Mapping Dubliners Project

O’Connell Bridge: A Gateway to Emancipation

Editor’s Note: The following is a guest contribution. Kurt Hochenauer is professor of English at the University of Central Oklahoma where he teaches modern British and postcolonial literature. He is the author of the political blog Okie Funk.

This detail from an 1883 Lett's, Sons, & Co. map, Plan of the City of Dublin, shows O'Connell Bridge in the center. The cab would have taken the party from the west along the south side of the Liffey before it crossed northward over the bridge and continued up Sackville Street to the Gresham Hotel, just north of the General Post Office, which can be seen in red. In the southern portion of the map is Trinity College, and across from that is the Bank, also in red, and just under that "K. Will. III. Statue, " indicating the location of the reference King Billy's statue. — This detail from an 1883 Lett’s, Sons, & Co. map, Plan of the City of Dublin, shows O’Connell Bridge in the center. The cab would have taken the party from the west along the south side of the Liffey before it crossed northward over the bridge and continued up Sackville Street to the Gresham Hotel, just north of the General Post Office, which can be seen in red. In the southern portion of the map is Trinity College, and across from that is the Bank, also in red, and just under that “K. Will. III. Statue, ” indicating the location of the referenced King Billy’s statue.

One of the livelier intellectual debates in the James Joyce scholarly community situates itself along a spectrum between what I will call the aesthetes and the politicos.

To put it in the most simplistic dichotomy, the aesthetes believe the lasting value of Joyce’s work is in the author’s brilliant use of language and symbolism. The politicos believe Joyce’s political and sociocultural statements are as much central to his work as artistic wordplay or the creation of modern and new literary structures and forms.

Obviously, the binary isn’t so tidy, and aesthetics inform the politics and vice versa, but it’s worth noting as a prelude to any academic discussion of “The Dead,” which appears in Dubliners, or any particular segments of that story, which is the perfect stew of astute political commentary and brilliant literary aesthetics but surely is not Joyce’s last major “political” work of fiction.

O'Connell Bridge, Dublin, photographed by Robert French ca. July 1900. From the National Library of Ireland's digitized Lawrence Photograph Collection. — O’Connell Bridge, Dublin, photographed by Robert French ca. July 1900. From the National Library of Ireland’s digitized Lawrence Photograph Collection.

Gabriel’s political epiphany to fully embrace his country’s quest for independence and its heritage on a “journey westward” in his hotel room only comes after his cab crosses the O’Connell Bridge, named after one of Ireland’s most famous leaders and agitators for emancipation, Daniel O’Connell. The bridge and its political implications are heavily tied to the theme of the story, and serve as the gateway to Gabriel’s political enlightenment after his encounter with Molly Ivors at his aunts’ home.

In the story, Gabriel and his wife Gretta share a cab with Mr. Bartell D’Arcy and Miss O’Callaghan as the couple go back to their hotel room after the party. Here’s the relevant segment:

“As the cab drove across O’Connell Bridge Miss O’Callaghan said:

–They say you never cross O’Connell Bridge without seeing a white horse.

–I see a white man this time, said Gabriel.

–Where? asked Mr. Bartell D’Arcy.

Gabriel pointed to the statue, on which lay patches of snow. Then he nodded familiarly to it and waved his hand.

–Good-night, Dan, he said gaily.” (214)

O'Connell Statue, Dublin, photographed by Robert French between 1880 and 1900. From the National Library of Ireland's digitized Lawrence Photograph Collection. — O’Connell Statue, Dublin, photographed by Robert French between 1880 and 1900. From the National Library of Ireland’s digitized Lawrence Photograph Collection.

The Carlisle Bridge was built to go over the River Liffey in Dublin. It was first constructed from 1794-1798 by James Gandon and named after Frederick Howard, 5th Earl of Carlisle, known as Lord Carlisle. It was later widened in 1880, and was renamed O’Connell Bridge in 1882 when the O’Connell statue was erected in Dublin. There’s an old legend that one always sees a white horse on the bridge, which could be a reference to the white horse owned by British King William III, or “King Billy,” who reigned from 1672 to 1702 and was widely hated by Irish Catholics. By the time the party crosses the bridge, incidentally, Gabriel has only an hour before told the story of his grandfather’s horse Johnny who walked circles around King Billy’s statue because he apparently “fell in love with the horse King Billy sits on” (208).

The bridge’s basic political implications seem almost too obvious to note, but in “The Dead” it becomes a symbolic blending of a basic Dublin iconic place name not only with Gabriel’s later catharsis but also with the numerous ironies and overlaps in the story.

When Gabriel happily and playfully says “Good-night, Dan,” referring to the O’Connell statue, he doesn’t know yet his wife will cry herself to sleep after thinking about a young man who once loved her and who she thinks maybe even died for her. Gabriel remains awake after Gretta’s emotional outburst in the hotel room with “generous tears” in his eyes and makes a connection with “vast hosts of the dead,” which would obviously include O’Connell.

First, Gabriel must lose his old, stifling West Briton identity, the source of his anxiety:

“His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling.” (223)

With his self-conscious and self-fawning identity now eradicated, Gabriel can finally embrace the struggle. “The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward,” or, to put it another way, the time has come for Gabriel to become politically realized. The snow that covers the O’Connell statue, which Gabriel noted earlier, continues to fall general across Ireland, uniting him with his historical past and propelling him westward to awakening.

The O’Connell Bridge is a symbolic gateway to Gabriel’s political epiphany and, by extension, Joyce’s political awakening, which the author deployed in both bold and subversive ways in his writing in and after “The Dead.”

Donnybrook Tram(line)

Editor’s Note: The following is a guest contribution by Julie McCormick Weng, a Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow at Georgia Institute of Technology. Her recent publications include articles in Journal of Modern Literature and Éire-Ireland. Her essay in Joyce Studies Annual, “From ‘Dear Dirty Dublin’ to ‘Hibernian Metropolis’: A Vision of the City from the Tramways of Ulysses,’” argues that Joyce’s depiction of Dublin’s tramways redresses stereotypes of Ireland as a (technologically) underdeveloped country. Julie also serves as editor of reviews for Breac: A Digital Journal of Irish Studies.

From a larger map of Dublin’s tramways, this subsection displays the Donnybrook tram route featured in “Two Gallants.” Dated 1912 on the back, this map was likely incorporated into a Dublin guidebook. (Click to zoom.)

In “Two Gallants,” the Donnybrook Tram(line) is mentioned twice. In both instances, the transportation route facilitates Corley’s duplicitous meetings with a woman.

In the first reference, Corley explains that after a chance meeting with a maid (or as he calls her, a “fine tart”) at Waterhouse’s clock, he made an “appointment” to meet her the following Sunday. Upon their meeting, they “went out to Donnybrook,” a suburb in South Dublin, where Corley takes “her into a field” to have sex (51). Not only does the maid bring Corley cigarettes and cigars that she steals from her employer, but she also “pay[s] the tram [fares] out and back” (51). In the second allusion, Lenehan follows Corley and the woman to Merrion Square and watches them “climbing the stairs of the Donnybrook tram” (56). From there, the couple travels to the end of the line to repeat their earlier sexual encounter.

Taking the Donnybrook Tram from crowded central Dublin to its more rural outskirts allows Corley and the maid to access a more intimate yet public space for intercourse. Even more, it permits Corley to further advance his plan of convincing the maid to steal more than luxury goods from her employer; rather, he aims to persuade her into taking the homeowners’ money.

As implied by the text, Corley’s philandering countryside adventures began long before his meetings with the maid. He confesses, “First I used to go with girls, you know…girls off the South Circular. I used to take them out, man, on the tram somewhere and pay the tram or take them to a band or a play at the theatre or buy them chocolate and sweets or something that way. I used to spend money on them right enough…” (52). Corley is absolutely gleeful, however, that in his latest relationship, he is the one on the receiving end. These sentiments support the opinions that Corley’s peers share about him—that he is a “gay Lothario” and “leech” (52, 50). He has a habit of stringing women along, both figuratively and literally, down Dublin’s tram tracks.

The Donnybrook Tramline that Corley and the maid utilize was established by the Dublin Tramways Co (DTC) in 1873. One of three rail companies servicing Dublin, the Donnybrook line “ran via Merrion Square (North and East), Lower Fitzwilliam Street, Baggot Street, Waterloo Road and Morehampton Road, to the terminus at Donnybrook, near the present bus garage.” James Kilroy notes that this line was known for its adoption of a “livery of ‘cream or pale yellow’” (19).

On January 1, 1881, Dublin’s three tram companies joined forces to form the Dublin United Tramways Co (DUTC), which offered about 32 miles of track and transported an astonishing estimate of around 10,000,000 passengers in its inaugural year (Kilroy 21). Indeed, in contrast to stereotypical assumptions of Dublin as a (technologically) backwards capital city, scholars such as Hugh Kenner and Andrew Thacker have claimed that by 1904, Dublin’s sophisticated and extensive tramways surpassed not just the rest of Europe, but perhaps even the rest of the modern world (Kenner 26, Thacker 127).

From the National Archives; Dublin Tram Timetable, 1910.

Because much of the population was illiterate, Dublin’s tramlines relied on symbols to distinguish the routes. The Donnybrook line via Merrion Square was recognized by two solid-blue conjoined diamonds (Figure 6). The north-bound end of the line was marked by the same symbol with a white “horizontal flash” passing through it (Kilroy 81). (Corley and the maid would have taken both these lines as they navigated to and from Donnybrook.) These symbols were phased out and eventually replaced by route numbers in the 1920s (Kilroy 84). Interestingly, Kilroy notes that although this system was one of a kind in Europe, it was implemented also in Egypt (84).

From the National Archives; Dublin Timetable, 1910.

As seen in the image below, the first tramcars were pulled down the tracks by horses. These same tracks were later used as Dublin’s trams gradually electrified between 1898 and January 1901 (Kilroy 83). In “Two Gallants,” Corley utilizes the DUTC’s electric (rather than horse-drawn) tramways, which would have been a relatively recent addition to Dublin’s transportation infrastructure.

Horse-drawn tramcars on Sackville Street, 1896.

Altogether, the Donnybrook tramline serves as a route that supports Dubliners’ inner-city travel and also allows Corley’s illicit, countryside rendezvous.

Works Cited

Kenner, Hugh. The Mechanic Muse. NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1987. Print.

Kilroy, James. Irish Trams. Omagh: Colourpoint, 1996. Print.

Thacker, Andrew. Moving Through Modernity: Space and Geography in Modernism. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003. Print.

Trinity College

Editor’s Note: The following is a guest contribution to the Mapping Dubliners Project. The author, Jennifer Jennings, composed and submitted this piece as a student in Dr. Amanda Sigler’s James Joyce course at Erskine College.

by Jennifer Jennings

Entrance of Trinity College Dublin, taken by the author Jan. 13, 2015. Courtesy of Jennifer Jennings.

Though an important part of Dublin culture, Trinity College Dublin appears in various forms in only three of Joyce’s stories in Dubliners. In “After the Race,” Trinity, under the guise of “Dublin University,” is listed as one of the schools attended by Jimmy Doyle. In “Two Gallants,” Trinity is part of Corley and Lenehan’s route to meet the slavey. In “The Dead,” Trinity is mentioned twice: implicitly in reference to “The University Question,” a political conundrum in twentieth-century Dublin, and explicitly in reference to the college as a landmark in the cityscape. According to the Trinity College Dublin website, “Trinity is recognized for academic excellence and a transformative student experience.” However, without its unique and rich history, Trinity College would not exist as the university it is today.

Trinity has gone through several inceptions since its beginning in the twelfth century. According to Bruce Bidwell and Linda Heffer in their book The Joycean Way, the King of Leinster built the college as an Augustinian Monastery; however, the monastery dissolved in the sixteenth century and the land was appropriated by the city of Dublin (141-142). In Joyce Annotated, Don Gifford says that Elizabeth I used the land to found Trinity College and “further the cause of the Reformation in Ireland” (53). While Trinity College was founded as a Protestant school, the majority of Dublin’s citizens were Catholic, so the school’s intellectual opportunities were denied to the majority of Irish citizens. In fact, for a time Irish Catholic bishops forbade their parishioners to attend Trinity College because of its association with the Protestant domination (53). Gifford writes that while Irish Catholics did have the University College, Dublin, the early curriculum was so below the standards of other colleges that many considered it to have no power to award degrees or provide successful jobs for its students (117).

According to Bidwell and Heffer, Trinity’s main entrance is located on Great Brunswick (Pearse) Street and was built in 1760, destroying the Elizabethan architecture that once characterized the college. A fence separates the main campus from the public sidewalk, and at the main entrance there is a large clock that faces the Bank of Ireland (142). The reference to Trinity College in “Two Gallants” features the fence and the clock at the front entrance. Joyce writes, “As they passed along the railings of Trinity College, Lenehan skipped out into the road and peered up at the clock” (53). Bidwell and Heffer argue that Corley and Lenehan follow the path of the College Green and circle around the front of Trinity College to re-enforce Joyce’s use of circles in the story. These references to circles adumbrate the retrieval of the circular gold coin in the story’s climax. Despite its symbolic role in “Two Gallants,” Trinity’s role in “The Dead” is more nuanced.

In “The Dead,” Trinity College hovers behind Miss Ivors and Gabriel Conroy’s discussion of education. According to Gifford, Joyce’s reference to “The University Question” in “The Dead” marks a political shift in the conversation between Miss Ivors and Gabriel by providing something they can agree on. Joyce says, “When they were together again she spoke of the University question and Gabriel felt more at ease” (188). Gifford writes that “The University Question” deals with the debate amongst Dubliners about the establishment of a university that would provide an education equivalent to that of England and the continent and that would emphasize the Irish culture and Catholic tradition of Ireland (117). Presumably, Miss Ivors and Gabriel can agree that Ireland needs such a college; for Trinity College, while being sufficiently prestigious, did not meld this academic prestige with a Roman Catholic heritage in the early twentieth century. Only after Irish independence did a shift occur, and, by the 1990s, “80 percent of the undergraduates were from Roman Catholic families” (Fargnoli and Gillespie 218).

Joyce mentions Trinity College by name later in the story when Mr. Browne gets a ride from a cabman who is unfamiliar with the layout of the city. He resorts to asking the cabman if he knows where Trinity College is, and when the cabman replies that he does, Mr. Browne says, “Well drive bang up against Trinity College gates… and then we’ll tell you where to go… Make like a bird for Trinity College” (Joyce 209). Joyce uses this reference ironically to indicate that Trinity College is a part of the new Irish culture, and in some way he answers “The University Question” by adumbrating the future of Trinity College as a staple of Irish academia.

Works Cited

Bidwell, Bruce and Linda Heffer. The Joycean Way: A Topographic Guide to ‘Dubliners’ & ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’ with Maps and Photographs. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982. Print.

Fargnoli, A. Nicholas and Michael Patrick Gillespie. James Joyce A to Z: The Essential Reference to the Life and Work. New York: Facts on File, 1995. Print.

Gifford, Don. Joyce Annotated: Notes for Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. Print.

Stephen’s Green

Editor’s Note: The following is the first guest contribution to the Mapping Dubliners Project. The author, Sarah Hoyt, is a senior at Erskine College and a student in Dr. Amanda Sigler’s James Joyce course. She graduates May 21. 2016 with a B.A. in English.

by Sarah Hoyt

St Stephen’s Green, known informally as Stephen’s Green or simply the Green, is a public park located in the heart of Dublin.

Historically, that stretch of land which would eventually become St Stephen’s Green began its life as a marshy plot. The website for Ireland’s Office of Public Works notes that the “name St Stephen’s Green originates from a church called St Stephen’s in that area in the thirteenth century” and that the area originally was used by the citizens of the city of Dublin to graze their livestock. However, in 1663 the plot of ground was decided by the City Assembly to be perfect for generating a consistent revenue for Dublin; twenty-seven acres were marked for the park and the remaining land was let after its division into ninety building lots. In The Joycean Way, Bidwell and Heffer explain that the “central portion was planted and lots… were distributed among some of the city’s more prosperous citizens. [The citizens] were not required to build, and for some time much of the south and east side was retained in agriculture and grazing” as it had been prior to its creation (140).

Nevertheless, according to Fargnoli and Gillespie in James Joyce A to Z, by 1670 the park was “enclosed for citizens to ‘take the open aire’” (196). Taking “the open aire” was presumably quite fashionable, and soon the wealthy of the city had fully taken over by moving in and claiming the location as distinctly their own. By the eighteenth century the park had been encircled by a host of Georgian mansions, and the “Beaux Walk situated along the northern perimeter of the park became a popular location for high society to promenade” (OPW).

Malton, James. St Stephen’s Green. 1796. Image Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland.

Despite the initial clamor for residing in St Stephen’s Green by those who were rich and high-born, the park was neglected over much of the nineteenth century (Bidwell and Heffer 140). Though one effort in 1814 to beautify the park was raised, in which a “broken wall [was replaced] with ornate Victorian railings and… more trees and shrubs [were planted],” as well as “[n]ew walks… constructed to replace the formal paths previously found in the park” (OPW), overall the construction was considered a failure by the majority of Dubliners. With these improvements, the Green became a private park—in spite of the 1635 law decreeing the park “available for use by all citizens.” The 1814 move from an open to a private park “was widely resented by the public” (OPW).

Not until 1877 was St Stephen’s Green once more opened to the public. At the behest of Sir Arthur Guinness, later Lord Ardilaun, the Green was bought from its private owners and returned to the public. “[Sir Arthur Guinness] paid off the park’s debts and secured an Act which ensured that the park would be managed by the Commissioners of Public Works, now the OPW” (OPW). This done, Lord Ardilaun extensively relandscaped the park, adding not only trees and huge flowerbeds but a three-acre lake with a waterfall and a bridge, and enclosed the park in wrought-iron railings (OPW; Fargnoli and Gillespie 196). The new renovation, “[a]fter three long years of construction work” and expenditures of “£20,000” (OPW), was opened to the public on July 27, 1880. The public loved it immediately; it “quickly reemerged as a popular gathering place for Dubliners of all classes” (Fargnoli and Gillespie 196)—from the very rich to the very poor.

French, Robert. St Stephen’s Green, Dublin City, Co. Dublin, c. 1900. Image Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland.

It is important, nonetheless, to bear in mind that St Stephen’s Green in Joyce’s time was considered to be “[a] sizable public park in a fashionable section of east-central Dublin,” as Gifford points out in Joyce Annotated (54). Knowing both the contemporary and the historical context of the park can help readers to better grasp what Joyce may have meant by inserting St Stephen’s Green into “After the Race” and “Two Gallants.”

In “After the Race,” the main character in the story, Jimmy Doyle, and his wealthy foreign friends—jubilant because of their success in the race—make their way across the park:

“The young men strolled along Stephen’s Green in a faint cloud of aromatic smoke. They talked loudly and gaily and their cloaks dangled from their shoulders. The people made way for them” (Joyce 46).

Bidwell and Heffer argue that, in “After the Race,” Joyce may be using St Stephen’s green as a metaphor to evoke the “‘corruption’ which Stephen senses pervading Dublin” (50). As Stephen’s Green is “associated with the rich and sophisticated in Dublin” (Bidwell and Heffer 125), Joyce may been seen as referring to St Stephen’s Green because he is attempting to strip the walk that the characters are taking of its illusory extravagance and instead display the underlying and repulsive corruption that lies behind the wealth of the main characters.

Detroit Publishing Co. St Stephen’s Green Park, Dublin, County Dublin, Ireland (LC-DIG-ppmsc-009877), c. 1890-1900. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

In “Two Gallants,” the mood surrounding St Stephen’s Green is sombre, as Lenehan and Corley—and then only Lenehan, alone—walk from the road into the park:

“The two young men [Lenehan and Corley] walked up the street without speaking, the mournful music following them. When they reached Stephen’s Green they crossed the road [to enter the Green itself]. Here the noise of trams, the lights and the crowd released them from their silence” (Joyce 54).

“He [Lenehan] walked listlessly round Stephen’s Green. . . “(56).

Although the tone surrounding St Stephen’s Green seemingly differs in the two works, the meaning in both cases points toward corruption. Here, the corruption is not so much of wealth as of “treachery” (Bidwell and Heffer 50). The fact that “several scoundrelly characters are associated with the area” bolsters this notion of treachery (50). Captain O’Shea, who “betrayed the relationship between [Charles Stewart] Parnell and Kitty O’Shea, attended the university at 86 Stephen’s Green” (50). This address was also home to Buck Whaley, acceptor of a £4,000 bribe to vote against his own political party and a “boon-companion to Francis Higgins,” who nefariously contributed to suppressing the Rising of 1798; Higgins himself “lived at 82 St Stephen’s Green” (50).

This list of scoundrelly characters from Irish history is only furthered by the actions of Lenehan and Corley near St Stephen’s Green—like the characters who lived there before them, Lenehan and Corley are scoundrels steeped in the same “decadent commingling of greed, peremptory self-righteousness, and sexual intrigue” that their historical predecessors exhibited (according to Donald Torchiana, quoted in Bidwell and Heffer 84). Lenehan and Corley’s insertion into St Stephen’s Green draws attention to the “historical associations” of “the debauchery, perfidity and false nobility” of Dublin (Bidwell and Heffer 84). St Stephen’s Green, for Joyce, is then merely another metaphor for the layers of corruption, greed, falsity, and treachery that paralyse all the characters in his Dubliners.

Works Cited

Bidwell, Bruce and Linda Heffer. The Joycean Way: A Topographic Guide to Dubliners & A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man with Maps and Photographs. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982. Print.

“Cultural Heritage: St Stephen’s Green.” The Office of Public Works. Web. 14 Apr 2016.

Fargnoli, A. Nicolas, and Michael P. Gillespie. James Joyce A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Writings. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Print.

Gifford, Don. Joyce Annotated: Notes for Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. Print.

Joyce, James. Dubliners. Ed. Robert Scholes and Richard Ellmann. New York: Viking Press, 1967. Print.