From Ulysses to Araby: James Joyce’s Controversial Mirror of Dublin by Jeslyn Brouwers

This blog seeks to investigate the differing controversial aspects between James Joyce’s Ulysses and Dubliners, arising from the employment of pornographic content and a critical portrayal of life in Dublin, respectively. The article “Judge Woolsey on Ulysses” was published in 1933 in an American weekly magazine named The Saturday Review of Literature, with a target audience of globally-aware upper-middle-class American readers who are interested in literature and international authors like Joyce. The article summarizes Judge Woolsey’s statement in the 1933 federal court case “United States vs. One Book Called Ulysses,” which overturned the banning of Ulysses, published in 1922, in the United States. The novel was cited as banned due to pornographic references and a “preoccupation with sex in the thoughts of [Joyce’s] characters” that risked harboring obscene “sex impulses and sexually impure and lustful thoughts” among American readers. In the statement, Woolsey argues that rather than using such “dirty words” “for dirt’s sake,” Joyce, in his novel, had rather achieved his intention to “draw a true picture of the lower middle class” “living in Dublin in 1904” with “sincere and honest effort to show exactly how the minds of his characters operate.” As such, Woolsey concluded that “Ulysses may, therefore, be admitted into the United States” for while “the effect of Ulysses on the reader is undoubtedly is somewhat emetic, nowhere does it tend to be an aphrodisiac” for it was not created “with what is commonly called pornographic intent.”

This piece prompted me to investigates [changed because of repetition] the collection Dubliners(1914) from a controversial lens, despite being published eight years before the famously provocative Ulysses. Specifically, the short story “Araby,” influenced largely by Joyce’s childhood in Dublin, explores controversial themes of cultural stagnation, sexual desire, and poverty, among others, that paint a negative picture of Dublin. In “Araby,” Joyce frames Dublin as representative of the paralysis of opportunity and hope in Ireland society  at the time. Joyce’s provocative statement is explored by the fall from innocence that a young boy in Dublin experiences when he recognizes the bleak and futile state of the world around him. Set in the cold and dark days of winter, the narrative begins by emphasizing the naturally gloomy atmosphere of Dublin. At the story’s beginning, readers are introduced to the “blind” nature of North Richmond Street, populated by “brown imperturbable faces,” illustrating the dead-end neighborhood by its characteristic inescapable dullness and constant surveillance by the moralist, judgemental neighbors. The bleak and stale imagery of Dublin “grown somber” is compounded by contrasting descriptions of the sky above with the “color of ever-changing violet” that the “lamps of the street lifted their feeble lanterns” towards. This anthropomorphic imagery symbolizes the lamps’ hopeful and desired escape into the beautiful great unknown as futile, too far out of reach for Dubliners, reemphasizing motifs of the paralyzing nature of Irish society.

In contrast, Mangan’s sister, the object of the boy’s intense first love, stands out to him as a dazzling light, “her figure defined by the light,” amidst the persistent darkness of the city. Such romantic idealism, however, gradually decays due to the decidedly unromantic world he interacts with as he embarks on a romantic quest to the Bazaar. From “drunken men” and street singers’ ballads about “troubles in our native land,” the boy endeavors toward hope, love, and light despite the harsh political climate and societal unpleasantness surrounding him. Upon entering Araby, he witnesses the flirtatious but shallow exchange between the young lady and the two young men, a version of love shocking to him compared to his devotion to Mangan’s sister that brought him to Araby. At the story’s end, the young boy recognizes himself as smaller than the heroic drive that sent him on his adventure to a bazaar, reassuming his place in the encroaching darkness of Dublin that has remained behind the curtains of his hopeful, lust-fueled, and exciting journey for love. Upon the physical darkness that overwhelms the boy at the story’s closing moments in the empty Bazaar, he “gaz(es) up into the darkness,” recognizing himself “as a creature driven and derided by vanity” for he was ultimately unable to escape the mundane bleak life of his small Irish town, not even through love.

Joyce’s harsh and potentially controversial criticism of the suffocating, paralyzing, and bleak nature of his hometown is thus interwoven into a palatable story about a boy’s first love, reveals a broader commentary on the sense of disillusionment among Dubliners. On one level, Joyce’s “Araby” could be deemed controversial for its discussion of the prevalence of alcoholism, poverty, and sexual desire in everyday life, which were topics often considered taboo at the time. “Araby” likewise serves as a critique of the moral and social stagnation of Ireland itself, trapped among oppressive and social circumstances, particularly the Catholic Church, as referenced multiple times throughout the collection of stories as a whole. Thus, Joyce’s unflinching realism in “Araby” in starkly portraying the struggles and hopelessness of Irish life, in addition to his willingness to explore taboo topics of the time, makes Dubliners not only a recognized seminal work of literature but rather must be recognized as a provocative, driving force that illuminates the paralyzing nature of life in Ireland. Following my analysis, I am left with the following questions: Why did “Araby” not create the same level of disturbance and anger as Ulysses, and could this distinction be attributed to whether it was the pornographic content or the controversial social commentary that upset readers and critics most? and How do Joyce’s other works in Dubliners supplement his exploration of controversial themes, and what additional perspectives and insights are offered by these pieces on Joyce’s illustration of life in Ireland?