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I want to thank you all for the food you have provided for thoughts and if I continue on to Grace it is only because of the pressure of time. (Kiri, your suggestions have been noted and necessary changes will be made to the website soon.) Reading Dubliners was smooth sailing till about the Ivy Day. Now comes Grace! Just a foretaste of what is waiting for us when we continue on to The Portrait and then on to Ulysses. I read, reread and reread the story, finally went on to read the many pages of notes put together by Terence Brown and went back to the read the story again. Here are my initial thoughts about the story. It starts with a small accident in a pub, where Mr. Kernan has fallen down, "his cloths are smeared with filth and ooze of the floor, his eyes are closed, a thin stream of blood trickles from the corner of his mouth." Two people come to assist him, nobody knows who he is, the police is called, a constable comes and behaves like one, just before he constable can really get tough, Mr. Kernan is rescued by Mr. Power, a friend of his, who was at the far end of the bar unknown of course to Mr. Kernan. Nice name, I felt at this point, Power indeed! Joyce never says what exactly happened which led to this acccident. Mr. Power brings Kernen home, he is put to bed. Mr. Kernan has bit off a part of his tongue when he fell. This sentence is a very important one in this story. Meanwhile "The children - two girls and a boy, conscious of their father's helplessness and of their mother's absence, began some horseplay with him. He was surprised at their manners and at their accents and his brow grew thoughtful." This is something else which is never resolved in the story. What is the background to the friendship between Mr. Kernan, "a commercial traveller of the old school" and Mr. Power, "a much younger man, who was employed in the Royal Irish Constabulary Office in Dublin Castle." Obviously they also belong to different social strata as is shown by his "brows growing thoughtful"! Mrs. Kernan comes down. She makes it quite clear, in a friendly manner alright, that there is no money at home to entertain guests, and Mr. Power declines her offer of sending the boy "to Fogarty's at the corner", and leaves her promising her, "We'll make a new man of him." There is little here about the character of Mr. Kernan, but I loved the way how clearly, in very few words, Joyce makes this person and her life come alive. Joyce says this of her: "She was an active, practical woman of middle age. Not long before she had celebrated her silver wedding and renewed her intimancy with her husband by waltzing with him to Mr. Power's accompaniment.... Three weeks after her marriage, she had found a wife's life irksome and, later on, when she was beginning to find it unbearable, she had become a mother. ...for twenty-five years she had kept house shrewdly for her husband..." Joyce says, in just ten words, volumes about how the married life of the couple was - renewed her intimancy with her husband by waltzing with him! But what is not clear to me is whether she deliberately become a mother when she found being a wife unbearable or whether motherhood was a further link in the chain which bound her to her cage. But the main part of the story is yet to come. Mr. Power returns after a couple of days. This time he has come with two other friends, Mr. Cunningham and Mr. McCoy. They are in league with Mrs. Kernan. The aim is to make a new man of Kernan. How do they do it? By making a retreat (= to retire for a few days of prayer, reflection and special instruction, usually in the company of others / From the notes of Terence Brown). This is to take place under Father Purdon, and it is for business men. Then follows the most incredible and daunting conversation between the four friends about the religious scenario in Dublin. And Brown writes that most of the talk taking place, most of he opinion expressed is factually wrong. That shows that none of the four friends who are later joined by Mr. Fogarty, a modest grocer, is a great intellectual. Kernan agrees to make a foursome with the friends in this retreat, but he puts his foot down when Mr. Cunningham says, "All we have to do is to stand up with lighted candles in our hands and renew our baptismal vows." Kernan, a born protestant, who turned a catholic at the time of his marriage does not want to do anything with this "magic-lantern business." The retreat starts with an assembly in the Jesuit Church. It is full of business men - I thought that is how a mafia gathering in a church in Sicily might be. Mr. Purdon preaches. His leit-sentence for the evening is "For the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light. Wherefore make unto yourselves friends out of the mammon of iniquity so that when you "die" they may receive you into everlasting dwellings." Father Purdon has substituted the word "die" for the original word "fail". He is like their spirital accountant, he says. He assures the congregation that "Jesus Christ was not a hard taskmaster. He understood our little failings ... But if, as might happen, there were some discrepancies, to admit the truth, to be frank and say like a man: - well, I have looked into my accounts. I find this wrong and this wrong. But, with God's grace, I will rectify this and this. I will set right my accounts." The story ends with these words. Obviously Joyce is making fun of the entire concept of Church, confession, grace, etc. Father purdon assures the business men of the grace of god. What ensures this grace is not explicitly said. The story does not say what these business men incl. Mr. Kernan would have confessed. As I understand the story, it is not the intention of Joyce to show what had happened to Kernan and to show whether he turned a new lead. Joyce intention here seems to me just to make a mockery of the whole business of obtaining such grace and also to show how little is known among the common people about the church and its wards. The choice of the name Purdon itself is a mockery. Purdon Street in central Dublin just north of the river was at the heart of the red-light district at the time this story is set. To understand what is happening and to really appreciate it, I feel, one needs to know quite a bit, I felt, about the irish christianity, about irish history and its language. I know none well :-( Joyce uses quite a few slangs and irish words to pepper this conversation. And many of the characters which are in this story are to be met in other stories of Dubliners and later in other works of Joyce. In one sentence, this is no Araby, guys! Do tell me what you think of this story. Chandra |
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