← The History of Literature![663 James Joyce's "The Dead" Part 1 [Ad-Free Encore Edition] — The History of Literature cover](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmegaphone.imgix.net%2Fpodcasts%2F7b1b0608-0ffd-11e8-b20f-bbbb64158369%2Fimage%2Fuploads_2F1593209082240-p4u278lci1e-275beae2da7edda326775394b3d990c8_2Fhistory-of-literature.jpg%3Fixlib%3Drails-4.3.1%26max-w%3D3000%26max-h%3D3000%26fit%3Dcrop%26auto%3Dformat%2Ccompress&w=1920&q=75)
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:02]
Jack Wilson
The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the podglomerate Network and Lit Hub Radio. Hello everyone, this is Jack in 2024. We have a trip back to the archives today for you. Part one of our two part episode on the Dead by James Joyce, which we brought to you in December of 2017. In that episode I listened to some music and talked about my own Christmas traditions in Wisconsin with my grandparents and then we dove into the great James Joyce masterpiece, reading the entire story plus some commentary. The full episode is in the archives if you want to hear the music and the Christmas traditions in Wisconsin and all of that stuff. For this encore edition we are presenting just the story and the commentary ad free. Enjoy the Dead Lily, the caretaker's daughter, was literally run off her feet. Hardly had she brought one gentleman into the little pantry behind the office on the ground floor and helped him off with his overcoat than the wheezy hall door bell clanged again and she had to scamper along the bare hallway to let in another guest. It was well for her she had not to attend to the ladies also, but Ms. Kate and Ms. Julia had thought of that and had converted the bathroom upstairs into a ladies dressing room. Miss Kate and Miss Julia were there, gossiping and laughing and fussing, walking after each other to the head of the stairs, peering down over the banisters and calling down to Lily to ask her who had come. It was always a great affair, the Mrs. Morkan's annual dance. Everybody who knew them came to it. Members of the family, old friends of the family, the members of Julia's choir, any of Kate's pupils that were grown up enough, and even some of Mary Jane's pupils too. Never once had it fallen flat. For years and years it had gone off in splendid style as long as anyone could remember, ever since Kate and Julia, after the death of their brother Pat, had left the house in stony batter and taken Mary Jane, their only niece, to live with them in the dark gaunt house on Ussher's island, the upper part of which they had rented from Mr. Fulham, the corn factor on the ground floor. That was a good 30 years ago, if it was a day. Mary Jane, who was then a little girl in short clothes, was now the main prop of the household, for she had the organ in Haddington Road. She had been through the academy and gave a pupils concert every year in the upper room of the ancient concert rooms. Many of her pupils belonged to better class families on the Kingston and Dalkey line, old as they were. Her aunts also did Their share. Julia, though she was quite gray, was still the leading soprano in Adam and Eve's. And Kate, being too feeble to go about much, gave music lessons to beginners on the old square piano in the back room. Lily, the caretaker's daughter, did housemaid's work for them. Though their life was modest, they believed in eating well. The best of everything, diamond bone sirloins, three shilling tea and the best bottled stout. But Lily seldom made a mistake in the orders so that she got on well with her three mistresses. They were fussy, that was all. But the only thing they would not stand was back answers. Okay, there we are. You see where we are now? We're not in Dublin. We're outside the city. We're here with Lily, the caretaker's daughter, who's our entry point, but not a major character. This is a narrator who's swooping in to set the stage. In a grand, sweeping description of this house and the inhabitants of it, we hear that Lily is run off her feet. Why? This is a big night for the house. Well, it's not a big night. It's a big night for this house. It's not a presidential inauguration. It's not an ambassador's visit. This isn't the king coming to dinner. But it's a big night for these three, for Julia and Kate, the sisters, and Mary Jane, the niece. They're musicians, music teachers, and they've been having this dancing party, this holiday event, for 30 years. Lily, the caretaker's daughter, helped them put it on. Can you see where I was drawn to this after I told you about my years in Wisconsin? This is about traditional. It's about small town traditions. In a sense, I had a tradition too. 18 or 20 years of heading up to my grandparents for the holidays, and they had a big meal and cookies and presents under the tree. We drove there through heavy snow, on icy roads. Sometimes we couldn't miss it. It was a tradition. It was the big day for that house. For the three women hosting in our story, it's a night of music and fellowship and a few potential problems. Let me read the third paragraph. Everything to this point has been setting. Now we start to see our main characters and the plot, such as it is, starts to emerge. This continues from Lily seldom made a mistake in the orders so that she got on well with her three mistresses. They were fussy, that was all. But the only thing they would not stand was back answers. The third paragraph begins, of course they had good reason to be fussy on such a night. And then it was long after 10 o'clock and yet there was no sign of Gabriel and his wife. Besides, they were dreadfully afraid that Freddy Maylands might show up screwed. They would not wish for worlds that any of Mary Jane's pupils should see him under the influence. And when he was like that, it was sometimes very hard to manage him. Freddy Maylands always came late, but they wondered what could be keeping Gabriel. And that was what brought them every two minutes to the banisters to ask Lily, had Gabriel or Freddy come? Okay, so now we're three paragraphs in and we see some potential problems. One is Freddy, Freddie Maylan's, who might show up drunk, which could ruin the party, and yet they invite him every year anyway because it's a tradition and because this is a community. And that's what communities have, bad and the ugly. And the other potential drama is they don't know where Gabriel is. What could be keeping him? It's not like him to be late. Is that our drama? Are we looking for our drama here? We're a whole page in. Shouldn't a short story writer give us our drama at this point? Freddy, Gabriel. A different story might revolve around those stories. The hints we're getting here. Maybe Gabriel's been in an accident, maybe he'll show up with bad news. Maybe he'll be drunk this year, shocking everyone. But no, this isn't going for that kind of drama. The drama here is almost. It's almost all introspection. So let's meet Gabriel. We're quickly put out of our anxiety as Gabriel arrives in the very next paragraph. You might ask, well, why even have this miniature drama of him arriving late if we meet him in the very next paragraph? Why waste that space? What good does that do the narrative to set up a question like, where's Gabriel? We're waiting for Gabriel. And then answer it so quickly. Well, it tells us who Gabriel is. It tells us how he fits in this family. He's the safe one. He's the problem solver. He's the reliable nephew. He's. I saw this as I started to grow older. In fact, I felt it myself. Not long ago we had a family reunion of sorts. And my oldest niece can drive now, and my oldest nephew is big and strong, young and healthy. We had to haul all this stuff out of a car and into the house. Some of it was quite heavy. My brother in law said that his son, my nephew, could take the heavy stuff. Leave that for him. Let him take that. And it was a reminder to me of when I moved into college and my mom asked me if I could take the heavy stuff because she was worried about my father's back. You don't feel this when you're 8 or 10 or 12. The grownups are the ones who do everything, and they're strong and capable and in charge. But then you're 16 or 18 or 20, and suddenly you feel it. You feel a difference. Oh, we need to bring in firewood. I'm better at that than my grandfather. When did that happen? Oh, we need to climb a ladder for something. Well, here I am. When you're my age and the next generation is coming up, you feel it, too. Right now, I can sense the relief when I show up. Oh, Jack's here. Someone who can program the television or fix the wireless or carry that heavy bag of salt down to the basement to fill the water softener. Someone who can straighten out these bills and call the cable company to find out why we're being charged twice every month. Someone to look after the bank statements. Someone to climb into the attic to get stuff or go up under the roof to clean out the gutters. You feel that here I am. This is my role now, not the role I envisioned when I was seven. But time passes, and you sense when the next generation is coming up, too, and you start to rely on them as well. Oh, you can drive to that. You can go buy that at the store. You can cook that. Oh, you can do that. Gabriel is playing that role for his aunts. He's here to give a speech, to carve the goose, to basically be the steady person that everyone in the house will rely on. And I recognized in Gabriel my grandfather, once upon a time, when he was young, and my father throughout my childhood, and now me. But even when I first read the story, I knew it was my destiny to be a Gabriel. Safe, reliable, a little boring. Perhaps. That's who I was raised to be. Gabriel, as we'll see, has some other thoughts, too. He writes literature reviews. He dabbles in higher thoughts, but he's not a poet. He's not Joyce exiling himself to the continent. He's the one who stayed. He's the person Joyce wasn't, the one who stayed where he was and took care of things and made himself useful and kept the traditions going. Joyce disrupted that life. He left his mother. And even when he returned on her deathbed, he couldn't bring himself to take communion, even though his mother begged him to. I think we know where Gabriel would have been on that one I'm looking ahead here. You haven't really met Gabriel yet, but let me just tell you, he's the one who would have been there. He'd have taken it because he would believe that that was something that needed to be done. He could accommodate himself if he needed to, to make a dying woman happy, to bring her a little bit of comfort. What does that mean for the Gabriel Conroys of the world? It means you don't live in Paris. You don't become a famous author. You don't live a kind of burning life. Your fire is the flame of a candle, a steady, guiding light. Joyce must have seen that this was the kind of person to be admired, to be valued, the sort of glue that holds the community together in a beautiful way. Gabriel's a beautiful person, but it's perhaps not the person that Joyce believed that he himself would be or emulate in his own life. So let's read about Gabriel. That's what comes next in our story. There are several big things that happen in this first description. Start with one of them, which is that we go into Gabriel's head. We weren't in Lily's head. We saw things through her eyes, sort of. We saw that she was busy. We saw that the ants were calling down to her because they were so concerned. That was telling us that this was a big night, a big event for this house. We saw just enough through Lily and her being run off her feet that she. We saw just enough to realize how important the night was and how much everyone was worried about Freddy and how much everyone was counting on Gabriel. But then when Gabriel arrives, we slide right into his consciousness, and we realize that he is our protagonist. We'll be seeing things along with him and feeling things that he feels. And we'll take on his concerns and his minor triumphs and ultimately all his revelations. By the way, did you notice now that I'm talking about how we started with Lily and we switched to Gabriel? We move into Gabriel's consciousness. We were never really inside Lily's consciousness, even though we sort of were. Did you notice what Joyce did with this? He starts out, lily, the caretaker's daughter. And then when he says her name later, after a couple of paragraphs, he says, lily, the caretaker's daughter again. Why would he repeat that? What her job was, what her role was a mere page or two later? I think it was his effortless way, his sneaky way, his invisible way of signaling to the reader on an almost unconscious level. Yes, Lily was the first one I mentioned. But Just because her name began the story, don't think that we're going to spend time with her. Don't be confused. We're not going to be in her mind anyway. Keep your distance. You need to be ready to dive in when I want you. When I want you to dive in. We're going to dive into Gabriel's mind. Joyce is truly a master at this kind of thing. We go where he wants us to go. So let's get to Gabriel. We see at least three big things. First, I want you to listen for these three things. First, he's careful, almost to a fault. Second, he's a decent guy who tries to do the right thing, tries to be dutiful, even when it's not exactly how he feels. You see him mustering up his energy to be polite, to be helpful, to be generous. And third, he and his wife Greta have entered into that bickering stage, affectionate but not madly in love, where that phase where everything gets washed away by passion. Passion is there, but it's domesticated now. Instead, we get a lot of mildly irritated comments as they travel through the world together, crossing one another's paths, stepping on each other's toes as married couples do. Listen for all those things. Oh, and listen for the snow, which is another central character for our story. Freddy Maylands came late, but they wondered what could be keeping Gabriel, and that was what brought them every two minutes to the banisters to ask Lily, had Gabriel or Freddy come. Oh, Mr. Conroy, said Lily to Gabriel when she opened the door for him. Ms. Kate and Ms. Julia thought you were never coming. Good night, Mrs. Conroy. I. I'll engage. They did, said Gabriel, but they forgot that my wife here takes three mortal hours to dress herself. He stood on the mat, scraping the snow from his galoshes, while Lily led his wife to the foot of the stairs and called out, miss Kate. Here's Mrs. Conroy. Kate and Julia came toddling down the dark stairs at once. Kate and Julia came tunneling down the dark stairs at once. Both of them kissed. Gabriel's wife said she must be perished alive, and asked, was Gabriel with her? Here I am, as right as the mail, Aunt Kate. Go on up. I'll follow, called out Gabriel from the dark. He continued scraping his feet vigorously while the three women went upstairs laughing to the ladies dressing room. A light fringe of snow lay like a cape on the shoulders of his overcoat and like toe caps on the toes of his galoshes. And as the buttons of his overcoat slipped with a squeaking noise through the snow stiffened frieze. A cold, fragrant air from out of doors, escaped from crevices and folds. Is it snowing again, Mr. Conroy? Asked Lily. She had preceded him into the pantry to help him off with his overcoat. Gabriel smiled at the three syllables she had given his surname and glanced at her. She was a slim growing girl, pale in complexion and with hay colored hair. The gas in the pantry made her look still paler. Gabriel had known her when she was a child and used to sit on the lowest step nursing a rag doll. Yes, Lily, he answered, and I think we're in for a night of it. He looked up at the pantry ceiling, which was shaking with the stamping and shuffling of feet on the floor above, listened for a moment to the piano, and then glanced at the girl who was folding his overcoat carefully at the end of a shelf. Tell me, Lily, he said in a friendly tone, do you still go to school? Oh, no, sir, she answered. I'm done schooling this year and more. Oh, then, said Gabriel gaily, I suppose we'll be going to your wedding one of these fine days with your young man, eh? The girl glanced back at him over her shoulder and said with great bitterness, the men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you. Gabriel colored as if he felt he had made a mistake and without looking at her, kicked off his galoshes and flicked actively with his muffler at his patent leather shoes. He was a stout, tallish young man, the high color of his cheeks pushed upwards even to his forehead, where it scattered itself in a few formless patches of pale red, and on his hairless face there scintillated restlessly the polished lenses and the bright gilt rims of the glasses which screened his delicate and restless eyes. His glossy black hair was parted in the middle and brushed in a long curve behind his ears, where it curled slightly beneath the groove left by his hat. When he had flicked luster into his shoes, he stood up and pulled his waistcoat down more tightly on his plump body. Then he took a coin rapidly from his pocket. Oh, Lily, he said, thrusting it into her hands. It's Christmas time, isn't it just? Here's a little. He walked rapidly towards the door. Oh no, sir. Cried the girl, following him. Really, sir, I wouldn't take it. Christmas time. Christmas time, said Gabriel, almost trotting to the stairs and waving his hand to her in deprecation. The girl, seeing that he had gained the stairs, called out after him. Well, thank you, sir. He waited outside the drawing room door until the waltz should finish, listening to the skirts that swept against it and to the shuffling of feet. He was still discomposed by the girl's bitter and sudden retort. It had cast a gloom over him, which he tried to dispel by arranging his cuffs and the bows of his tie. Then he took from his waistcoat pocket a little paper and glanced at the headings he had made for his speech. He was undecided about the lines from Robert Browning, for he feared they would be above the heads of his hearers. Some quotation that they could recognize from Shakespeare or from the melodies would be better. The indelicate clacking of the men's heels and the shuffling of their soles reminded him that their grade of culture differed from his. He would only make himself ridiculous by quoting poetry to them, which they could not understand. They would think that he was airing his superior education. He would fail with them just as he had failed with the girl in the pantry. He had taken up a wrong tone. His whole speech was a mistake from first to last, an utter failure. Just then his aunts and his wife came out from the ladies dressing room. His aunts were two small, plainly dressed old women, and Julia was an inch or 2 inch or so the taller. Her hair, drawn low over the tops of her ears, was gray and gray. Also with darker shadows was her large flaccid face. Though she was stout in build and stood erect, her slow eyes and parted lips gave her the appearance of a woman who did not know where she was or where she was going. Aunt Kate was more vivacious. Her face, healthier than her sister's, was all puckers and creases like a shriveled red apple, and her hair, braided in the same old fashioned way, had not lost its ripe nut color. They both kissed Gabriel. Frankly. He was their favorite nephew, the son of their dead elder sister, Ellen, who had married T.J. conroy of the Porton Docks. Grete tells me you're not going to take a cab back to Monkston tonight, Gabriel, said Aunt Kate. No, said Gabriel, turning to his wife. We had quite enough of that last year, hadn't we? Don't you remember, Aunt Kate? What a cold Greta got out of it, cab windows rattling all the way and the east wind blowing in after we passed Marian. Very jolly it was. Greta caught a dreadful cold. Aunt Kate frowned severely and nodded her head at every word. Quite right, Gabriel, quite right, she said. You can't be too careful. But as for Greta there, said Gabriel, she'd walk home in the snow if she were let. Mrs. Conroy laughed. Don't mind him, Aunt Kate, she said. He's really an awful bother, what with green shades for Tom's eyes at night and and making him do the dumb bells and forcing Eva to eat the stirabout. The poor child, and she simply hates the sight of it. Oh, but you'll never guess what he makes me wear now. She broke out into a peal of laughter and glanced at her husband, whose admiring and happy eyes had been wandering from her dress to her face and hair. The two aunts laughed heartily too, for Gabriel's solicitude was a standing joke with them. Galoshes, said Mrs. Conroy. That's the latest. Whenever it's wet underfoot, I must put on my galoshes. Tonight even he wanted me to put them on, but I wouldn't. The next thing he'll buy me will be a diving suit. Let's stop there. Did you hear that? We have our man Gabriel, who accidentally provokes Lily into an outburst about men, which makes him feel bad because he's a decent guy. He didn't mean to bring up these bad memories by asking her if they'd be coming to her wedding soon, and he feels bad about that, just like a good Midwesterner. I'm calling him that, even though he's obviously a Dubliner. He presses a tip into her hand, trying to be decent, showing his generosity. Christmas time, Christmas time he's got that kind of bravado, that kind of bluff nature, that cheeriness. He's worried about his speech because he's careful. He worries that he might insult his audience because he's decent. But he's also a little frustrated. One senses he's a little bit of an underachiever, as careful people often are. He calls out, coming, coming, Aunt Kate, to make sure his aunts feel his energetic presence, his good nature. And then he admires his wife. His eyes look at her with admiration as she's teasing him about being so cautious and making her wear galoshes. He's also slightly bickering with her because he's caring and nurturing and protective. He doesn't want her to become sick. It's snowing out, after all. Greta would walk home in the snow if you'd let her. That's what decent and cautious people do. They care about their loved ones, and she's mostly good natured about it. But even so, even so, she says, he'd make me wear a diving suit. The next thing after that which I didn't read was. Gabriel laughed nervously and patted his tie reassuringly. And then he gets a little bit irritated that they keep going on about the galoshes. And he says, oh, yeah, it's nothing really. But Greta thinks it's very funny. These are their roles. The caring one, Gabriel, who urges his wife to wear galoshes, and the wife, Greta, who would maybe prefer to have her feet a little less covered up, who would walk home in the snow if you'd let her. Maybe she would prefer to have her feet a little less encumbered by galoshes, a little less clunky, little more free. It's all very subtle, very realistic, presented in a way that makes you feel like you're just watching two people arrive at a party, just a couple arriving at a party. But as we'll see, Joyce has more in mind. All those themes I mentioned, all these character traits are going to return in part two, as is the staircase, as is the snow. Did you hear the arrival of the snow? What did we have? We had the scraping the snow from his galoshes. A careful man, right? First time we see the snow is in connection with those careful galoshes that everyone is teasing Gabriel about, about demanding that people wear. And then he continues scraping his feet vigorously. I think that's the first adverb we get, the first ly. Adverb. We get the first two pages. Scraping his feet vigorously. Joyce, like so many excellent authors, uses verbs to carry the weight of the action. Once in a while, he drops in the perfect adverb. Here we get scraping his feet vigorously, just what a careful person would do, right? The others go upstairs, but he takes a little more time to scrape his feet, make sure he doesn't track in the snow. And then we hear Joyce's. I would say this is the first real writerly description. A light fringe of snow lay like a cape on the shoulders of his overcoat, and like toe caps on the toes of his galoshes. You can see the snow there, right? The way it just clings to his shoulders and the tips of his shoes. And then we get this, which is very precise and very beautiful. It's unexpected. It's Joyce at his finest, before he tips into puns and wordplay. This is about as good as Joyce gets, as far as physical description, as the buttons of his overcoat slipped with a squeaking noise through the snow, stiffened frieze, a cold, fragrant air from out of doors, escaped from crevices and folds. It's so musical. It's really just a single sentence. I'll read the whole thing again. Just listen to the music of this A light fringe of snow lay like a cape on the shoulders of his overcoat and like toe caps on the toes of his goloshes and as the buttons of his overcoat slipped with a squeaking noise through the snow stiffened frieze a cold fragrant air from out of doors escaped from crevices and folds the marvelous passage giving us the snow and yes, yes the snow will come back too and so will we. There you go, a little taste of the old theme song at the end there. This is Jack in 2024 again. I hope you enjoyed that look at the opening of the Dead. We'll be back tomorrow with a summary of the middle and the conclusion brought to you once again ad free for your Christmas Eve listening. I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for joining me and listening and we will see you next time.