Dubliners – James Joyce

My first encounter with Joyce. It’s taken a while.

Phrases that entrance, and a deeply tragic sense underlying the ordinary lives the writer so carefully observes. When Eveline trapped by conditioned duty, cannot board the boat to Buenos Aires with Frank, she stands at the barrier “passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition.”
 
In The Dead, at the old aunts’ dance, Gabriel is clearly respected, trusted, a bit stuffy but a decent man, who married, clearly for love, a woman his mother disapproved of. It is the way Joyce presents Gretta that is so interesting, because he does so implicitly. Amidst the social chatter and convention, we feel, just by her presence, a woman who is amiable, calm, desirable. Her composure and unobtrusiveness set her apart from the other women with their fussiness.
 
After the party, Gabriel wants to cut though the mannered theatre of the evening to direct, shared intimacy, only to be unintentionally rebuffed by her heartbreak at the memory of a true love. The fresh wave of admiration and passion that arose in her husband is beautifully described, so that when his heartfelt urge is not requited, we are as saddened as he. His respect, his desire, his anger and his care are multiple aspects of the same uncrossable distance between them.
 
For Joyce’s Dubliners, it seems, life can never be how they would like it to be.