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Joyce and Trevor's Dubliners: the legacy of colonialism
Studies in Short Fiction, Summer, 1995 by Jim Haughey
In a recent review of Edna Longley's latest collection of essays -- The Living Stream: Literature and Revisionism in Ireland -- Norman Vance notes that "Irish Literature, fraught with tradition, has a reputation for endlessly re-reading itself, not necessarily with value added, under the misapprehension that it is reading `Ireland,' whatever and wherever that might be" (43). At times, such re-readings may be accused of self-serving revisionism, and "It requires great faith in literature to believe that Irish literature itself can correct ideological astigmatism and promote new ways of seeing . . ." (43). As Vance and Longley point out, perhaps there is a need to discard "anachronistic critical tools, such as the `post-colonial pastry-cutter'" (43). Certainly there is something of an exercise to sifting through modern Irish literature for discourses on the "Irish Question" and the colonial legacy, especially if one merely looks for what Vance calls the "archaic forced oppositions" that characterize the nationalist/unionist conflict (44). There is also nothing original about the notion that Irish literature itself often examines the ongoing fallout of past political upheavals with greater acuity than the arid polemics of political theory. However, rereading Irish literature for tensions other than the usual binary conflicts of culture and creed reveals the pervasiveness of the myth that ethnic identities in Ireland can be pegged out by simply constructing exclusive religious, cultural, and political hierarchies.
Two short stories that explore the complexities of Irish identity are James Joyce's "Two Gallants" and William Trevor's "Two More Gallants," a clever adaptation of Joyce's tale. Like Joyce, Trevor recounts an act of deception: this time a college student enlists an old woman in a scheme to humiliate a Joyce scholar who believes he has discovered Joyce's source for the "slavey" in "Two Gallants." Apart from the narrative similarities between both stories, Trevor's depiction of contemporary Dublin and its citizens serves as an updated commentary on the legacy of Ireland's colonial experience. Both Joyce and Trevor's stories obliquely reveal how Irish men, conditioned by the historical weight of colonization, are partly responsible for their inability to transcend their sense of cultural alienation and inferiority. In the course of the two stories, both writers unveil the gulf between ordinary Dubliners and those Dublin landmarks whose political and cultural significance represent how difficult it is to construct an homogeneous Irish identity. In addition, both writers portray a paralyzed and self-destructive patriarchy whose exploitation of women results from a diverted aggression against the prevailing cultural and political status quo. Another consequence of Ireland's colonial past that Joyce explores is the way in which Irish cultural icons become politicized emblemata enlisted to serve the nationalist cause. Trevor also deftly probes the Irish response to the colonial experience by examining how some Irish men's lack of self-esteem is manifested in an astringent anti-intellectualism. A closer look at both stories' submerged narrative tensions may also clarify Joyce and Trevor's shared perspectives on the complexity of Irish identity and the self-defeating construction of opposing political and cultural homogenies that embrace narrowly exclusivist interpretations of Irish ethnicity and history.
Ireland's landscape is imbued with such an overwhelming awareness of the past that history, religion, and politics constantly interfere with the interpretation of current experiences. Such is the case in Joyce and Trevor's short fiction. Bernard Benstock notes that in Dubliners "700 years of English rule weigh heavily in the atmosphere of these stories . . ." (46). Trevor himself acknowledges that "In Ireland you can escape neither politics nor history, for when you travel through the country today the long conflict its landscape has known does not readily belong in the far-away past as Hastings or Stamford Bridge does for the English" (A Writer's Ireland 51). Certainly, Joyce and Trevor's depiction of Dublin reveals a political and cultural gulf between the characters and the landmarks they frequent. This alienation between character and landscape indicates not only how Ireland's colonial past continues to promote a sense of cultural submissivencss in some Irish men, but also how a constricted nationalist ethos contributes to a general sense of "apathy and defeatism" (Benstock 46).
In "Two Gallants," Corley and Lenehan's odyssey through the heart of Dublin takes the reader on a tour of several centuries of Irish history. Among the more noteworthy sights they pass together or separately are Rutland Square, Trinity College, Kildare Street, the Duke's Lawn on the "west side of Merrion Square West," and Dame Street (Gifford 60). Apart from the obviously ironic juxtapositions -- Corley brags to Lenehan about his ensuing "dodge" with the "good slavey" while they saunter past some of Ascendancy Ireland's notable landmarks -- Joyce's meticulous recording of Corley and Lenehan's routes also reminds us of the extent of Anglo-Irish influence on Irish history. More importantly, though, the historical significance of these landmarks and Corley and Lenehan's perceived alienation from them suggest that "the Anglo-Irish tradition was a threat to the ideal of a distinct Irish nationality," and Joyce saw this "battle of the two civilisations . . . [as] pointless" (Manganiello 25). He also endorsed a more inclusivist definition of Irish nationality. In his essay "Ireland, Island of Saints and Sages," Joyce argued that "to exclude from the present nation all who are descended from foreign families would be impossible, and to deny the name of patriot to all those who are not of Irish stock would be to deny it to almost all the heroes of the modern movement . . ." (Critical Writings 161-62). Clearly Joyce rejected the assumption that Irish identity must be linguistically and culturally grounded.
