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Maureen hema, i loved your summary of and ideas about _the sisters_. very cool and many of your own thoughts about the story have crossed my mind as well. (vidya, i will also respond to yours -- i am very desperately behind on my mail right now! :) the thing hema that your posting brings to mind for me, hema, is one aspect of joyce that i find very compelling -- and that is, his ambiguousness, his elusiveness. he does not tell the reader obviously what is wrong with the priest; he does not tell us what is odd or amiss about the conversations in the story; he does not tell us why the boy feels freed nor why he has that dream, nor what it means. all of this is left up to us to sift thru and interpret and analyze as we may. so what does that say (to me :)?? it says that to joyce the specifics of the problems and issues are not really the issue he cares about. he means to imply that there are issues, but he wants us to think about the causes, not necessarily the specific outcomes. that is at least my feeling as of right now...so many various interpretations of _the sisters_ can be correct, and yet! the central issues (societal ills for example) remain unchanged... we see these issues still prevailing today in irish culture -- divorce was just made legal two years ago and under much controversy and conflict...and even under the new law, couples must be separated and wait for 5 (or is ten?) years before the divorce will be finalized... the irish (like some indian cultures?) are very traditional and very much heart and soul bound to tradition and to keeping traditions alive -- this can be good and it can be bad, depending on perspective and depending on outcomes... :-) that is the thing i love so much about this story, besides its hardhitting rebelliousness, its ambiguousness...like an impressionist painting, say some of monet's late works, the ones he did when he was losing his eyesight are some of his most colorful, most beautiful and most elusive...such as his late japanese bridge, have u seen this? i love it so much more than the early (very green and very famous) one he painted... i'll be caught up on my mail shortly and be back with more comments. hema, please do also share your thoughts on araby if you'd like to. :)) |
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