James Joyce “Clay”. Critical analysis.

The life of this world is but comfort of illusion.

Koran 3: 185

In the fifteen Dubliners stories, city life, religion, friends and family bring hope to individuals discovering what it means to be human. “Dubliners” is a penetrating analysis of the stagnation and paralysis of Dublin society. The story “Clay” takes place in late autumn on Hallow Eve, which is the Celtic New Year’s Eve and Feast of the Dead. 

The theme of the story is that one can live a long life but never actually realize that the whole was nothing but an illusion. We can also trace several ideas that run all through the story: humble folk and the society, the senility and loneliness, relationships between the generations. 

In “Clay,” the protagonist, Maria is a patient, old woman and a former maid for rival brothers Joe and Alphy Donnelly. Now that they’re all grown up, she seems to be “lost” in her life, childless and unmarried, and is now an employee at a laundry. At first sight she seems to be a very balanced and flat character, but at the end of the story we have some doubts about it. We do not know much about her life, why she does not have a husband and children, we know only that Maria is a very appealing character, very kind-hearted and tolerant, “a veritable peace-maker” and “every one was…fond of” her. The implicit details presented in elements of speech mannerism (“nice”, “good”, “lovely”) help to understand the reader the kindness and sincerity of her nature. J. Joyce describes Maria as “a very, very small person” with “a very long nose and a very long chin”, she has tine dressboots , “diminutive body”, “tiny head” and “a tiny quavering voice”. Here the epithet “tiny” is emotionally-essential detail which discloses the character as a very lonely person and small, insignificant in comparison with the world and the crowd. We can find certain oppositions between Maria and the crowd (“The tram was full and she had to sit on the little stool at the end of the car, facing all the people”; “ferreted her way quickly among the crowds”, “the shop was…full of people…”, etc). 

She was not only lonely but also an elderly person, we can trace oppositions between the protagonist and young people, which show that the society doesn’t need her and doesn’t understand her, that she is just useless and irritating old woman. For example, the “stylish young lady” in the shop, who was very rude and “evidently annoyed” by Maria; or young men in the tram, who “simply stared straight before” Maria and an elderly gentleman, “none of  the young men seemed to notice her”.

But still Maria is very kind to people (she blushes and smiles at young lady in the shop), she accepts life as it is and goes with the stream (“but such was life”), and that is the main mistake of her life. Maria missed all the opportunities in her life, she is kind, nice, loving and sacrificing to all the people but to herself. She dedicated her life to the others and had to create the world of illusions to fill the void in her although she regrets having wasted her life (“Maria had to laugh and say she didn’t want any ring or man either; and when she laughed her grey-green eyes sparkled with disappointed shyness”). The author foregrounds this idea in the end of the story when Maria sings the same verse twice (“…But I also dreamt, which pleased me most,/That you loved me still the same.”) She is a very interesting demanding our emotional involvement character, we feel pity for her. Thus we can say that there is an explicit, but minor conflict between the person and the society, and the main internal conflict within the protagonist presented through the implicit details. 

The title is suggestive and is of great importance to understand the whole story. During the celebration of the Hallow Eve they played a game when a blindfolded person seats in front of a table on which several saucers are placed. The saucers are shuffled, and the person then chooses one by touch; the contents of the saucer determine the person's life during the following year. Clay is object Maria chooses during the divination game (“soft wet substance”). Traditionally, this object was the omen of approaching death. That’s why everybody paused and then began scuffling and whispering. “Nobody took off her bandage” as if wanted to protect her. Joe who used to say that “mamma is mamma, but Maria is my proper mother”, had never been so nice to her “as he was that night”. Nobody wanted to ruin her world of illusions. 

The tone of much of the story is poignant, sweet and sad at once. This story is yet another tale dealing with relationships between generations, and Joe may be weeping after the song because his beloved Maria is not long for this world. A huge world, full of illusions and unrealized dreams, in a “tiny person, and a “tiny person” in a huge world, where hardly a person would notice her death that is the story is about.