper-class individuals, and one in particular, but also the remnants of Ireland's formerly powerful ascendancy as a whole. In fact, Bowen's story seems the logical ending point of a tradition in Irish fiction concerned with exposing the ascendancy's ailing spiritual condition. Beginning with George Moore's A Drama in Muslin (1886) and continuing through Seumas O'Kelly's The Lady of Deerpark (1917) and various short stories by Daniel Corkery, Brinsley MacNamara, and others, this tradition has always emphasized the ascendancy's paralysis in parallel fashion to the better-known tradition that criticizes Ireland's other classes for having the same disease—as manifested in Dubliners, its most salient example. Even though Valeria Cuffe may own her palatial home while Joyce's Misses Morkan merely rent their sprawling second-floor middle-class apartment, considerable similarities exist between the dinner parties in the two stories, especially since the events presented at each party occupy the bulk of each story. The party in Bowen's story is something of a reduced version of the one in Joyce's, for it involves far fewer participants. Still, when the story's protagonist, Mr. Alban, plays the piano, no one listens; Mr. Rossiter, Bowen's version of Mr. Browne, drinks to excess and has some ridiculous flirtation—or worse—going on with the parlor maid; and the general veneer of good manners hides only temporarily the underlying indelicacies of human nature.

The role of Mr. Rossiter, who conceals his bottle of whiskey in the most undetectable places, seems to be to show the debauched and seedy side of the self-consciously polite aristocracy—to expose the falseness skulking behind refined airs. Valeria's aunt, Mrs. Treye, and her younger friend and associate, Miss Carbin, are snooty, two-faced, and patronizing—and since they insist on treating the 25-year-old heiress as a child, they play a part in enabling Valeria to continue her bizarre puerility. Their only stake in Valeria's well-being seems to be that if she were to remain unwedded and childless, "the Castle would have to be sold and where would they all be?" Their fortunes are, apparently, legally tied to Valeria's. Mannerly and controlled to the utmost, these two older women seem intent upon suppressing the spontaneous actions and ejaculations of the effervescent Valeria—as when she excitedly contorts her body so that her "bust [is] almost on the table" and Mrs. Treye is forced to step on her toe from beneath the table in an effort to rein in her niece's enthusiasm.

In contrast to the general paralysis suffered by her class, Valeria maintains a vibrancy that cannot be effectively controlled. Though her passions may seem silly, they are at least genuinely felt and emanate from an independent-spirited soul. In this respect she continues the tradition in Irish fiction of such women: Moore's Alice Barton. Rose Leicester, and even Esther Waters; O'Kelly's Mary Heffeman; and, ultimately, Joyce's Gretta. There are more. Yet though none of these lives a vigorous peasant life, conversely, none suffers from upper- or even middle-class inertia. In fact, except for her age, level of maturity, and probably intelligence, Valeria shares a good deal with Gretta Conroy. Caught up in her wildly romantic imaginings, Valeria runs out into the rain and mud with no concern for her shoes or her satin dress; at times like these she seems much like Gretta, who, according to the fearful Gabriel, "would walk home in the snow if she were let." Valeria's spontaneous and heartfelt responses to life are found throughout Bowen's story and remind us of Gretta's similar reactions, as when she "clasped her hands excitedly and gave a little jump" at the thought of a trip to romantic Galway. And while Gretta has really lived through a highly romantic episode in her life—her involvement with Michael Furey—Valeria has at least a similar receptivity to romance, a state of being to which we are directly exposed via the device of narrated interior monologue. Valeria's consciousness reveals not only a strange and immature propensity for romantic reverie, but an almost incredible naïveté, a flightiness that is like a child's, and a fertile imagination that is wildly out of control—picturing, for example, a fight for her honor between two naval officers she has never even met. But why would Bowen create such an abnormally childish young woman as a major character in her story? Valeria's behavior has led at least one critic to call her "demented," but Bowen's vision of the protagonist's epiphanic moment requires just such a character.

The story's protagonist, Mr. Alban, whose name suggests his colorless, unromantic nature, is every bit as paralyzed as Gabriel Conroy, though obviously his malaise is not of exactly the same sort. For instance, while Gabriel has the consolation of being much sought-after for conversation throughout the Morkans' party, Mr. Alban is remote from Valeria and her guests, and, because he is colorless, he easily becomes socially invisible. He is described as one who "disappeared personally" from the rest of the company; later he feels that the party sits "looking through him"; and, finally, when the best he can attract is "less than half their attention," his instant thought is that "some spring had dried up at the root of the world." This is the man invited as a suitor to Valeria's symbolic table spread but who finds himself to be "less than half the feast" when he discovers that a naval destroyer, with its imagined romantic officers, has usurped his position as the gathering's main point of interest.

Like Gabriel, Alban is highly controlled and unspontaneous. While Gabriel has his prophylactic galoshes, Alban has his mackintosh buttoned tight up to the very collar. Gabriel worries if his literary references will be above the heads of his listeners, for whom he feels some obvious cultural contempt; Alban also feels culturally superior to the other guests, finding it "sad" that they should feel so "indifferent" to a man who comes from London and plays Mendelssohn on the piano for them (an exercise they find so "exasperating [that] they open all four windows to let the music downhill"). Finally, just as Gabriel fails several times in his dealings with women (with Lily, with Miss Ivors, and, most poignantly, with his own wife), Alban, actually a reluctant suitor, is twice described as having a "negative … attitude to[ward] women." This unromantic figure, with his fussiness and constant adjusting of his glasses and clothing, is, like Gabriel, so self-absorbed that he is described as having "failed to love" ever in his life. We cannot miss one of Gabriel's chief epiphanic revelations: that "he had never felt [as Michael Furey had] towards any woman but he knew such a feeling must be love." However, this is not the stuff of Alban's epiphany, since we are apprised of his misogynous attitude early in the story, well before the epiphanic moment itself; rather, Alban's loveless condition is more like an attendant detail that lends additional meaning to his coming revelation.

Significantly, Alban begins to shed his paralytic constraints by degrees, thus clearing the way for his epiphany to occur with full force. When Valeria runs off into the rainy night in search of her imagined naval officers, Alban feels—reluctantly—obliged to follow her and bring her back. He worries about his expensive shoes—his treasured pumps—for once they are destroyed with mud and scuffs, he has "no idea where to buy them … in this country" and he has "a ducal visit ahead." But let go he must, and as he uncharacteristically mutters a minor expletive he finally breaks loose and charges off gallantly into the downpour, for the first time "his mind blank to the outcome"; he has acted spontaneously even though pushed to it by circumstances. Finally locating Valeria in the dark after her lantern has gone out, he attempts to communicate with her but finds it impossible because the voluble Valeria has mistakenly assumed he is one of her much-desired naval officers come to rescue her—and she gives Alban little opportunity to make any explanations. She does not even recognize his voice—evidence of how invisible Alban has indeed become over the course of the evening. But for these few moments, Alban is unwillingly and suddenly thrust into the role of the romantic lover. Finding himself in an uncontrolled situation, "madly" out in the rain and the dark—muddy, dirty, and sopping wet—he realizes that he is standing very close to a warm, beautiful young woman, whom he can feel next to him better than he can see. It is for him an exciting moment, almost purely romantic and sensory: for once his all-controlling intellect is inoperative.

These stimuli bring on his epiphany, but one that is not as limited as it may seem. It is not the mere sexual arousal he is feeling, which would hardly constitute an epiphany, but a much broader and more significant insight that includes all women. This is so because just above him and Valeria, up on the balcony, are the story's two other female characters, the middle-aged Miss Carbin and the older Mrs. Treye. Among the three women all ages are represented, especially if we remember that Valeria, though in her twenties, behaves much like a young, teenaged girl, "still detained in childhood." As Bowen's narrator puts it, "their unseen faces were all three lovely, and … such a strong tenderness reached him that, standing there in full manhood, he was for a moment not exiled." Alban's awakening, then, has very broad implications, reaching beyond Valeria to include all women and an appreciation of womanhood itself; ultimately, through the three women's agency, he also arrives at a new and vital understanding of his own manhood. These emanating ripples of insight are, on a far smaller scale, similar to the waves of new vision that Gabriel Conroy experiences—going beyond Michael Furey's death to a far broader contemplation of death itself. Bowen's stuffy protagonist has been enabled to reach his fullest potential as a sentient human being by an epiphany of such magnitude that his former self has been momentarily obliterated.

The role of the destroyer (which is actually anchored far below in the estuary) and its crew is, strangely, comparable to that played by Michael Furey: both are catalysts. Unchanged themselves, they have been the chief agents in permanently changing the life perspectives of the protagonists. Hence, the destroyer in Bowen's story appropriately heads out to sea as the story's final detail. The significance of Bowen's title becomes fully clear now: Valeria's table has obviously been spread for a suitor. Originally that suitor is supposed to be Alban; then he is replaced by the never-seen naval officers; and, finally, it is Alban who replaces the naval officers by unwittingly impersonating one of them and thereby assumes the role of suitor in a totally new way. It can also be said that her table has been spread to enable Alban to reach his epiphany.

Mary Jarrett has argued that in all of Bowen's best stories "there is a refusal to pronounce on the validity of the worlds her characters create for themselves." This is most certainly true for Alban—and Valeria for that matter—in "Her Table Spread." What we have, then, is an ambiguity very similar to that at the end of "The Dead." Is Alban to change as a result of his epiphany? Is Gabriel? Is either capable of change? Are they too old, chronologically or emotionally? Or is each man terminally paralyzed and now painfully aware of it—and of what each, somnambulistically, has missed in his life? Such ambiguity is both meaningful and intended. As is the case at the end of Joyce's story, multiple perspectives emerge as possibilities. Those of us who are optimists would hope that significant change will occur in each protagonist.

Harold Bloom finds Bowen's stories to be "even … more remarkable than [her) novels" and he places Bowen only after Joyce and Lawrence as possibly "the most distinguished writer of short stories in our time." Once again we have Bowen and Joyce linked, this time in terms of quality. "Her Table Spread" is by no means on the level of "The Dead," but then not many stories are. Bowen's story is, however, qualitatively comparable to other Dubliners stories that demonstrate both spiritual paralysis and then the use of epiphany as the means by which a character becomes acutely aware of his of her affliction. This level of quality acts to reinforce the argument that Bowen, perhaps idealizing Joyce's work as a level of art to which to aspire, read him carefully and probably subconsciously—imitated some of the effects he had perfected, especially in "The Dead." When she applied her considerable talents to writing the story of Mr. Alban and Valeria Cuffe, what emerged was a thoroughly Joycean story—except for the merely surface differences of setting and social class. The imitation may possibly have been a conscious effect, but it seems to me more likely that it was a subconscious phenomenon that Bowen could not have helped noticing soon after the composing process had begun. The aesthetic stance and the multiplicity of connections between Bowen's story and "The Dead"—on the level of character, theme, symbol, and technique—make the case for influence considerably strong.