I still see the climax of the story to be the ending, when Gabriel is able to escape from the prison of his ego and enter into sympathy with the living who are on their way, like he is, to being the dead. The scene on the stairs occurs to my mind as a result of a long evening of annoyance for Gabriel, an evening in which he longed for escape. Now the conditions are perfect for this escape: the freedom from family cares, the probably rare event of a night alone together, the way the snowfall seems to set apart that night from all other ordinary nights. Perhaps he does reach a higher love for Gretta than ever before, that isn't clear to me. But in any case, we see how Gabriel's mind works in making of his wife an object of aesthetic appreciation. The description of Gretta reminds me a little bit of Mangan's sister in "Araby." I think it's flattering to Gretta, despite the fact that Gretta isn't going to cooperate in molding herself to Gabriel's romantic notions. She has her own opposite, and for Gabriel terrifying, romance going on. I wonder what saffron and giselle would think about being captured mentally in this way.

I like the character of Gabriel a lot because he resists easy categorization, just as people in our lives do if we're not quick to judge. But let me throw out a possibility about Gabriel. Is he a control freak of sorts? He relies on being able to master situations through his eloquence, his ability to turn a phrase, and if this ability fails him, he's devastated beyond reason. His quip to Lily he expects to be accepted by her with appropriate demureness. She gives him a jarring response, and this successful and outwardly self-assured man "coloured as if he had made a mistake." Gabriel is apparently in charge back at home, seeing to it that all the family have their green eye shades and goloshes and eat well. Gretta teases him about this, but lovingly, in front of Aunt Kate. Gabriel feels exposed rather than affectionately needled, and he shows himself as unable to laugh at himself.

Even before this point, Gabriel fears that he won't be able to control the tone of the evening when he comes to his speech at the dinner. Again he is paralyzed (uh-oh) by the prospect of failing with the audience just as he did with Lily. He can't figure out how to be genuine, is to aware of the culture differences between him and the crowd in general. He seems to be a product of his mother's snobbishness, yet he is not a snob, really, simply more aware of the difficulties of navigating between worlds. Significantly, he went against his mother's wishes in marrying a woman from another social world. He feels defensive about his mother's poor opinion of Gretta, but he also isn't entirely comfortable with Gretta's world, as he indicates when Miss Ivors asks him if Gretta is from the West: "'Her people are', Gabriel said shortly."

How exposed Gabriel feels in the scene with Miss Ivors. Normally, he'd try to turn away her sallies with a highfallutin phrase or two, but since he has known this woman for a while, he feels he won't get away with it. "He did not know how to meet her charge. He wanted to say that literature was above politics. But they were friends of many years' standing and their careers had been parallel, first at the University and then as teachers: he could not risk a grandiose phrase with her. He continued blinking his eyes and trying to smile and murmured lamely that he saw nothing political in writing reviews of books." The dance, both physical and verbal, can't end soon enough for Gabriel. The very unpleasant taste left in
Gabriel steers him toward rebuffing Miss Ivors in his dinner speech, though she was no longer present (so much the better, as he likes to avoid conflict).

And to finish this line of thinking, is Gabriel's later idealization of Gretta, followed by his desire to make her appreciate the special moments of their lives together, and then by the mounting urge to take her sexually and rather brutally, a continuation of control-freaking? I think it can be important to pay attention to the intensity of language and feeling in Joyce's description in this section. Gabriel seems more than normally aroused in his imagining and desire. It's as though repression has produced an extremely powerful counter-current of feeling.

Thanks, DWill. Your comments are very much appreciated here. I'm looking forward to the female perspective from Saffron and Giselle.

I do enjoy the way Joyce gives us a glimpse inside of Gabriel's head. He does feel a strong lust for Gretta, wants to take her. There is a strong sense of anger and control. And when Gretta tells him about Michael Furey, he feels a lot of anger and jealousy. And, yet, despite having his entire life sort of flash in front of his eyes, he maintains an inner strength and reserve.

Like Mr. James Duffy in "A Painful Case," Gabriel tones down his response after a moment of reflection. It's actions not thoughts that really matter. We can forgive his passionate inner thoughts because he doesn't act on them.

He tried to keep up his tone of cold interrogation, but his voice when he spoke was humble and indifferent.
"I suppose you were in love with this Michael Furey, Gretta," he said.
"I was great with him at that time," she said.
Her voice was veiled and sad. Gabriel, feeling now how vain it would be to try to lead her whither he had purposed, caressed one of her hands and said, also sadly:
"And what did he die of so young, Gretta? Consumption, was it?"
"I think he died for me," she answered.

. . . And when I was only a week in the convent he died and he was buried in Oughterard, where his people came from. O, the day I heard that, that he was dead!"
She stopped, choking with sobs, and, overcome by emotion, flung herself face downward on the bed, sobbing in the quilt. Gabriel held her hand for a moment longer, irresolutely, and then, shy of intruding on her grief, let it fall gently and walked quietly to the window.
She was fast asleep.

Gabriel becomes fairly morbid in his thoughts at this point, but who can blame him? He's just unleashed a torrent of passion for his wife only to discover she's still grieving over her first love. I loved this character. He's so psychologically complex, doesn't feel comfortable in his own skin. At the end of this story he's actually crying but only when he's alone, grieving for lost love that he will never experience. I agree with Camacho that there's hope for this Gabriel guy. He has demonstrated a capacity for love, a possibility for growth.

I suppose Joyce is commenting on timing. Gretta experienced love long ago with a guy who died, while Gabriel is only now coming to life. They will probably never connect with each other, and that's what makes this a tragedy. Has anyone here ever read Ethan Frome?

Granted, this is my first reaction and I'm sort of shooting from the hip. These are the kinds of stories that need to be reread. I feel like there's a lot of complexity and nuances that I'm missing.

geo wrote: Granted, this is my first reaction and I'm sort of shooting from the hip. These are the kinds of stories that need to be reread. I feel like there's a lot of complexity and nuances that I'm missing.

No, those are beautiful comments. This is such a humanizing story, one that makes me realize the truth behind Hitchens' statement that we have an incredibly rich storehouse of moral teaching at our disposal in literature. It's not a do this/don't do that type of morality we can learn about from literature like this, but something far better, where we experience with characters (and in our case, with other readers, too) what it's like to be a person trying to get it right, though sometimes failing or only partly succeeding.

I strongly identify with Gabriel, which doesn't mean that I have his same good or bad qualities. But I've been where he is in a sense and actually feel love for the guy by the end. You're right, if he flirts with some rough or mean thoughts toward his wife (and others), he redeems himself when he can't just grab Gretta but needs her to show some of the same sexual desire that he feels. When she doesn't and she begins to open up to him about her past, and still inner, life, he experiences deep disappointment, but this is followed by enlightenment. I like how Joyce uses the seemingly inconsequential detail of the loan to Freddy Malins. Gabriel brings this up just to fill space, but it makes Gretta come up to hug him and say, "You are a very generous person, Gabriel." Do we feel, though, that throughout the story this has necessarily been true? Several pages later, after Gabriel experiences the epiphany, in which he truly sympathizes with poor mortals, Joyce writes, "Generous tears filled Gabriel's eyes."

The thing is, too, Gabriel is pretty hard on himself. Throughout the story he has strong feelings almost of disgust at himself. Here at the end, he has one of these moments that might seem to indicate a breakthrough for him, but really I think it's just the same pattern where he devalues himself, and along with himself, others. (He labels his aunts ignorant old women at one place.)

"Gabriel felt humiliated by the failure of his irony and by the evocation of this figure from the dead, a boy in the gasworks. While he had been full of memories of their secret life together, full of tenderness and joy and desire, she had been comparing him in her mind with another. A shameful consciousness of his own person assailed him. He saw himself as a ludicrous figure, acting as a pennyboy for his aunts, a nervous, well-meaning sentimentalist, orating to vulgarians and idealising his own clownish lusts, the pitiable fatuous fellow he had caught a glimpse of in the mirror. Instinctively he turned his back more to the light lest she might see the shame that burned upon his forehead."

At this stage full understanding might not have come to him. It's not at all true that he was ludicrous at his aunts' party, that the guests were vulgarians, or that his lusts were clownish. Maybe if this were therapy, we'd say that he has work still to do.

So many things have meaning in this story. Details such as Michael Furey having been employed at a gasworks, a utility company, about the most prosaic and menial job there was. Imagine Gabriel having to assimilate the fact that his wife was loved so much (and apparently loved back) by such a lowly figure.

The distance created by Gretta's past between the couple originating in Gabriel ties in with what's been said here.

I think of 'great men' and I am drawn to DWill's thoughts about what's reasonable and unreasonable. Great men, men who value their self-worth, are extremely covetous of it. Gabriel's feelings are not unreasonable when shown in this light.

Is the relationship dead? Hope for the future of the two to be one? For a person like Gabriel it may be if he can't perceive, to himself, to overcome the obstacle of the boy in the gasworks. That the boy was of a low stature is a further hindrance to this.

A lot of talk has been tossed about Gabriel's money. I didn't live up to expectations (mine or yours) here's money. I am in a greater position and I am munificent, here is money. I need to reference my munificence for whatever reason, here is my proof stated by my own account. These character traits shouldn't be overlooked no matter their tendency towards the disagreeable.

Anyone reading the history of a chess match will sometimes see an exclamation point by a move. This shows a sometimes unforeseen and decisive move that demands attention and respect. The talk of generosity owes an exclamation point. I feel this is key when considering his tears and when considering Gabriel as a person if the author meant to tie these together.

Anyway, there is love here and I want to express that. Gabriel loves his wife and there is nothing wrong in wanting to possess her in the way he does. What woman wants a man that loves her for her person but not her physical appeal to animal desire? I'll guess very, very few. Gretta is being sentimental from an emotionally traumatic event in which she feels she owes some gratitude.

Every story is judged by its ending. Every life by its entirety. Every relationship by the same. The relationship between the boy and the gasworks and Gretta is whole. The relationship between Gabriel and Gretta is not. Romanticism plays a huge role in this story. Self sacrifice and love come to be themes at the end. The man who paid a lower price for the affections of a wife which keep him attracted and sexual charged shouldn't be downplayed. I know of many a man who wishes he had a wife who kept him so charged.

Gabriel's passion is deep. Gretta isn't young or very pretty. His passion is still very much aroused by her.... but what if the scene in the closet went differently?

DWill wrote:I still see the climax of the story to be the ending, when Gabriel is able to escape from the prison of his ego and enter into sympathy with the living who are on their way, like he is, to being the dead. The scene on the stairs occurs to my mind as a result of a long evening of annoyance for Gabriel, an evening in which he longed for escape. Now the conditions are perfect for this escape: the freedom from family cares, the probably rare event of a night alone together, the way the snowfall seems to set apart that night from all other ordinary nights. Perhaps he does reach a higher love for Gretta than ever before, that isn't clear to me. But in any case, we see how Gabriel's mind works in making of his wife an object of aesthetic appreciation. The description of Gretta reminds me a little bit of Mangan's sister in "Araby." I think it's flattering to Gretta, despite the fact that Gretta isn't going to cooperate in molding herself to Gabriel's romantic notions. She has her own opposite, and for Gabriel terrifying, romance going on. I wonder what saffron and giselle would think about being captured mentally in this way.

I have not abandon ship - I will jump back into the discussion. I was on call this weekend and work took over my life. To respond to your muse. I think that we all have little scenarios running in our heads that turn our loved ones into objects. I think we can't help it. The trick is to not get stuck in our mind so that we are disappointed and not able to engage with the real person. A thought off in another direction came to me. I find that the longer I know someone and the more I like or love them the more I enjoy and like the way they look. If I remember correctly (I am not quite finished reading) Gabriel's passion is aroused while looking at his wife. I wondered if Gabriel's appreciation of his wife visually is actually an indication of his deepened love. I better go read the end of the story....I'll be back.

President Camacho wrote:. . . A lot of talk has been tossed about Gabriel's money. I didn't live up to expectations (mine or yours) here's money. I am in a greater position and I am munificent, here is money. I need to reference my munificence for whatever reason, here is my proof stated by my own account. These character traits shouldn't be overlooked no matter their tendency towards the disagreeable.

I still haven't read much of the criticism of DUBLINERS yet, but I do know quite a lot has been made of the issue of money in these stories. Offhand, I would say Joyce is dramatizing some of the dehumanizing aspects of capitalism. Clearly there's a divide between the haves and have nots. This is a Dickensian theme as well, but in this particular story we get a good feel for the isolation and pressure from the perspective of one from the upper class. In fact, this is one of the things that most surprised me about this story in terms of my expectations. Since Joyce is peering into the gritty underbelly of Dublin life, I was not expecting the last story to center around a dance/dinner party.

But on the other hand, this story makes a great bookend to the collection of stories, along with "Two Sisters" because both stories deal with life and death.

I was researching Harold Bloom's critical interpretations of Dubliners which is long out of print. (I'm a big fan of Bloom's). I read just a smidgeon of the book online and apparently Bloom thinks rather highly of "Ivy Day in the Committee Room." This is one of the stories I had a hard time connecting with.

I read that "Ivy Day" was Joyce's favorite in the collection. I'd be interested, too, to see what Bloom, often an iconoclast, has to say about "Dubliners." Supposedly, Joyce wrote this story when he was living in Rome, a city he hated. He had begun to long for or at least appreciate the Irish notions of hospitality.

I didn't get the sense that Gabriel is exactly monied, but he doesn't suffer from the privation that seems typical of the characters. The pleasure he gets from handling the books he reviews is "almost" more important than "the paltry cheque." He's probably what we would call middle class economically, though his social status could be higher, judging by the university appointment.

If we go by the story's title as well as by the ending epiphany, it's not the relationship between Gabriel and Gretta that Joyce means to feature exclusively; rather, that relationship seems to be a means for the theme of greater connectedness to come to the fore. So the first connection is Gabriel and Gretta, the second is Gabriel with his own country and with the people from whom Gretta comes, and the third is with all the living and the dead.

We know that Gabriel himself feels somewhat ashamed of his wife's origins. He gets this from his mother, who disapproved of Gabriel marrying a country girl. Gabriel went against her wishes, but he hasn't embraced, and has even rejected, a part of his wife that is essential to her. He sees what his countrymen are beginning to call the true Ireland as almost a foreign culture. Though his old friend Miss Ivors had joined up with the new nativist movement, Gabriel had kept his allegiance to England and to Europe. Irishness is just one more irritation for Gabriel, one more thing to dodge in avoiding the social quicksand. He spits at Miss Ivors, who relentlessly pursues him on the matter::"I'm sick of my own country, sick of it!" When Miss Ivors invites him and Gretta on a trip to the West, Gabriel responds with coldness: '"You [Gretta]can go if you like." How ungenerous, really. Gretta had said how much she would like to go back to Galway.

At the very end, he realizes that part of the next phase in his life will be to identify with Gretta's Ireland, because he also realizes how much he loves Gretta. "The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward." Of course, journeying westward is also symbolically the journey toward death. Montaigne said that to live is to prepare to die, and although that may sound morbid to us now, in Gabriel's case it might apply to the expansion of his sympathies here at the end. He is on his way to the same destination as his aunts and everyone else including Michael Furey. He had previously thought of aunts Julia and Kate as ignorant old women. He thinks about how Julia had assumed a look of radiance when she had sung that evening, a look belying her approaching senility. He thinks of her now:

"Poor Aunt Julia! She, too, would soon be a shade with the shade of Patrick Morkan and his horse. He had caught that haggard look upon her face for a moment when she was singing Arrayed for the Bridal. Soon, perhaps, he would be sitting in that same drawing-room, dressed in black, his silk hat on his knees. The blinds would be drawn down and Aunt Kate would be sitting beside him, crying and blowing her nose and telling him how Julia had died. He would cast about in his mind for some words that might console her, and would find only lame and useless ones. Yes, yes: that would happen very soon."

The last few pages of this story are extremely moving, something we had reason not to expect from the author of the previous 14 stories. They don't paraphrase well, but simply must be read. I get choked up reading them, old sentimental me.

I can see that the somewhat enlightened man, educated man, anglican man is somewhat shown to have lost what is real but the hit on capitalism I can't really grasp too well. Gabriel uses his money to compensate or to boost him at times but he never seeks to take advantage of people through this. He doesn't seek to undermine anyone else's wealth to augment his own relative wealth and he isn't wealth driven as DWill says - his interests lie elsewhere.

Wealth, though, is a proof of his superiority and so he uses it to underscore his perceived position in life. I'm sure he'd love to be rich but not on his ability to 'make money' but because he's so valued that it comes to him. He wants his thoughts to be #1. His love is shown not to be true but something baser - and this is where it gets tricky because the base is what he's trying to distance himself from while it's shown that from the base comes this noble action. This must mess him up quite a bit.

DWill's opening sentence might be the key to the story. If so, the whole story is a panegyric of Irish hospitality and generosity.

I don't see the emotional impact this story creates in you guys. Why do you think it has had this impact? Maybe I'm not 'getting it'.

President Camacho wrote: I don't see the emotional impact this story creates in you guys. Why do you think it has had this impact? Maybe I'm not 'getting it'.

Well it's always hard to say why one person feels it and another doesn't. In this case, maybe it's an old guy thing (speaking for myself). I believe it was well over 30 years ago when I first read this for a class. I don't recall it making any impression. I've read it a few times since then, and it grows on me.

President Camacho wrote:I can see that the somewhat enlightened man, educated man, anglican man is somewhat shown to have lost what is real but the hit on capitalism I can't really grasp too well.

Sorry for my absence. Been busy last couple of days helping my son move home from college.

My comment on capitalism was probably not well thought through. Gabriel seems to carry a sense of superiority when the story opens to the point that I was reminded of the concept of noblesse oblige.

The earlier awkward encounters, first with Lily, then with Miss Ivers, seems to underscore Gabriel's disconnect with the way things really are. The concept of noblesse oblige in this Dublin society is greatly diminished from the past. The theme of death fits in with this collapse of class and manners. It is said that death is the great equalizer. And though Gabriel is still trying to keep alive these traditions of manners and politeness and high society, his speech at the dinner table sounds a hollow tone. The death of posturing also serves as an equalizer in this story.

Later, Gabriel mentions the debt of the pound (which ironically has been repaid). He's still trying to play the role of one from the upper class, but it remains an uncomfortable fit for him. Even Greta seems to patronize him by telling him he's a good man. His sense of superiority is killed outright when he finds out his Greta was in love with a boy who worked for the gasworks.

Gabriel felt humiliated by the failure of his irony and by the evocation of this figure from the dead, a boy in the gasworks. While he had been full of memories of their secret life together, full of tenderness and joy and desire, she had been comparing him in her mind with another. A shameful consciousness of his own person assailed him. He saw himself as a ludicrous figure, acting as a pennyboy for his aunts, a nervous, well-meaning sentimentalist, orating to vulgarians and idealising his own clownish lusts, the pitiable fatuous fellow he had caught a glimpse of in the mirror. Instinctively he turned his back more to the light lest she might see the shame that burned upon his forehead.

President Camacho wrote: I don't see the emotional impact this story creates in you guys. Why do you think it has had this impact? Maybe I'm not 'getting it'.

I just really connected with Gabriel's existential angst in this story which has a lot to do with seeing through the superficiality of society (culture) and facing up to the inevitability of death. But what's especially redemptive of Gabriel's life is that he does face up to it in the end rather than persist in deluding himself. His speech at the dinner table is that of a man still trying to play a role, but it rings hollow with himself even if it passes muster with others. At the end of the story, all veils are lifted and he faces himself in the mirror with courage and honesty and even class. He's ready to live life on his own terms now that all pretensions have been ripped away.

Like DWill, this story packed a wallop for me. We all face the abyss every now and then, and it's comforting to have such an experience so well articulated as Joyce does in this story. It's always moving to connect with someone from another era. That's why reading something like THE ILIAD can be such a powerful experience. You're connecting with human experiences from thousands of years ago.

It just occurred to me that this story perhaps has many parallels with THE GREAT GATSBY.