Stares From The Looking-glass Of Dubliners

As a milestone in the history of short prose fiction, James Joyce's Dubliners for many years continued to languish somewhat in the shadow of his other fiction. This is first reflected on the ten-year postponement of the book's publication, and then on the scarcity of criticism until the recent fifty years. Joyce's intention of presenting the whole world a realistic Dublin city, which can only be grasped through multiple perspective reading, is tactically hiding within the multifaceted quality of his stories. This paper is going to represent a wholesome image of this city by means of applying theories of post-colonialism, feminism, narratology respectively, plus commercialization.For the first time in Irish history Joyce clearly demonstrates the process of Dublin's post-colonization in his Dubliners. Widespread poverty, a consequence of past colonization, induces Irish people to make a living at the cost of discarding first self-esteem and then national dignity. English, the most striking feature of British cultural colonization, has successfully replaced the native Gaelic language and dominated the whole Ireland. Restricted by their own shortcomings, Irish nationalists can lead their people nowhere.Joyce also, before feminist forerunners, displays that gender is a matter of personal choice and social construction. Individual women as characters in his Dubliners are set against the male-dominant Dublin city, serving their fathers and husbands submissively as "servers of servants". Those who choose to possess the traditional female characteristics end in silent craziness or death while those who fiercely stand up to their male counterparts come to nothing. Irish men, in the meantime, attempt to regain their lost masculinity by means of alcoholism, domestic violence, or even treason.Manfred Jahn, one of the great narrotologists, points out in his recently-published article that external and internal stories are coherently related;especially untold internalized stories can facilitate the understanding of literary character's psychological cognition process. Since none of the stories in Dubliners is coherent and tightly packed, the omitted inner plots can aid such kind of analyses in the collection with narratology devices.Commercialization prevails in the book where readers can meet nearly all the latest commodities, especially the most special one in Capitalism — labor. This opens a dooT of escape for Irish women like young Eveline, but leads Irish men too far to undertake indecent trades, or to intoxicate themselves behind the door, daydreaming their old days.From the analysis in the previous four chapters, Dublin is, therefore, "the center of paralysis". Full of subtlety and evasion, Dubliners is a delicate looking-glass, in which Irish people can see not only the nation's past humiliation, but their gender distortion, psychological anguish and material pursuit as well.