Guidelines for Online Discussion
1) Students must compose ONE post by 12:00 pm (noon). This initial post should follow some of the basic guidelines for blog posts, but should also incorporate some of the ideas we discussed in class on how to improve our literary analysis attempts (more examples, explaining key terms, elaborating on what it is about you and your experience that informs your position, etc). Make sure to end your post with a few questions to help generate discussion.
2) Students must compose TWO "follow-up" posts by 8:00 pm Wednesday evening. These posts should be roughly between 250-500 words and you should address at least one other student's question.
You may address one of the questions below for your posts, or feel free to develop your own ideas.
1) In class, we discussed the ways in which Yeats has a tendency in The Celtic Twilight to construct a vision of Irish women as "pure," "beautiful," "white," and "gleaming." Where do we see such "visions" in Joyce's stories? How does Joyce break down these constructions?
2) We cannot talk about Joyce without talking about the "epiphany." According to the linked article, epiphanies (as Joyce used the concept) are "a sudden and momentary showing forth or disclosure of one’s
authentic inner self. This disclosure might manifest itself in
vulgarities of speech, or gestures, or memorable phases of the mind." Where do you see moments of "epiphanies" in Joyce's stories? As much as Joyce disdained Yeats and his work, can we see a connection between Yeats' visions and spiritual "seeking" and Joyce's epiphanies? In what ways are they different? Have you ever had an epiphany? What was it? How did it compare to the epiphanies in Joyce's stories?
3) These excerpts from Dubliners have been the course's first glimpse into Irish urban life. How does Joyce describe the city of Dublin? In what ways is it its own character in these stories? How does it differ from the rural, pastoral constructions of Ireland we've seen in the previous works we've read?
4) In "The Dead," Gabriel seems ambivalent about Irish nationalism and has a tense exchange with Miss Ivors about the Irish language and Gabriel's refusal to visit the "west" of Ireland. What happens in that exchange and why do you think Gabriel is so intent on setting himself apart from his Irish family and companions?
5) At the end of "The Dead," we hear Gretta's story of Michael Furey, and later Gabriel catches a glimpse of his ghost. What is the significance of the ghost of Michael Furey? What might he symbolize in this story? Compare his presence to other "ghosts" we have read throughout the semester, or examine the presence of Michael's ghost using the theories from Gordan Avery and Derrida we discussed in class.
By Kate Bruegmann
ReplyDeleteWhen we talk about Ireland in previous stories we talk about how it is charming, mystical, and romantic. Most people are quick to think this way because of the stories that were told through generations. In “Araby,” I find this is a great passage that explains the modern life the Irish transformed to live in. “The cold air stung us and we played till our bodies glowed. Our shouts echoed in the silent street. The career of our play brought us through the dark muddy lanes behind the houses where we ran the gauntlet of the rough tribes form the cottages, to the back doors of the dark dripping gardens where odorous arose from the ashpits, to the dark odorous stables where a coachman smoothed and combed the horse or shook music from the buckled harness.” This passage describes the lifestyle of how people in Ireland are now living their lives. I think this passage also shows what Ireland has been through. It describes the streets now being silent, the gauntlet of the rough tribes form the cottages, and the gardens that were odorous but arose from the ashpits. I think this is one way Joyce is describing urbanization through trying to overcome the war. Another way that conveys Ireland changing to becoming urban is the lifestyle of the people in this story. In past stories we read men would be farming and women would be in the house doing house work. While in this story, Joyce does not quite say to his readers what the characters do, but I get a feel that they are doing more factory work then working in the fields. I feel that way since this family lives in town, which I know through the houses being next to each other, and the street lights by the house. This story does have one part that seems to be the mystical type, that is when Joyce describes this woman. Her dress sways when she moves and her soft rope-like hair moves with her. She is also described by having a glowing light when she walks. Is she suppose to be a fairy in this story or is the narrator in this story simply just happen to be a man in love?
By: Lynn Schambow
DeleteI think that in the story “Araby” that the narrator is a man that simply is in love with this man. He does kind of see her in a way that makes her sound a little like a fairy though. When he gets to Mangan’s steps he talks about how her figure is defined by the light from the half opened door. Also how the light of the lamp showed the curve of her neck and lit up her hair. This is a view that he adores her and thinks that she is beautiful. The light hits her just right and he thinks it lights her up and highlights her beauty. He says “I kept her brown figure always in my eye” (1). He would speed up to follow her around and always have her in site. He shows that obsessive love that he always wants her around even if his is not talking to her. It reminds me a little of Edward and Bella, how Edward is always watching Bella. He has a draw to her because of her blood which isn’t a factor in this story but this narrator seems to have a draw to this girl. The part that confused me was in the end where it says “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity and my eyes burned with anguish and anger” (5). What do you think that this means?
By: Lynn Schambow
ReplyDeleteIn the story of “The Dead” Gretta tells her husband Gabriel of a past love Michael Furey. Gabriel later after his wife is asleep sees Michael’s ghost. I think that Gabriel seeing this ghost after learning the story of Michael for the first time has a meaning of jealously. It says “He had never felt like that himself towards any women but he knew that such a feeling must be love” (38). I think that he was jealous that he’s wife had a love before him that was real and was romantic. He watched her sleeping a thought was how they had never lived together as man and wife. Michael’s ghost is a haunting to what love should be and how Gabriel will never have this love even with his wife. Gretta will always know and remember what real love feels like and that is because of Michael. I think that we see this all the time in life in movies and our personal lives. We all know how it feels to hear about stories of your significant other and who they were with before you. Sometimes you wonder if they felt more of a connection with them than you or if they compare them with you. I think that Gabriel wonders the same thing. He wonders if there is more to the story that his wife is not telling him. I think that the ghost says a lot about relationships at that time. They didn’t really marry for love and I think that this was a fear that they had thinking that they had felt real love and now they are just with them because they have to be. I wondered before hearing this story why Gabriel didn’t want to visit he’s homeland but wanted to explore new places why do you think that is?
By: Ashley Kreul
DeleteI like how you explain the idea of what love is to Gabriel with connecting it to how his wife is feeling, with the idea about first real love and that there is this idea of fear that Gabriel is showing, whether it be in his conversations or his posture and composure. I think in me reading the story "The Dead", I think the reason Gabriel travels to different places instead of going to visit his homeland is because he has insecurities and his way he explains his discomforts. He explains to Miss Ivors in his conversation about his homeland, "I'm sick of my own country, sick of it!" (15). When Miss Ivors asks "Why?", Gabriel doesnt answer and that shows the way in how he handles his past and discomforts and insecurities. I think that he doesn't want to go back to his homeland because it will just impact the pain and bring up Gretta's past more about Michael. When he says when explaining to Aunt Kate about their trip that Gretta got a dreadful cold (8). This "cold" could explain the hurt and the pain she endurs from losing her love Michael and settling for Gabriel. I feel like the reason Gabriel doesn't want to visit his homeland is because it will bring up his insecurities about his marriage and make him think of the past.
By: Lukas Wagner
ReplyDeleteWhen first reading James Joyce’s Abraby I found it very different, but yet having a lot of the same quality’s as many if the previous stories that we have read. The first major thing that I realized is that this story is based on a more urban Ireland than any of our last stories. There is no talk about what they do for a living but I get a feel that it is more factory work. I see this because they talk about playing in the streets and going to the bazaar, in all of our last stories. There was no playing in the streets because; they had all seemed to be working out in the fields or on the farm. To me this seems to paint more of a portrait of how Ireland is now and how their lifestyles have changed from what they once were. But yet I think it has some of the same qualities as the other stories that we have read. In many of our other stories we see how the men adore a women’s beauty we can see this when the boy talks about Mangan’s sister. “When she came out on the doorstep my heart leaped. I ran to the hall, sized all my books and followed her. I kept her brown figure always in my eye.”(1). He resembles a lot of other Irish men on adoring a women the one thing he seems to lack is the romantic part in my opinion because, he cannot get the nerve to talk to her. I did not clearly understand the end when he heard the voice was it the voice of the fairy he saw earlier or could it be the voice of Mangan’s sister talking to another guy making him crazy?
By Kate Bruegmann
DeleteI think this means that the narrator finds that he is not thinking straight because he is distracted by her beauty. He is more obsessed by her looks and being the man in love that he forgets who he really is. He had only one conversation with her, and to me that is not enough time to get to know who you are “in love” with. The fairy part of this story seems to her beauty. On some level he is tricked by how gorgeous she is. I think his oblivious is what he would call the fairy part of this love spell the narrator is under. Is this how she teases him to like her? Does she put him under a type of fairy spell? He is oblivious of her personality and her life and does not seem to even take that into consideration. I do not understand how that can even be thought of when thinking about the rest of your life with someone. The man says “The blind was pulled down to within an inch of sash so that I could not be seen. When she came out on the door step my heart leaped. I ran to the hall, seized my books. She only said and followed her” ‘(1.) He follows her everywhere and cannot get her out of his mind. I would think that he is more of a stalker than he is being charming and romantic.
By: Lukas Wagner
ReplyDeleteAddressing Kate’s question I think that the women had the quality of a fairy but also a man in love. I took it as the women was a fairy by the way he described her as he was talking to her. “The light from the lamp opposite our door caught the white curve of her neck, lit up her hair that rested there and, falling, lit up the hand upon the failing. It fell over one side of her dress and caught the white border of a petticoat, just visible as she stood at ease” (2). In this quote I seen her more as a fairy because he describes her as a beautiful lady and that she is wearing a dress as is many of the other fairies in the stories that we read. The one thing that really stuck out to me is how when describing her he brought up the color white, in many of our other stories when describing a fairy they are usually wearing white or at least the color white is brought up. The one part that made me think it was more a man in love was when he says “Her brother and two other boys were fighting for their caps and I was alone at the railings” (2). Thus showing that the women he was seeing was Mangan’s sister, because he said her brother was fighting in the street referring to Mangan. In my opinion I think the women shows a lot of traits of fairy which makes me think that she was indeed a fairy.
By: Ashley Kreul
ReplyDeleteWomen in James Joyce’s stories are described as figures of men’s affection and power. We see that the women are weak and portrayed as victims in a male dominated world. They’re lonely and longing for love and escape, freedom and to have their own say. In Araby, we see that the woman is viewed as an image of affection and romance. “Her dress swung as she moved her body and the soft rope of her hair tossed side to side” (1). “When she came out on the doorstep my heart leaped” (1). “Her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance” (1). These depictions of the women show that there is a longing for love but yet when he says he would buy her something when he leaves, he can’t find anything that is suitable for her. I feel like the woman doesn’t have a say in anything, she is like powerless, but what is the silver bracelet on her wrist resemble? Could it mean she is a prisoner of her own home and that’s what makes her powerless? The depictions of women carry over into The Dead, by James Joyce with the women being powerless and under a man’s control. It kind of seems like Joyce has a hatred for women in his story The Dead. The idea of the story and women is that they are in the background while the men are the superior ones. The women have say but only when the men make it so they can speak like with a question. If they do talk some of their ideas are rejected or ignored and what is Joyce’s purpose on this? Women are plain and not as suitable for the men as on page 29, the way Gabriel symbolizes his wife Gretta as being a lady from a painting and what that would symbolize. They way Gabriel is describing Gretta into what he expects or wants her to be is a good idea to think about. The women in these stories are subjects to men and the question is why, why can’t there be an equilibrium between the two? What is the purpose of this writer flipping the role and having women powerless in this story and in others we read having them be powerful and the main role?
By Kate Bruegmann
DeleteI have to agree with you Ashley, as to the woman in “Araby.” I find it was a way of society at this time of their life. It is hard to grasp that time because we now live our life with more free will to what women want. Personally, I do not think this woman was completely powerless, but domesticated. She had to take care of her brothers. She was not able to make the choices for herself though. It seems like in this story the men choose to be with the women. Not exactly like an arranged marriage, but where the women have to choice. I think the narrator is one who found that he was not thinking straight and was distracted by this women and her beauty. At the end the story the narrator says, “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anger and anger (5.) Is this a way where he was lost in her beauty, or does he just want her as a prize and trying to win her with possessions. If he does win her with possessions doesn’t she have a choice? Saying that she may have more power than we think she does. I think on some the women control what really goes on. The narrators aunt asks her husband, “Can’t you give him the money and let him go? You’ve kept him late enough as it is.” She does not initially go out and say give him money like she has the power, but she initiate the question to do so
I can see a lot of you aptly working through some of the depictions of women in Joyce's two stories, but I feel that Ashley really provides the most nuanced reading when it comes to exploring women's agency and "power" in his work. In the beginning of "Araby," we see the young boy obsessing over Mangan's sister, constructing her as this mythic, fairy-like being. He is, as Kate suggests above, a "man in love," and just as we see in works like Twilight, which Lynn offers above as an example, the young boy (and Gabriel, as well, to be sure) places the young woman on a sort of pedestal. They are so enraptured by them, but they do not *know* them--the inner-workings and secrets of their minds, their personal histories and struggles. I like how Ashley brought up the example of the way in which Gabriel sees Gretta on the staircase and immediately labels her image--"Distant Music he would call the picture if he were a painter" (29). By "naming" her, he further distances himself from her, in a way, setting her apart from his reality. The young boy in "Araby" had obsessed over this bizarre and his "quest" to find a "token" for his lady-love, but in the end, what happens? He's too late, the bizarre is a bit of a let-down, and what do you think he realizes in the end about himself and his love for Mangan's sister? Similarly, what is Gabriel's epiphany at the end of "The Dead" about himself and Gretta? ~Colleen
ReplyDeleteBy: Lynn Schambow
DeleteIn the end of “Araby” we see that the young man is too late to end up with his “love” but it helps him realize something about himself. I think that he realizes that he is obsessed with the idea of love and having that perfect women and being in love with her. He just met her and without even talking to her he wants her to be near all the time and never out of site. He sees that he is becoming a monster stating “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity and my eyes burned with anguish and anger” (5). He stopped caring about the actual person that this young girl is and is just into the way she looks the vanity as the reading states. I think that this does make him angry and is not the kind of man he should be. Likewise Gabriel in “The Dead” has an epiphany about his marriage. He sees that he really doesn’t know his own wife. Their marriage was never about knowing and loving each other. He sees this because of the way she talks about her first love Michael Furey. On page 39 it talks about how Gabriel felt humiliated because he didn’t know about Michael and her secret life with him. In the end it tells about the snow falling, I think this is like his marriage falling apart and how it has been covered up from reality all these years.
By: Ashley Kreul
DeleteIn the end of "Araby" the young man as he goes to the bazaar he realizes he can't find anything to buy for Mangan's sister and if he did it wouldn't be suitable enough for her. He finds teacups and pots but nothing that would be suitable for the sister's liking. He sees that the bazaar is closing down and that it's failing his expectations to buy the sister a gift and if he didn't come back with something, the sister would lose interest and it would be too late. He just simply gives up on buying anything and that is basically saying like he is giving up on love. On page 5, that could be saying that he is angry for giving up and no one will look at him in the ways of love. The idea about Gabriel in "The Dead" has an ephiphany about how his love with his wife has been during the years. The idea of this is that he realizes that he never knew about Michael and that it seems like they just settled for eachother and there was no love. On page 35: "Perhaps she had felt the impetuous desire that was in him, and then the yielding mood had come upon her. Now that she had fallen to him so easily, he wondered why he had been so diffident (35). This could explain the reasoning of being not her first love but the love she's settling for and that makes him realize that his marriage has been a settling idea and it could be no more.
By: Lukas Wagner
ReplyDeleteAfter reading Araby and The Dead by James Joyce I realized some similarities. A part that really stuck out to be important to me in the end of The Dead was the last paragraph when Gabriel is thinking to himself after realizing that he was not his wife’s first love. “Yes the newspapers were right: snow was 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” (39). Showing that Gabriel’s wife had a real true love before him and that he and wife have never had true love. When he talks about the snow falling and the descent of their last end he is talking about his marriage is falling apart now knowing that his marriage was never a true loving marriage it was just something that they made work. I think that the end of Araby also resembles the same sort of thing the boy was obsessed with Mangan’s sister and at the end he realizes that he will never get her and it’s too late and possible that she was never his true love anyway. Both these stories seem to end the same way, both end up losing the person that they thought they loved, but in the end find out that they really didn’t know anything about the women and that they were not each other’s true love.
I think Kate really touches on something significant in both stories, which is the way in which women were very much at the mercy of the men in their lives--men, who, as we have discussed here today, know very little about what is really going on beyond what they *choose* to see. Reading "The Dead" again after several years, I was struck by the minor character Lily and her brief exchange with Gabriel. Gabriel attempts to joke with her about finding a boyfriend, but she retorts bitterly, "The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you" (6). He is trying to treat her like a little girl, but it's clear that Lily has had some sort of romantic (perhaps even sexual?) initiation already. Gabriel is just too blind and awkward to see that and keeps pressing money on her when it's clear that she finds the entire conversation uncomfortable. There's another exchange I noticed on page 18 where the party discusses the beauty of Aunt Kate's voice and how she was "thrown away in that choir" (meaning the Catholic church choir). Mary Jane says that it was all for "the honour of God," and Aunt Kate retaliates, "I know all about the honour of God, Mary Jane, but I think it's not at all honourable for the pope to turn out the choirs that have slaved there all their lives an put little whipper-snappers of boys over their heads." Apparently, Aunt Kate's position was taken away from her because she is a woman, and she was replaced by some incompetent younger man. Here, we see the way in which the Catholic Church had such a profound effect on women's lives in Ireland. Remember that being "Irish" became conflated with being Catholic, and one increasingly could not be one without the other. As we explore Irish women writers next Monday, consider how much of these women's works are a sort of attack on the patriarchy of the Catholic Church within Ireland.
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