Story of mature life

A Little Cloud

Importance of the theme of marriage in this first story of ‘mature life’. Stanislaus Joyce went as far as to state that ‘A Little Cloud’ ought to be read as ‘nothing more’ than a simple story about matrimony, ‘with the figure of a successful and impenitent bachelor in it to cause discord and cast a little cloud over married life’(in which case, the title comes to mean the very reverse of what we suggested in the paragraph devoted to the ‘setting’-but Joyce liked phrases with double entendre).

Counterparts

Robert Scholes remarks that ’’’Counterparts’’ offers us, in its title and its plan, a major clue to the whole structure of Dubliners. The title of this story suggests both the harmonious balance of counterpointed musical parts and the anonymous interchangeability of cogs in a great machine. In the story itself, Mr Alleyne bullies the shiftless Farrington and Farrington bullies the hapless Tom. The Farringtons-father and son-are counterparts as unlovely victims. But Farrington and Mr Alleyne are counterparts as abusers of authority. And beyond this story, the brutal Farrington’s return to his wifeless home and whining son is the counterpart of Little Chandler’s encounter with his tiny son.. ... Similarly, Gallaher, in ‘A Little Cloud’, is related to Weathers in ‘Counterparts’, representing an alien London world which challenges and in some sense defeats Dublin (as the Englishman Routh defeats Jimmy Doyle in ‘After the Race’).

Clay

The importance of ‘Clay’ may well lie elsewhere. It is, in the section devoted to ‘mature life’, the first study in sterility (the second being ‘A Painful Case’), the sterility of humility and celibacy. Maria is in love with herself (see the mirror scene) and her state of innocence; she refuses to see the world as it is (that is, she mistakes condescension for kindness) and ignores her vital impulses, particularly sexual, her refusal and willing ignorance being conveyed through the simple-mindedness of the vision and the style (which are Maria’s throughout the story) and through her laughter, blushings and omissions.

A Painful Case

A mock love-story. A psychological study in the mechanism of paralysing self-absorption and refusal of passion. Mr Duffy is both more intelligent and more unpleasant than Maria(in ‘Clay’): he has the support of Nietzsche to back his own attitudes or condemn those of his lady-friend, which does not prevent him from resorting also to clichés (like Maria, or Stanislaus Joyce of whom the author is making fun here), such as this one: ‘Love between man and man is impossible because there must not be sexual intercourse, and friendship between man and woman is impossible because there must be sexual intercourse.