What is Joyce's perception of childhood in Dublin in the late 19th/early 20th Century and how are his attitudes conveyed?
What is Joyce’s perception of childhood in Dublin in the late 19th/early 20th Century and how are his attitudes conveyed?
In the Dubliners Joyce trails the children in his stories from childhood to maturity gradually increasing in age from one story to the next. The characters in the first three stories are young enough to still entertain hopes and dreams of their adult lives and the adventures and experiences that they might have. These first three stories - ‘The Sisters’, ‘An Encounter’ and ‘Araby’ - are all set in the childhood stages of life. In all three of these stories the children come across as young, innocent and very naïve. Each one of the children in each of the stories learns or discovers at least one thing about the adult world that they live in. There are three words that describe the childhood world in Dublin at this time perfectly and they are isolation, paralysis and entrapment.
In ‘The Sisters’ the boy discovers the reality of death when a close adult friend of his dies. At the beginning of the story he is intrigued by the world paralysis, ‘It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer it and to look upon its deadly work.’ This boy had not come across the idea of confinement to one particular place or room like the dying priest was on his deathbed and the idea was a strange one for him. He wanted to understand it and when the priest dies the child grows to understand the idea a bit better. ‘The priest is said to have taught him a great deal, mind you; and they say he had a great wish for him.’ The priest assumed that the boy would want to go into the church without any discussion or ideas from the boy, this shows that during this time in Dublin the youth were guided by the adults around them, they followed on doing the same job as them. The children of this time just thought that this is what happened and they didn’t have the choice of what they wanted to do as they entered adulthood, this is an example of entrapment in childhood.
