This post considers storytelling, self-image, and epiphany in Dubliners.

One of my favorite lines from Finnegans Wake is spoken by the washerwomen of I.8: “Every telling has a taling, and that’s the he and the she of it.” This could mean that every story has an end (the tail), and that’s the long and short of it, which is rendered as “he and she” to reflect the ways that sex and the concepts we attached to sex are recurrent themes throughout our stories. It also could mean that there is a process (a “taling”) by which experience becomes converted into a story. By “story,” of course, I mean the set of activities that I’ve (too) broadly been describing using the word “storytelling”: the ways we understand ourselves and the world by constantly interpreting and narrating events to ourselves and even by abstracting generally true statements from the flux of Becoming (the “riverrun”) that comprises the world. The way I’m using “storytelling” encompasses almost everything we do with language, including statements ranging from “I’m having a good day” to “So-and-so has wronged me” to “I really enjoy the fiction of James Joyce” and even to “That’s a tree over there.” Our (experience of the) world is created through acts of storytelling. We construct elaborate dreams for ourselves and live inside a dream.

As I’ve discussed, there are limitations to storytelling and, simultaneously, no limits on storytelling. We live in a world that confronts us with bare facts that we must accept if we are to live effectively, but our experience of those bare facts is more shaped by the stories we tell ourselves than most of us realize most of the time. People tend to view themselves as fixed entities, but they are closer to a collection of stories that they might be able to narrate differently; and some of those stories that people see as defining themselves are out of whack with the bare facts of reality, not properly consistent with the true statements that an objective, reasonable mind would abstract from the world.

I was thinking of this recently while re-reading “Counterparts” from Dubliners. This story centers on Farrington, a clerk in a law office who makes copies (counterparts) of legal documents. He’s Joyce’s version of Bartleby the Scrivener, basically. But rather than a melancholy soul who has resigned from life, Farrington is an abusive, rageful alcoholic. The story suggests many interesting ideas about substance abuse, child abuse, cruel treatment of others (a version of the “circle of screaming”), and “toxic masculinity.” By the end of the story, we see Farrington’s abuse of his son as a “counterpart” of the abuse he suffers from his boss, with the implication that his son may grow up to be a counterpart of Farrington.

But my attention was caught this time by the way the text depicts Farrington rehearsing a story of his day in order to prepare to tell it to the lads at the pub. One of the key events of the story is that Farrington insults his angry boss, Mr. Alleyne. Drunk at work, Farrington has screwed up the copy. Alleyne summons him and berates him in front of others (including the boss’s lady friend and client, Miss Delacour).

Tell me, he added, glancing first for approval to the lady beside him, do you take me for a fool? Do you think me an utter fool?

It seems that Mr. Alleyne enjoys dressing down Farrington in front of Miss Delacour. I wonder if the boss gets some kind of (sublimated?) erotic thrill out of exerting his dominance over another man in the presence of a woman. But then, in response to this rhetorical question, this happens:

The man [Farrington] glanced from the lady’s face to the little egg-shaped head [of Alleyne] and back again; and, almost before he was aware of it, his tongue had found a felicitous moment:

—I don’t think, sir, he said, that that’s a fair question to put to me.

There was a pause in the very breathing of the clerks. Everyone was astounded (the author of the witticism no less than his neighbours) and Miss Delacour, who was a stout amiable person, began to smile broadly. 

After this, Mr. Alleyne flips out on Farrington and then, off screen, forces him to offer an “abject apology.” Farrington thinks about this after work, and as he prepares to meet his friends, he begins telling himself the story of what happened, practicing how he will describe it to others:

As he walked on he preconsidered the terms in which he would narrate the incident to the boys:

—So, I just looked at him — coolly, you know, and looked at her. Then I looked back at him again — taking my time, you know. I don’t think that that’s a fair question to put to me, says I.

We see here Farrington subtly editing reality. In his story, he looks from Alleyne to the lady and back to Alleyne. In reality, he had looked from her to him and back to her. In the story, he omits the word “sir” that he had used. Both of these changes are in the service of the overall transformation of the event from a spontaneous jab (whose utterance surprises even Farrington) to a deliberate, calm, collected attempt to insult.

The Farrington of the story he’s practicing is different from the one in the story told to us by the narrator.

In ways like these, Farrington typically narrates the story of himself to himself, viewing himself in his own mind through the perspective of drunken barflies, who will be his audience. He constructs stories of himself as a “cool,” masculine figure who’s not afraid to insult a man who has power over him.

On his way to meet his friends, just before the above rehearsal, he also talks to himself this way about the people at work:

He went through the narrow alley of Temple Bar quickly, muttering to himself that they could all go to hell because he was going to have a good night of it. 

Another story begins: he puts a lot of pressure on the evening to redeem the day, and this makes the events that transpire all the more disappointing.

Why does Farrington suffer so much in this story? Joyce implies it’s because of how he narrates his own life to himself. After his disastrous night out, look at how he talks to himself:

A very sullen-faced man stood at the corner of O’Connell Bridge waiting for the little Sandymount tram to take him home. He was full of smouldering anger and revengefulness. He felt humiliated and discontented; he did not even feel drunk; and he had only twopence in his pocket. He cursed everything. He had done for himself in the office, pawned his watch, spent all his money; and he had not even got drunk. He began to feel thirsty again and he longed to be back again in the hot reeking public-house. He had lost his reputation as a strong man, having been defeated twice by a mere boy. His heart swelled with fury and, when he thought of the woman in the big hat who had brushed against him and said Pardon! his fury nearly choked him.

The indirect discourse is again Farrington rehearsing his story of the day. Throughout “Counterparts,” the narrator has impersonally called Farrington “the man,” using his name only when he is drinking at the pubs. This might reflect how Farrington only fully feels like himself and fully feels “in the moment” when drinking. The rest of the time, his thoughts sit at a distance from his experience and retrospectively construct an image of himself.

In this particular construction, he laments all of these failures and the fact that others no longer will think of him as a “strong man,” an image he had made for himself first in his own mind and then had performed for others through his behavior, seeking to persuade them that this story was true.

Obviously, Farrington’s alcoholism creates a significant amount of his problems, but Joyce suggests in this passage, and elsewhere, that his “thirst” is a response to the way he narrates his life to himself. It’s probably not realistic to think that Farrington could conquer his alcoholism just by thinking differently about himself…but then again, what are 12-step programs if not attempts to reframe the 12-stepper’s narrative of himself or herself? (That is, someone in recovery might start regularly thinking of themselves as someone with the disease of alcoholism who needs to exert effort to overcome temptation and embark on treatment) Merely thinking differently won’t end alcoholism, but recovery starts, and is sustained by, acts of storytelling.

We could also look to his conditions. As an Irish subject of British colonialism, Farrington particularly feels humiliated by the English woman and his Northern Irish boss. The former probably reminds him that he’s getting older and will have fewer opportunities for sexual encounters (perhaps suggested by his friends teasing him about being married). But it is primarily his reaction to these conditions, the stories he tells himself about them, that determines the quality of his experience.

His “fury” — also a result of his inner storytelling — is given agency in the last sentence, visiting a figurative act of violence upon him. As a victim of “choking,” Farrington has deprived himself of almost all voice, all ability to direct his life in a positive way. Instead, he lashes out at his child, projecting outward the anger he possesses toward himself.

While hopefully none of us reading this blog are as awful and abusive as Farrington, all of us in some ways mirror his storytelling tendency. We all retell reality to ourselves (and thereby bend reality) in ways that we think are good for us but that can easily feed into harmful behaviors.

I’m not sure Farrington has an epiphany. If he does, it’s his realization that the night has been a bust and that his treasured image as a “strong man” (and perhaps also as a ladies man?) is false. That could be an opportunity for growth, to surrender those narratives, take an honest look at his life, and begin building new stories of himself that are healthier and more in line with a more honest interpretation of his circumstances. Such stories would have to include the fact that he has developed a harmful dependence on alcohol, that he is not only *not* a strong man but someone with a weakness. He comes nearer this realization soon after work: “He had made a proper fool of himself this time. Could he not keep his tongue in his cheek?” 

But Farrington can’t let himself go further, ultimately. Instead of having a good look at himself, he doubles down on the “strong man” story by beating someone who can’t fight back.

I’d like to contrast Farrington with Maria of the story “Clay.” Maria is no rageful abuser; she is a “veritable peace-maker,” as the matron of the laundry puts it.

We aren’t told too much about Maria’s past, but we can guess (from her occupation at the laundry) that she may have had a hard life. Laundries in Dublin typically employed former prostitutes or women who had had children out of wedlock and therefore would have been to some degree social outcasts.

The thing that sets Maria apart from other Dubliners characters is her cheerfulness and kind heartedness. In addition to maybe having had a hard life, Maria lives in a culture where the dominant story is that a woman needs to get married. This idea is echoed everywhere in “Clay,” from the laundry girls teasing Maria that she will “get the ring” in cake this year — which would signify that she will get married — to one of the neighbor girls getting the ring in the game they play to the shop girl making fun of Maria by asking if she’s buying a wedding cake.

Now it’s true that Maria responds to the laundry girls’ teasing with “disappointed shyness,” so there’s almost certainly a part of her that has internalized the cultural story that a woman needs to be married. A part of her feels disappointment. And certainly, one could read the story as exploring an “old maid” Dubliner whose life has few prospects. But look at how optimistically Maria thinks of her circumstances when she embarks on her day off:

She arranged in her mind all she was going to do and thought how much better it was to be independent and to have your own money in your pocket. 

And then her thoughts turn to the Donnellys, whose father she had raised, thinking about how nice it would be if he reconciled with his brother. There are shades here of Shaun and Shem: “They were always falling out now but when they were boys together they used to be the best of friends: but such was life.” Her thoughts are other-directed and speak to her concern for the people she loves (contrast this with Lenehan’s gloomy reflections on himself in “Two Gallants”). Even that phrase “such was life” indicates Maria’s good-natured acceptance of what is.

I’m also really struck by her positive regard for her own body:

Then she took off her working skirt and her house-boots and laid her best skirt out on the bed and her tiny dress-boots beside the foot of the bed. She changed her blouse too and, as she stood before the mirror, she thought of how she used to dress for mass on Sunday morning when she was a young girl; and she looked with quaint affection at the diminutive body which she had so often adorned. In spite of its years she found it a nice tidy little body.

Does anyone else in Dubliners have “quaint affection” for themselves?

Maria probably has regrets and sadness in her life. She probably does have a part of her that yearns for a relationship, as testified by the way she is flustered by the older gentleman on the tram. But rather than telling herself negative stories about her life, she’s consistently upbeat. Yeah, she almost cries at forgetting a cake, but I’d cry too if I spent half my money on something and then left it behind. Maybe the point is supposed to be that she’s “simple” (she joins in on a children’s game, and even they seem to tease her by including the clay). Maybe she’s just another “paralyzed” Dubliner who can’t even articulate the nature of the trap that holds her, the patriarchal society that imposes restrictions upon her and that limits her potential. But I am taken by the fact that she’s also one of the few characters whose storytelling fulfills her and makes her happy rather than adding to her misery.

The few instances of recorded speech in the story consist entirely of comments about Maria or to Maria. The sole exception is the song Maria sings, I Dreamt that I Dwelt. Here’s the first verse, reported by the text:

I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls
    With vassals and serfs at my side
And of all who assembled within those walls
    That I was the hope and the pride.
I had riches too great to count, could boast
    Of a high ancestral name,
But I also dreamt, which pleased me most,
    That you loved me still the same.

However, Maria *repeats* this verse instead of singing the actual second verse, which is not reported by the text. You have to know that this second verse concerns courtship: “I dreamt that suitors sought my hand, / That knights upon bended knee / And with vows no maidens heart could withstand, / They pledged their faith to me. / And I dreamt that one of that noble host / Came forth my hand to claim / But I also dreamt which charmed me most / That you loved me still the same.”

I think this omission is usually read as Maria’s mind — consciously or unconsciously — leaving it out because she knows that there is no relationship in her future. But it could also be that she chooses (either consciously or unconsciously) to omit the verse because she’s authentically happier as a single woman.* By recording Maria singing and making a choice to repeat a verse, Joyce gives her a voice at the end. Throughout “Clay,” others speak about her or to her, and she absorbs the words of others implying that she needs a husband — but here at the end, she gets a chance to reply. Her positive storytelling does not leave her “choked” like Farrington.

[*Yes, the text calls the repetition a “mistake,” but that could be indirect discourse for the Donnellys’ assumption that she had made a mistake. Then again, even if Maria has made a mistake, Freud insists that there are no mistakes: some part of her chooses to leave it out]

And what is it she emphasizes by repeating the verse? That her family and friends mean more to her than riches. A romantic relationship doesn’t even enter the equation in her thoughts. She’s not necessarily opposed to it, as suggested by the man on the tram, but she’s not seeking it out, not actively weighing it as a desired fantasy (in the way that money and titles would such a fantasy).

I’m struck by how positive that attitude is. Consider, also, that “Clay,” the title of the story, refers not just to the clay of the grave (implying that the player who selects it will soon die) but to a substance that unites. Maria is the clay, the “veritable peacemaker,” who holds together the girls at the laundry, and perhaps Joe and his brother in the future, and perhaps others. Her positive attitude and quiet joy improve her life and the lives of those around her, even as her circumstances may not be the happiest.

Circumstances are only half the battle. There are also the ways we narrate the circumstances to ourselves, the ways in which we “tale” our tellings, interpreting facts and placing them into a narrative for ourselves and others.

Finnegans Wake — and all of Joyce’s works — reminds us of the immense power of language and storytelling in our lives. That’s a cliche sentiment that some would roll their eyes at. But as Joyce shows, that’s not just some trite platitude: our stories have concrete and tangible effects in everyday life, guiding our moment-by-moment experience.