Author: Jasmine Mulliken

Jasmine Mulliken is Digital Production Associate at Stanford University Press. Prior to that she spent five years as Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Oklahoma State University. She has a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin and specializes in 20th-Century British Literature, Digital Humanities, and Digital Literacies.

Shannon Waves

Shannon River, Foynes, Co. Limerick, photographed between 1865 and 1914 by Robert French. From the Lawrence Photograph Collection at the National Library of Ireland
Shannon River, Foynes, Co. Limerick, photographed between 1865 and 1914 by Robert French. From the Lawrence Photograph Collection at the National Library of Ireland

The River Shannon, and more specifically, “the dark mutinous Shannon waves” make only one appearance in Dubliners, in the famous closing of “The Dead:”

“Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead” (223-24).

The River Shannon is the longest river in Ireland and flows from County Cavan’s Cuilcagh Mountain in the north to Limerick City where it becomes an estuary and connects to the Atlantic Ocean in the west. Partially because of its enormous estuary, only about 45% of the River Shannon is freshwater.

The path of the River Shannon through Ireland. ("ShannonRiversml" by Seabhcan at the English language Wikipedia. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ShannonRiversml.png#mediaviewer/File:ShannonRiversml.png)
The path of the River Shannon through Ireland.
(“ShannonRiversml” by Seabhcan at the English language Wikipedia. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ShannonRiversml.png#mediaviewer/File:ShannonRiversml.png)

According to legend, the Shannon got its name from Sinann (or Sionann), granddaughter of the Irish sea god. Sinann was drowned in the river when she attempted to eat a salmon from Connla’s well in order to gain knowledge. One version of the legend, as described by the Inland Waterways Association of Ireland, notes that “It was forbidden to women to come within the precincts of Connla’s wonderful well; but the beautiful Lady Sinann…longed to have also those more solid and masculine acquirements which were accessible at Connla’s well to the other sex only.” When she approached the well, the waters ran out and engulfed her, forming the River Shannon.

For much of Dubliners, the primary river reference is the Liffey. It is at least implicit in just about every story because it bisects the city in which every story is set. But if the Liffey is the river of the east of Ireland, emptying into the Irish Sea, the Shannon is the river of the west, feeding into the Atlantic. And at the end of “The Dead,” Gabriel imagines that “The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward.” His turn westward is very much effected by his wife Gretta’s story about Michael Furey and, arguably, her usurpation of the story of “The Dead” in general. From the beginning of the evening, Gabriel fights to steer moods and events his way, attempting to appease Lily’s challenges with a coin, fighting off the intellectual challenge introduced by Molly Ivors during lancers, revising his speech at the last minute in response to that challenge,  and finally plotting the seduction of his wife whom he assumes will be open and inviting to his advances. But throughout the story he’s met with challenges to his intentions, even what he might consider in his solipsistic perspective as mutinous waves of opposition.

The greatest mutiny comes from his own wife who does not “[feel] the impetuous desire that was in him” and who does not feel “the yielding mood …come upon her” when they get to the hotel room (218). Instead she mutinies, like Sinann seeking knowledge, with the story of her past, what until now has been unknown to Gabriel, that she had a young man in Galway who she “was great with…at that time” and who died for love of her (220). “The Dead” has becomes Gretta’s story by the end, not Gabriel’s. He even feels that “[h]is 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).

In the end “the dark mutinous Shannon waves” are one of several western locations that beckon Gabriel’s imagination, and his acceptance of a fading identity, though in one way sad, is what gives the story’s end a possible epiphanic tone. And actually, “the dark mutinous Shannon waves” are the only landscape that is ultimately not affected by the snow. In fact, whereas the snow falls on “the dark central plain, “the treeless hills,” “the crooked crosses and headstones,” “the spears of the little gate,” and “the barren thorns;” whereas the snow falls upon “the Bog of Allen” and “the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried;” the snow only falls into “the dark mutinous Shannon waves.” Ultimately they absorb the snow, unaffected.

 

 

 

Galway

Salmon Weir Bridge, Galway City, Co. Galway, photographed by Eason and Son between 1900 and 1939. From the Eason Photographic Collection at the National Library of Ireland.
Salmon Weir Bridge, Galway City, Co. Galway, photographed by Eason and Son between 1900 and 1939. From the Eason Photographic Collection at the National Library of Ireland.

Though mentioned six times in Dubliners, Galway appears in only one story: “The Dead.” The city, also the name of the county in western Ireland where it’s located, is the former home of Gretta Conroy, Gabriel’s wife. Fittingly, it is Gretta that makes first mention of the place, even though the general area has already been introduced within the context of the rather heated exchange between Gabriel and Molly Ivors. After a tense session of lancers during which Miss Ivors calls Gabriel a West Briton and scolds him for preferring to vacation on the continent rather than explore his own country, Gretta asks her husband what all the trouble was about:

“–There were no words, said Gabriel moodily, only she wanted me to go for a trip to the west of Ireland and I said I wouldn’t.

His wife clasped her hands excitedly and gave a little jump.

–O, do go, Gabriel, she cried. I’d love to see Galway again.

You can go if you like, said Gabriel coldly.

She looked at him for a moment, then turned to Mrs. Malins and said:

There’s a nice husband for you, Mrs. Malins.” (191)

The couple’s very different reactions to and moods associated with the west of Ireland embodied in this scene become more complex throughout the story. For Gabriel the west of Ireland in general represents the disconnection he feels from his own geography. He feels disassociated from much of his political and intellectual surroundings, and the exchange with Miss Ivors makes it apparent that he can’t escape that conflict.

To Gretta, the reference has a completely different effect and meaning. It initiates a series of reminders, that manifest throughout the night, of her past and another life. Like Joyce’s wife, Nora, Gretta grew up in Galway. It’s indicated in Joyce’s and Nora’s biographies that Nora had several relationships during her time in Galway before moving to Dublin to escape an abusive family. Two young men in particular, Michael Feeney and Michael Bodkin, are noted as possible models for Gretta’s Michael Furey, “a person [she] used to know in Galway when [she] was living with [her] grandmother” (218).

St. Joseph's Chapel & Presentation Convent, Galway City, Co. Galway, where a young Nora Barnacle was sent after her parents separated. Photographed between 1865 and 1914 by Robert French. From the Lawrence Photograph Collection at the National Library of Ireland.
St. Joseph’s Chapel & Presentation Convent, Galway City, Co. Galway, where a young Nora Barnacle was sent after her parents separated. Photographed between 1865 and 1914 by Robert French. From the Lawrence Photograph Collection at the National Library of Ireland.

When Gretta first reveals to Gabriel that she’s been remembering an old flame from Galway, he’s shocked and upset:

–I used to go out walking with him, she said, when I was in Galway.

A thought flew across Gabriel’s mind.

–Perhaps that was why you wanted to go to Galway with that Ivors girl? he said coldly.” (219)

But he soon learns there is much more to the story and becomes sympathetic though no less shocked and disturbed. Not only did the young man die, Gretta reveals, she believes that Michael Furey died for love of her:

“–It was in the winter she said, about the beginning of the winter when I was going to leave my grandmother’s and come up here to the convent. And he was ill at the time in his lodgings in Galway and wouldn’t be let out, and his people in Oughterard were written to. He was in decline, they said, or something like that. I never knew rightly.” (220)

…

“–And then when it came to the time for me to leave Galway and come up to the convent he was much worse and I wouldn’t be let see him so I wrote him a letter saying I was going up to Dublin and would be back in the summer, and hoping he would be better then.

She paused for a moment to get her voice under control, and then went on:

–Then the night before I left, I was in my grandmother’s house in Nuns’ Island, packing up, and I heard gravel thrown up against the window. The window was so wet I couldn’t see, so I ran downstairs as I was and slipped out the back into the garden and there was the poor fellow at the end of the garden, shivering.

–And did you not tell him to go back? asked Gabriel.

–I implored of him to go home at once and told him he would get his death in the rain. But he said he did not want to live. I can see his eyes as well as well! He was standing at the end of the wall where there was a tree.

–And did he go home? asked Gabriel.

–Yes, he went home. And when I was only a week in the convent he died and he was buried in Oughterard, where his people came from. O, the day I heard that, that he was dead!” (221)

Though Galway has its share of political, historical, and mythological resonance, its appearance in Dubliners is more biographical than anything else. Joyce’s reference to it is primarily a very direct parallel to his own experience and associations with the place in the context of his relationship with Nora. As Gordon Bowker puts it, the death of Nora’s lover “haunted her thereafter and came to haunt also the man she eventually married” (122).

Nevertheless, that Galway is situated in the west of Ireland works perfectly for the conflict that Joyce sets up in the story between west and east, Ireland and England, preserving the past and moving toward a new progressive and global age.

Davy Byrne’s

Front of Davy Byrne's. Photo by Jasmine Mulliken, 29 June 2014.
Front of Davy Byrne’s. Photo by Jasmine Mulliken, 29 June 2014.

Most Joyce enthusiasts, and even  many non-enthusiasts, recognize Davy Byrne’s as the place where Bloom ate a cheese sandwich and drank a glass of burgundy in Ulysses. Many a Bloomsday pilgrim has stopped into the pub over the years to experience a moment in the life of Leopold Bloom, and literary pub crawls  (including the excellent one I experienced in the summer of 2014, linked) highlight the premises as a staple in Dublin’s literary scene. Perhaps less noted is the pub’s appearance in Dubliners. It appears only once, and briefly, but it resonates in Joyce’s weblike world as an intersection of person, place, and theme.

In Dubliners, specifically “Counterparts,” it’s the first pub Farrington hits after his exchange with Mr. Alleyne, and the first time he embellishes the story of that exchange to his drinking fellows:

“–So, I just looked at him—coolly, you know, and looked at her. Then I looked back at him again—taking my time, you know. I don’t think that that’s a fair question to put to me, says I.

Nosey Flynn was sitting up in his usual corner of Davy Byrne’s and, when he heard the story, he stood Farrington a half-one, saying it was as smart a thing as ever he heard. Farrington stood a drink in his turn.” (93)

In reality, the incident with Mr. Alleyne leaves Farrington much demeaned, but as the night goes on, and Farrington tells his story to a wider audience,  he increasingly paints himself as the verbal victor over his boss and a hero for all working class Bartlebies tired of taking orders.

Interior of Davy Byrne's as photographed by the author, 30 June 2014.
Interior of Davy Byrne’s as photographed by the author, 30 June 2014.

Now “Dublin’s most famous [gastro]pub,” Davy Byrne’s was established in 1889. According to the history on the pub’s website, before Byrne opened the doors to his own business, he was manager at the Scotch House, another pub that Farrington and his crew visit during the course of the story. It’s at the Scotch House that Farrington meets Weathers, the artiste who eventually beats him at arm wrestling and ruins his night.

Interior of Davy Byrnes, photographed between 1930 and 1950. From the Valentine Photographic Collection at the National Library of Ireland.
Interior of Davy Byrnes, photographed between 1930 and 1950. From the Valentine Photographic Collection at the National Library of Ireland.

But early in the evening, before Farrington spends all his money and begins his downward spiral, he has a drink at Davy Byrne’s, courtesy of Nosey Flynn, who also appears at this locale in Ulysses. In fact, as soon as Bloom enters the “moral pub” (8.732), Nosey Flynn, apparently at work, greets him and takes his order: a glass of burgundy and a cheese sandwich. After some conversation between the two, Davy Byrne himself comes in “from the hindbar in tuckstitched shirtsleeves, cleaning his lips with two wipes of his napkin. Herring’s blush. Whose smile upon each feature plays with such and such replete. Too much fat on the parsnips” (8. 809-12). Bloom studies the counter as Byrne and Flynn talk: “Nice quiet bar. Nice piece of wood in that counter. Nicely planed. Like the way it curves there” (8.822-23).

Exterior of Davy Byrne's, as photographed between 1930 and 1950. From the Valentine Photographic Collection at the National Library of Ireland.
Exterior of Davy Byrne’s, as photographed between 1930 and 1950. From the Valentine Photographic Collection at the National Library of Ireland.

Another common figure to both stories is Paddy Leonard, who enters the scene once the main characters have already begun eating and/or drinking. In “Counterparts,” Leonard comes in with O’Halloran, and in Ulysses, he comes in with Bantam Lyons and Tom Rochford shortly before Bloom leaves.

According to the pub’s online history, fictional characters aren’t the only common links in Joyce’s Davy-Byrne’s web. Apparently, the rooms above the pub were once leased to another person named James Joyce, a fact that, as the history points out, “Joyce the author may well have been aware of when famously alluding to Davy Byrnes…This ironic detail would not have been lost on the writer, famous for carefully researching all premises and addresses used in his writings.” Thus, it might be also worth noting the implications this irony seems to highlight. Though it’s endlessly intriguing to explore the various connections between characters and places across Joyce’s works, might it also be possible that Ulysses Nosey Flynn and “Counterparts” Nosey Flynn are two completely different people?

 

Straits of Magellan

"Map of the Straits of Magellan and Part of the Land of Fire, Prepared in 1786" from Antonio de Córdoba's expedition, the first scientific mapping of the region. Available at World Digital Library: http://www.wdl.org/en/item/52/
“Map of the Straits of Magellan and Part of the Land of Fire, Prepared in 1786” from Antonio de Córdoba’s expedition, the first scientific mapping of the region. Available at World Digital Library: http://www.wdl.org/en/item/52/

One of several references that expand the psychological geography of Dubliners beyond the city’s borders, the Straits of Magellan infuse James Joyce’s realist urban montage with hints of unattainable escapism. Frank, Eveline’s sailor sweetheart has travelled the world and fills her head with romantic tales about places like Canada, Buenos Ayres, Patagonia, and the Straits of Magellan:

“He had tales of distant countries. He had started as a deck boy at a pound a month on a ship of the Allan Line going out to Canada. He told her the names of the ships he had been on and the names of the different services. He had sailed through the Straits of Magellan and he told her stories of the terrible Patagonians. He had fallen on his feet in Buenos Ayres, he said, and had come over to the old country just for a holiday. Of course, her father had found out the affair and had forbidden her to have anything to say to him.” (39)

The story revolves around Eveline’s ambivalence concerning running away with Frank and making a new life with him in Buenos Ayres. Doing so would mean leaving her father and her siblings, all of whom have come to depend on her, and the city of Dublin itself, which, for her and the rest of the book’s characters, has an uncomfortably paralyzing effect.

The reference to the Straits of Magellan in particular does more than evoke an exotic locale an ocean away. Situated near the southern tip of South America and weaving through modern-day Chile (touching Argentina at its eastern mouth), the Straits are named after the Spanish explorer Ferdinand Magellan who led an expedition through the waterways in 1520. The journey was chronicled by Antonio Pigafetta in The Journal of Magellan’s Voyage, which includes a very basic map, pictured below.

 

"The First Map of the Strait of Magellan, 1520" from The Journal of Magellan's Voyage. Available at the World Digital Library at http://www.wdl.org/en/item/3972/
“The First Map of the Strait of Magellan, 1520” from The Journal of Magellan’s Voyage. Available at the World Digital Library at http://www.wdl.org/en/item/3972/

While the meta-reference–the reference to a place that references a person–imbues Eveline’s perceptions of Frank with qualities of exploration and adventure, it also signals to a critical reader that once again we are facing the colonization paradox. Exploration and discovery are exciting, but not to those being explored and discovered (or rather, exploited and displaced). Frank talks about the “terrible Patagonians,” the people native to the lands surrounding the straits. Magellan named the people already living in this place he “discovered” Patagones, meaning “big feet.”

Although there is no evidence that Eveline considers any of this when she ultimately does not board the ship with Frank, it is perhaps still worth considering the implications Joyce sets up within the context of Eveline’s potential “new world” and her inability as a European, especially an Irish European, to embark on that particular expedition. As people under the rule of the world’s largest empire, the Irish would be especially hesitant to implicate themselves with Spanish colonization of South America. And inasmuch as Eveline represents Ireland, she is held fast to the iron of her own shores, unable to become the colonizer. She can’t go with Frank the explorer, Frank the discoverer, Frank the Ferdinand Magellan who battles terrible Patagonians, because she is herself Ireland, the colonized, the oppressed, the paralyzed.

If the earlier geographical references would have been limited to just Canada and Melbourne and Buenos Ayres, the connotations might be more simple: emigration, reinvention, etc. But that Joyce chooses to include the more problematized references to the Straits of Magellan and Patagonians demands a more critical investigation of how place contributes to the post-colonial themes of this story and Dubliners as a whole.

Tivoli Theatre

The Tivoli Theatre on Burgh Quay, on the south bank of the Liffey. The theatre would have been a block north of Mulligan's and a block east of the Scotch House. Photographed between 1901 and 1914 by Robert French, from the National Library of Ireland's Lawrence Photograph Collection.
The Tivoli Theatre on Burgh Quay, on the south bank of the Liffey. The theatre would have been a block north of Mulligan’s and a block east of the Scotch House. Photographed between 1901 and 1914 by Robert French, from the National Library of Ireland’s Lawrence Photograph Collection.

The Tivoli Theatre is mentioned twice in “Counterparts” as the venue where Weathers is performing:

“Leonard introduced them to a young fellow named Weathers who was performing at the Tivoli as an acrobat and knockabout artiste. Farrington stood a drink all round. Weathers said he would take a small Irish and Apollinaris. Farrington, who had definite notions of what was what, asked the boys would they have an Apollinaris too; but the boys told Tim to make theirs hot. The talk became theatrical. O’Halloran stood a round and then Farrington stood another round, Weathers protesting that the hospitality was too Irish. He promised to get them in behind the scenes and introduce them to some nice girls. O’Halloran said that he and Leonard would go, but that Farrington wouldn’t go because he was a married man; and Farrington’s heavy dirty eyes leered at the company in token that he understood he was being chaffed.” (94)

When the Tivoli is first mentioned, the group is in the Scotch House, which is about a block west of the theatre, also on Burgh Quay. A block south of the Tivoli is Mulligan’s in Poolbeg Street. This entire area just south of the Liffey is the predominant setting for the story. After the group leaves the Scotch House, and re-congregates at Mulligan’s, Weathers starts drinking cheaper drinks. It’s here that Farrington lusts after the woman with the London accent, whom Weathers explains is one of the Tivoli crowd.

“Presently two young women with big hats and a young man in a check suit came in and sat at a table close by. Weathers saluted them and told the company that they were out of the Tivoli.” (95)

Once again, though, Farrington is “chaffed,” denied anything more than a glance or two, a brush against his chair, and an “O, pardon!”

The Tivoli theatre, as described by John Finegan in “Dublin’s Lost Theatres,” was

“[s]ituated on Burgh Quay, on the site of the old Conciliation Hall, and opened as the Grand Lyric Hall, a concert hall, on 26 November 1897. A year later it became the Lyric Theatre of Varieties, and closed on 31 August 1901. It reopened as the Tivoli Variety Theatre on 28 October, 1901 and closed in 1928. Irish Press offices later on site.” (96-97)

Conciliation Hall on Burgh Quay. Illustration form Archiseek.
Conciliation Hall on Burgh Quay. Illustration form Archiseek.

Pictured above, the original building, Conciliation Hall, according to architectural records, was designed by Peter Martin and built in 1843 “as a meeting place for Daniel O’Connell’s Loyal National Repeal Association.” Interestingly, it seems Joyce may have chosen to reference the Tivoli, this musical-theatrical venue that also carries political connotations, as a way of possibly suggesting Farrington’s economic, sexual, and lifestyle paralysis have political origins.

The artiste’s lifestyle is one that Farrington covets, and his frustration at not being equal in economic status, sexual prowess, or physical strength (he loses at arm wrestling to Weathers) all contribute to his violent outburst later that night against his son. Though the Tivoli is simply a place reference, it embodies an entire lifestyle and occupation that Farrington can never fully access or experience. That the theatre has political origins only adds complexity to his situation.

Kavanagh’s

"City Hall. Long shot, Dublin City, Co. Dublin." City Hall is located at the south end of Parliament Street, just a few steps from Kavanagh's. Note the "Daily Express" on the right. James Joyce, and Gabriel Conroy of "The Dead," wrote reviews for the Express. This would have been just a couple doors down from Kavanagh's. Photo taken between 1860 and 1883 by James Simonton or Frederick Holland Mares, held by the National Library of Ireland as part of the Stereo Pairs Photograph Collection.
“City Hall. Long shot, Dublin City, Co. Dublin.” City Hall is located at the south end of Parliament Street, just a few steps from Kavanagh’s. Note the “Daily Express” on the right. James Joyce, and Gabriel Conroy of “The Dead,” wrote reviews for the Express. This would have been just a couple doors down from Kavanagh’s. Photo taken between 1860 and 1883 by James Simonton or Frederick Holland Mares, held by the National Library of Ireland as part of the Stereo Pairs Photograph Collection.

Located in Parliament Street, between Essex and Dame Streets, south of the Liffey, Kavanagh’s is called in Ulysses “James Kavanagh’s winerooms” (10.992) and described by Don Gifford as “a gathering place for Dublin politicians and for those in search of political favors” (93). So it’s no surprise that the place makes its appearance in the most overtly political of all the Dubliners stories, “Ivy Day in the Committee Room.” In this story it’s mentioned as a place where Father Keon can often be found talking with Mr. Fanning. When mentioned in “Ivy Day,” Keon has just popped his head in the room, looking for Fanning. Not finding him, he quickly leaves, and the men in the Wicklow Street committee room begin to talk about him:

“–Tell me, John, said Mr O’Connor, lighting his cigarette with another pasteboard card.

–Hm?

–What is he exactly?

–Ask me an easier one, said Mr Henchy.

–Fanning and himself see to be very thick. They’re often in Kavanagh’s together. Is he a priest at all?

–‘Mmmyes, I believe so. …I think he’s what you call a black sheep. We haven’t many of them, thank God! but we have a few. …He’s an unfortunate man of some kind. …

–And how does he knock it out? asked Mr O’Connor.

–That’s another mystery.

–Is he attached to any chapel or church or institution or–

–No, said Mr Henchy. I think he’s travelling on his own account. …God forgive me, he added, I thought he was the dozen of stout.” (126-27)

During the discussion of Father Keon’s character, Henchy seems to have trouble nailing down any definite descriptions. His answers are filled with speculation and aposiopeses, echoing the dialogue surrounding Father Flynn, another problematized priest, in “The Sisters.” As they do with many other notable figures, the men in the committee room have trouble disparaging or criticizing Keon. Excepting Hynes, many of the characters take on the subtleties of political ambiguity when describing controversial figures. But more direct implications can be observed in the geographic allusions Joyce embeds in this particular passage.

As Gifford notes, Kavanagh’s is a political hotspot for making under-the-table deals. What indeed is Father Keon doing there? Here again, as in “The Sisters,” a priest is imbued with highly political overtones through a geographic reference. In “The Sisters,” the political implications resonate from the reference to St. Catherine’s, and in “Ivy Day,” it is Kavanagh’s. Furthermore, Fanning, the man Keon meets in Kavanagh’s appears in “Grace” as “the registration agent and mayor maker of the city, who was sitting immediately under the pulpit beside one of the newly elected councillors of the ward” (172). In fact, the presence of Fanning and other well known politicos and businessmen at the Gardiner Street Jesuit church makes Mr. Kernan “feel more at home” (173). The “mayor maker’s” appearance in the Jesuit church and Father Keon’s presence in the political pub emphasize Joyce’s perception of the highly political nature of the church and the religiously motivated nature of Irish politics.

Fanning also appears in Ulysses, also at Kavanagh’s, where he is directly identified as the subsheriff “Long John Fanning” (10.995-1030). In Ulysses, as in “Grace,” Fanning is in the company of people like Mr. Cunningham and Mr. Power.

Dame Street

Dame Street, facing east toward Trinity College. Photographed between 1865 and 1914 by Robert French, part of the Lawrence Photograph Collection at the National Library of Ireland.
Dame Street, facing east toward Trinity College. Photographed between 1865 and 1914 by Robert French, part of the Lawrence Photograph Collection at the National Library of Ireland.

Referenced in two of the Dubliners adolescence stories, Dame Street is one of the largest thoroughfares in the city. Today, as in Joyce’s day, the street houses City Hall on the western end and Trinity College at the Eastern end. In between is still the city’s financial district, featuring the Bank of Ireland, several insurance and accounting firms, and high-end retailers. One of these retailers, Waterhouse’s, is referenced directly in “Two Gallants.” Don Gifford describes it as “goldsmiths and silversmiths, jewelers, and watchmakers” (Gifford 57).

Lipton's Premises in Dame Street, photographed 13 October 1890 by James Talbot-Power. From the National Library of Ireland.
Lipton’s Premises in Dame Street, photographed 13 October 1890 by James Talbot-Power. From the National Library of Ireland.

The National Library of Ireland’s photo collection also reveals the Lipton company was in the process of opening a store in Dame Street in 1890, and an American publication, The Book-Keeper: The Business Man’s Magazine, features a 1904 article on the company in which they describe this second Dublin location:

One of the Lipton stores is located at the corner of Dame and St. George’s streets, only a few steps from Pim Brothers’ great department store. The Dame street store is in the very heart of the business district frequented by fashionable and middle class purchasers. (St. Clair  25)

Dame Street serves as the energetic setting for the race cars’ entrance to the city center in “After the Race:”

They drove down Dame Street. The street was busy with unusual traffic, loud with the horns of motorists and the gongs of impatient tram-drivers. Near the Bank Segouin drew up and Jimmy and his friend alighted. A little knot of people collected on the footpath to pay homage to the snorting motor. The party was to dine together that evening in Segouin’s hotel and, meanwhile, Jimmy and his friend, who was staying with him, were to go home to dress. The car steered out slowly for Grafton Street while the two young men pushed their way through the knot of gazers. They walked northward with a curious feeling of disappointment in the exercise, while the city hung its pale globes of light above them in a haze of summer evening. (45)

The cars would have been moving west to east. The bank (pictured below) is at the east end of Dame Street, just across from Trinity College, and it is here where Jimmy Doyle and Villona, his Hungarian friend, hop out of the car and make their way to Jimmy’s house. Walking north from the bank, they would be on Westmoreland Street heading toward Temple Bar and the Liffey. Where Jimmy lives is never stated, but since he has money, unlike the children in the previous set of stories who live well north of the Liffey, it’s reasonable to assume Jimmy lives nearby, on the south side of the river.

Bank of Ireland, at the corner of Dame Street and Westmoreland Street. Just to the right, not pictured) is Trinity College. Photographed by Robert French between 1880 and 1900. From the Lawrence Photograph Collection at the National Library of Ireland.
Bank of Ireland, at the corner of Dame Street and Westmoreland Street. Just to the right, not pictured) is Trinity College. Photographed by Robert French between 1880 and 1900. From the Lawrence Photograph Collection at the National Library of Ireland.

The bustling Dame Street setting of this story’s opening is appropriate to the tone of Futurism and thriving economy that characterizes the majority of “After the Race.” In “Two Gallants,” the street takes on a more contradicting, even out-of-place, implication. It’s first mentioned as the street in which Corley initially met the girl whom he is about to appeal to for money:

“And where did you pick her up, Corley?” he asked.

Corley ran his tongue swiftly along his upper lip.

“One night, man,” he said, “I was going along Dame Street and I spotted a fine tart under Waterhouse’s clock and said good-night, you know. So we went for a walk round by the canal and she told me she was a slavey in a house in Baggot Street. I put my arm round her and squeezed her a bit that night. Then next Sunday, man, I met her by appointment. We went out to Donnybrook and I brought her into a field there. She told me she used to go with a dairyman…. It was fine, man. Cigarettes every night she’d bring me and paying the tram out and back. And one night she brought me two bloody fine cigars—O, the real cheese, you know, that the old fellow used to smoke…. I was afraid, man, she’d get in the family way. But she’s up to the dodge.”

This girl, who works in the upper-class Baggot Street area and hangs out at night outside of Dame Street jewelry stores is, even though a “slavey,” quite better off than Corley. It’s a wonder how he was able to “pick her up” at all, and this remains one of the mysteries of the story. The street appears again as Lenehan wanders solitary through the city waiting for his friend to finish with the girl:

He went into Capel Street and walked along towards the City Hall. Then he turned into Dame Street. At the corner of George’s Street he met two friends of his and stopped to converse with them. He was glad that he could rest from all his walking. His friends asked him had he seen Corley and what was the latest. He replied that he had spent the day with Corley. His friends talked very little. They looked vacantly after some figures in the crowd and sometimes made a critical remark.

Though the text doesn’t point it out, at the corner of Capel and Dame, just across the street from City Hall, sits Watherhouse’s. That the geographic marker worth noting is City Hall, and not the previously-mentioned Waterhouse, could be indicative of Lenehan’s growing resentment toward Corley. Just prior to Lenehan’s arrival at this corner, he has been pondering his own failures, a rumination brought on by imagining Corley and his girl:

When he had eaten all the peas he sipped his ginger beer and sat for some time thinking of Corley’s adventure. In his imagination he beheld the pair of lovers walking along some dark road; he heard Corley’s voice in deep energetic gallantries and saw again the leer of the young woman’s mouth. This vision made him feel keenly his own poverty of purse and spirit. He was tired of knocking about, of pulling the devil by the tail, of shifts and intrigues. He would be thirty-one in November. Would he never get a good job? Would he never have a home of his own?

Corley clearly represents to Lenehan his own shortcomings, and his focus on City Hall instead of Waterhouse as he turns this corner could signify his unconscious, or even conscious, desire to break with Corley, who he may imagine is holding him back. But in the end, of course, he meets his friend, and nothing seems to change.

The section of Dame Street between Capel and George’s streets also serves as the beginning of a gnomon in Lenehan’s squarish route. It is here where we get a visually discernible parallel to the feeling of emptiness he has just experienced. More on the route’s gnomon can be found in “Two Gallants” Route.

The lines forming the route of Corley and Lenehan, then Lenehan alone, in "Two Gallants."
The lines forming the route of Corley and Lenehan, then Lenehan alone, in “Two Gallants.”

Counterparts Route

The path Farrington travels in “Counterparts” is confined to the south side of the Liffey. Most of the story sees him wandering between pubs in the Temple Bar area. He visits places like Davy Byrne’s, The Scotch House, and Mulligan’s in Poolbeg. Once he runs out of money and drinking companions, he catches the tram at O’Connell Bridge and heads home to Shelbourne Road outside of the city center.

In all, he travels about 2.8 miles, or 4.5 kilometers. He starts at his office near O’Neill’s, a pub and shop which he visits briefly for a porter before returning to work at Crosbie & Alleyne. After he leaves the office for the evening, he makes his way to a pawn shop in Fleet Street to acquire some drinking money for the evening. From there he walks down Westmoreland Street to get to Davy Byrne’s, a pub later made famous by Bloom and his cheese sandwich and burgundy. After telling his friends various versions of his day’s events, the group separates and Farrington continues with O’Halloran and Leonard past the Ballast Office and on to the Scotch house on the south bank of the Liffey. There they meet Weathers and together close down the Scotch House and remove to Mulligan’s in Poolbeg Street. It’s there that Farrington loses his confidence as well as the arm wrestling match with Weathers. “Sullen-faced” (96), he suddenly stands alone on the O’Connlel Bridge, the closest he ever gets to the north side of Dublin, waiting for the Sandymount tram to take him home. The tram drops him in Shlebourne road where he hugs the wall of the barracks until he arrives at the side entrance to his home.

The animated approximated path Farrington takes shows a distinct shift from the bustle of the Temple Bar area to the quiet, almost monotonous landscape of his suburban neighborhood.

The route, from above, Farrington travels in "Counterparts."
Google Earth satellite view of the route Farrington travels in “Counterparts.”

 

London

The moat at the Tower of London juxtaposed with modern architecture. Photo by Jasmine Mulliken, June 2014.
The moat at the Tower of London juxtaposed with modern architecture. Photo by Jasmine Mulliken, June 2014.

Referenced in six stories, London consistently carries connotations of economic dependence or opportunity for the Dubliners who were, at the dawn of the twentieth century, experiencing rather dismal prospects in the marketplace. In fact, much of the paralysis depicted in the collection stems from characters’ vocational or financial challenges. As Joseph Kelly very clearly puts it, “First and foremost, paralysis was economic” (17).  Kelly points to the essay “Fenianism” in which Joyce claims Ireland consists of

“a population which diminishes year by year with mathematical regularity, [through] the uninterrupted emigration to the United States or Europe of Irishmen for whom the economic and intellectual conditions of their native land are unbearable.” (CW 190)

One of those emigrants is Little Chandler’s friend Gallaher. From the very opening of the story, Little Chandler is obsessed with London:

“Little Chandler’s thoughts ever since lunch-time had been of his meeting with Gallaher, of Gallaher’s invitation and of the great city London where Gallaher lived.” (70)

As we learn in Ulysses, Gallaher works for a “Chapelizod boss” (7.732), another Irish emigrant, most likely the Chapelizod-born  Alfred Harmsworth who started London’s Daily Mail in 1894 and Daily Mirror  in 1903.  As “a brilliant figure on the London Press” (71), Gallaher is the epitome of success, even “greatness” (72) in Little Chandler’s eyes (“Ignatius Gallaher on the London Press!” [72].) And if only Little Chandler could write some verse about the Dublin tramps at nightfall, “[p]erhaps Gallaher might be able to get it into some London paper for him” (73); if only he could accentuate the more “Irish-looking” (74) parts of his name, perhaps he too could be considered among the London literary circles. In other words, Little Chandler considers his Irishness artistic capital in an English economy.

Once Little Chandler finishes his trek from office to pub (“Every step brought him nearer to London” [73]),the two men discuss  “the old gang” (75). O’Hara, who still lives in Dublin has “gone to the dogs” while Hogan, who recently visited “London and he seemed to be very flush” (76), is on the Land Commission, an agency that Don Gifford notes was a “notorious porkbarrel” (70). Gifford explains that “[t]he Land Purchase Bills of 1891, 1896, and 1903 provided for the tenants’ purchase of their farms from the landlords through the backing of British credit.” So even though the Irish farmers were getting their land, they were enabled to do so by the British economy. In turn, the Irish Hogan, though still living in Ireland, is”very flush” because his vocation involves British financial backing.

Soon, Gallaher encourages Little Chandler to travel outside of Ireland, and suggests he “[g]o to London or Paris” (76), and as they talk, Little Chandler becomes”disillusioned” by Gallaher’s new manner, but imagines it’s only because of ” living in London amid the bustle and competition of the Press  (77).” In other words, living in London makes up for the “something vulgar in his friend which he had not observed before.” Little Chandler is even envious of the worldliness that has created the new vulgarity in Gallaher. He begins appropriating London as another “moral” city on a level with Dublin, considering himself and his city, wishfully, in league with Gallaher and London against places like Paris, which he sees as immoral. Gallaher must correct him, though, insisting,

“–London! said Ignatius Gallaher. It’s six of one and half-a-dozen of the other. You ask Hogan, my boy. I showed him a bit about London when he was over there. He’d open your eye….” (77)

As uncomfortable as London’ potential immorality makes him, Little Chandler still dreams of following Gallaher. All his frustration pours out as at the end of the story as, holding his baby and questioning his marriage, he broods:

“A dull resentment against his life awoke within him. Could he not escape from his little house? Was it too late for him to try to live bravely like Gallaher? Could he go to London? There was the furniture still to be paid for.” (83)

Ultimately, it’s his debt that holds him back from leaving his despised home even at the same time that the London literary industry represents a chance to escape.

London functions somewhat similarly in the other four stories, though it’s never as prominent as in “The Little Cloud.” In “A Boarding House,” London is mentioned only briefly as the home city of one of the guests: “one of the music-hall artistes, a little blond Londoner, had made a rather free allusion to Polly” (68). The free allusion of the Londoner anticipates the seedier side of London that Gallaher reveals to Little Chandler in the next story.

The city is alluded to again briefly in “Counterparts” as Farrington is reaching his breaking point in Mulligan’s. The woman he is so fascinated by speaks to him in a London accent before leaving and never looking back:

“She glanced at him once or twice and, when the party was leaving the room, she brushed against his chair and said “O, pardon!” in a London accent. He watched her leave the room in the hope that she would look back at him, but he was disappointed. He cursed his want of money and cursed all the rounds he had stood, particularly all the whiskies and Apolinaris which he had stood to Weathers. If there was one thing that he hated it was a sponge. He was so angry that he lost count of the conversation of his friends.” (95)

Part of Farrington’s frustration stems from the rejection of this exotic Londoner, and it’s just after this exchange that he channels his rage into an arm-wrestling match, which he loses. The rejection of the London woman who is apparently out of his league sets in motion Farrington’s downward spiral of inadequacy and inferiority.

In “Grace,” Tom Kernan makes his living by selling tea for the London-based Pulbrook, Robertson, and Company. Although we don’t learn these specifics until Ulysses, enough of the address on his office is given to reveal that whatever company it is, it’s based in London:

“Modern business methods had spared him only so far as to allow him a little office in Crowe Street, on the window blind of which was written the name of his firm with the address—London, E. C. On the mantelpiece of this little office a little leaden battalion of canisters was drawn up and on the table before the window stood four or five china bowls which were usually half full of a black liquid. From these bowls Mr. Kernan tasted tea. He took a mouthful, drew it up, saturated his palate with it and then spat it forth into the grate. Then he paused to judge.” (154)

Again, the livelihood of this Dubliner is tied to industry located in England.

“A Mother” and “The Dead” reference London in the context of its music industry. While in “A Mother,” the Londoner Madame Glynn is described as “[a]n unknown solitary woman with a pale face” (143) and not a very good singer, Bartell D’Arcy in “The Dead” insists that London, along with Paris and Milan, is where all the good singers can be found (199). Though these references may appear to argue opposite perspectives on the London music scene, it’s interesting to note that Madam Glynn is an unknown among the rather inexperienced performers, understudies, and bronze-medalists of Mr. Holohan’s rather patched-together show. Kathleen Kearney has no knowledge of her whatsoever:

“–I wonder where did they dig her up, said Kathleen to Miss Healy. I’m sure I never heard of her.

Miss Healy had to smile. Mr. Holohan limped into the dressing-room at that moment and the two young ladies asked him who was the unknown woman. Mr. Holohan said that she was Madam Glynn from London.” (143)

Essentially, Madam Glynn must perform in Dublin because, ostensibly, she cannot perform in London. Like Little Chandler, she lacks the talent or economic means to break onto the London scene. Caruso, on the other hand, whose talent D’Arcy extols in “The Dead,” had toured in London:

–Oh, well, said Mr. Bartell D’Arcy, I presume there are as good singers today as there were then.

–Where are they? asked Mr. Browne defiantly.

–In London, Paris, Milan, said Mr. Bartell D’Arcy warmly. I suppose Caruso, for example, is quite as good, if not better than any of the men you have mentioned.” (199)

Overall, the role London plays as a reference in Dubliners tends to be one of economic privilege in opposition to a struggling Irish middle class. Some of the Dubliners capitalize on British economic opportunities while others find the London market hopelessly impenetrable.

Persia

Map of 19th-Century Iran. Creative Commons Wikimedia image at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_Iran_1900-en.png
Map of 19th-Century Iran. Creative Commons Wikimedia image at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_Iran_1900-en.png

Persia appears momentarily in “the Sisters” as the possible setting for a dream the narrator has the night he hears about Father Flynn’s death. Now modern-day Iran, Persia has had many iterations since the First Persian Empire in 550 BCE. Between that time, also known as the Achaemenid Empire, and 651 AD, it transitioned to the Parthian Empire and then the Sasanian Empire. Much of that time was marked by the ongoing Roman-Persian wars, which lasted from roughly 92 AD to 629 AD. Beginning in 1501, Persia was ruled by a series of dynasties. By Joyce’s time, Persia was under the Qajar Dynasty, which spanned from 1785 to 1925. Unsurprisingly, this period saw increased Brittanic influence, especially in the area to the southeast bordering India and what is now Pakistan. Thus the reference to Persia in the story evokes a long imperial history, not just that of the Persian Empire itself, but also the British Empire, which is also alluded to in the name of Great Britain Street, where the boy walks as he recalls his dream. As he walks, he also recalls that Father Flynn was educated at the Irish College in Rome, a more direct association to the Roman Empire than the one embedded in the Persia reference through the Roman-Persian wars.

There is no mappable route in “The Sisters” like there is in the other two childhood stories, but the narrator’s dream of Persia is a kind of imagined journey to the exotic. This imagined journey represents perhaps an expedition in embryonic form when contrasted with the one in “Araby,” which, though a real route, is only an artificial journey to the exotic locale evoked by the name of the bazaar.

The inherent mythos of places like Persia and Araby in Dubliners may perhaps also be viewed as a vestige of Romaticism, an early nineteenth-century literary and artistic movement that romanticized the exotic East as mystical and erotic. Such references are restricted to the childhood stories, as if Joyce is drawing a parallel between the evolution of literature in the nineteenth century and the phases of maturation depicted in the collection as a whole. That the journey to these two places are only imagined or simulated reaffirms the Romantic unattainability they represent.

In “The Sisters,” the narrator describes Persia as part of a dream or vision:

“As I walked along in the sun I remembered old Cotter’s words and tried to remember what had happened afterwards in the dream. I remembered that I had noticed long velvet curtains and a swinging lamp of antique fashion. I felt that I had been very far away, in some land where the customs were strange — in Persia, I thought…. But I could not remember the end of the dream.” (13-14)

The smoky memory of the dream echoes the exotic strangeness of the place as a Romantic concept. But the images sharply contrast with the narrator’s realistic surroundings at that moment. He is recalling the dream as he walks down the sunny side of Great Britain Street in the heart of working-class Dublin. Persia and all its mysteriousness represent the secrets and mysteries that also surround Father Flynn whose death he has just confirmed from the notice in the draper’s shop window. The priest had formerly “amused himself by putting difficult questions to [the boy]” which “showed [him] how complex and mysterious were certain institutions in the Church” (13). Persia seems almost a dream representation of the mysticism the boy perceives in the church, and the correlation between the two in his perception shows the church to be an institution as exotic and Romantic as Persia itself.

Frederick Lange points out the downstairs room where the boy and his aunt talk to the sisters is a kind of materialized version of the boy’s dream: “The images of the ’empty fireplace’ and ’empty grate’ are linked to the dream image of ‘lamp.’ The boy recalls the ‘curtains’ in his dream after seeing the Drapery sign and the ‘lamp’ after remembering how the priest used to sit by the fire” (35). Lange’s association serves his purpose of tracing church history in Joyce’s work, but we can also use the comparison to note the evolution of imagery and setting from Romantic to Realist fiction. According to this comparison, the priest and his sisters’ quarters become a modern urban Dublin incarnation of the Romantic East, where “long velvet curtains” are replaced with the commercial Drapery, and the “swinging lamp of antique fashion” becomes the empty grate. And I would argue that we could also compare the “dead-room” itself to the Persia room in the dream, a pairing not so starkly contradictory, and one that reveals the still unevolved Romantic perspectives of childhood. In this case, the “long velvet curtains” become “the lace end of the blind [which] was suffused with dusky golden light” and the “swinging lamp of antique fashion” becomes the “candles [which] looked like pale thin flames” (14). Thus, while the downstairs room, where the grown-ups make small talk, is an uncomfortable and uninviting place (the narrator “grope[s] [his] way to [his] usual chair in the corner” and refuses a biscuit because he fears making too much noise), the upstairs room, where the priest lies dead, is to this child suffused with mystery.