James Joyce

When I began reading the texts background information on James Joyce, I had horrific flashbacks to reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in AP English my junior year of high school. I do not remember specifically what made reading that book the most painful experience I had that year but the memory of it did give me plenty of biases before I started reading his writing again. I was surprised how quick and painless it was to read “Clay” from Joyce’s Dubliners. I regret to admit that just because it was effortless to get through this selection, I still was not a fan of the reading the first time I read it. Now that I am getting to the end of the readings for this course, I am realizing something that probably prevented me from enjoying these authors before this class or while I was in high school. In order to understand or appreciate any of this literature I have to read it several times to pick up on all the authors subtleties. So I read this text again and while I still felt unsure of any real significance, I actually found myself liking Joyce’s style a little more.
“Clay” presented readers with the incredibly monotonous life of Maria. From what I gathered, Maria led an unfulfilling life with no achievements to call her own. She had no family, choosing to never marry, and as result, she lived what appeared to be an empty life. Though she never married, Maria was loved by everyone who knew her. She was a pleasant woman who spoke kindly and strived perfection and organization in everything she did. In the incident where she discovers she leaves her plum cake on the tram, she is so upset about her carelessness and her waste of the money that she nearly cries. I thought this was strange because that is an honest mistake which anyone could easily have done. Maria constantly tries occupy her time by serving other people to make up for the fact that she has little going on in her own life. The title and reference to the clay is symbolism that part of her is suffering an early death. The game played with the three saucers is a traditional Halloween game played to foresee the future. While blindfolded you pick a plate and what is on the plate supposedly determines your fate. She was the only one at the party to land on the clay (which suggests you will die soon) and this shows how she herself has lost a part of herself to the trite nature of her daily life.
I found it interesting how much emphasis was placed on her never being married. It was as though just because she never married she doomed herself to have this fate. All the other ladies in the text skirted the issue of her single life, but it was suggested several times by other characters that perhaps she would be happier if she was married. It was strange to me, I gathered in the other readings from the modern era, and in the background information, during this era women sacrificed any chance of a fulfilling life if she did not marry. Once again, I was provoked to think about the inequalities between men and women during this generation. Men could lead perfectly satisfying lives, take a mistress, and never once be reminded that they did not marry. Women had a daily reminder that she did not live up to this expectation society laid out for her.
I felt Joyce purposely left out many details as to why the characters felt the emotions they did. Why Maria’s life had wound up so empty, and why Joe was so emotionally moved by Maria’s song, were hard for me to understand. I think the reason why I am so exhausted by Joyce’s writing is that I do not understand his choices in many of his stories. After reading his work, I find myself frustrated that I still can not drive a greater meaning out of his words. I found this story to be fun to read, but deciphering the motives behind his writing still bewilders me.