James Joyce's "The Sisters": chalices and umbrellas, ptolemaic Memphis and Victorian Dublin

Ebers describes anchorites living in pastophoria, small cells attached to the sanctuary: the "ascetic penitents led a gloomy cloistered life in the strictest self-imposed seclusion" seeking inward purification (Ebers, Egypt 159). In the novel, a visitor to the cult expresses shock that anyone would choose such a life: "When I was told that in this temple there were people who had themselves locked into their little chambers never to quit them, taking thought about their dreams and leading a meditative life, I thought they were simpletons or fools, or both at once." The anchorite offers an even more distressing explanation: "There is a fourth alternative you did not think of. Suppose now among these men there should be some shut up against their will...?" He elaborates, saying that he himself "got into this miserable cage" because of his mother's wishes (25-26).

Like Father Flynn, who was "too scrupulous always" (17), the anchorites in the Serapeum arc described as constantly trying to thwart their natural feelings and desires:

think of the fools shut up in the Temple of Serapis! Nothing is

beautiful but what is free and he only is not free who is forever

striving to check his inclinations -- for the most part in vain -- in

order to live, as feeble cowards deem virtuously, justly and

truthfully. (Ebers 124)

Perhaps it is learning this lesson that makes a priest who was "too scrupulous always" a "disappointed man" (17). His disappointment, his loss of faith, is symbolized in his breaking of the chalice and his "large hands loosely retaining a chalice" as his body lies in the coffin, with a vitriolic ("truculent") facial expression. No cup of thanksgiving, this chalice seems more like the Celtic cup of truth, reputed to break if lies are spoken over it (Walker 134).

The idle chalice is only one symbol of failed resurrection that appears in Joyce's text. The pattern of sunshine and darkness that recurs throughout the story reflects an ancient association of the sun with resurrection owing to its daily pattern of rising, setting, and rising again to begin a new day. The priest's body lives in a gloomy room "suffused with dusky golden light" (14); the mourners "all gazed at the empty fireplace." Eliza wiped her tears and "gazed at the empty grate" (17). These scenes sharply contrast with the boy's world when he feels a "sensation of freedom," walking on the "sunny side of the street"; repeated a page later: "I walked on along in the sun" (12-13). The ancient Greeks believed that the sun drove a chariot across the sky (Frazer 82). Scholars of comparative mythology see in "This immortal chariot of the Sun" the origins of King Solomon's chariot (Bailey 154), as well as the chariot of fire that appears when Elijah ascends to heaven. No chariots of the sun appear for Flynn and his sisters. Eliza can only recall their unfulfilled dream of getting "one of them new-fangled carriages," one with "rheumatic wheels," to take the three of them "to see the old house again where we were all born" (17).