The Affirmative Epiphany in James Joyce’s Dubliners

Abstract

In Dubliners, Joyce’s alternative to the available model of growth – the institutional mode of education – is the epiphanic model that hopes to preserve and justify the existence of an independent human being. On the face of it, it seems less likely to study the stories in the light of Wordsworth’s theory of education as expounded in The Prelude but I argue that there is clearly a substantial link between the two texts, and that link is provided by Joyce’s notion of the epiphany primarily inspired by Wordsworth’s notion of ‘spots of time’ and developed in Stephen Hero. The epiphanic moments provide stability in the otherwise unstable world. It is argued that Joyce appendages ‘moral’ – stripped off its historical religious meaning – to his aesthetic theory developed in Stephen Hero. He expands his notion of the epiphany – ‘an exact focus of vision’ – in the context of Dublin which is the intense centre of – moral and spiritual – ‘paralysis’. This research paper examines the affirmative epiphany in the first three stories of Dubliners. It is evident from the first three stories that the boy narrator’s childhood experiences are far from exciting and adventurous in the sense Wordsworth describes in The Prelude. In the first story, it is the death of his mentor; in the second, it is the uneasy encounter with the middle-aged person; in the third, it is the disillusionment of his adolescent longing for a girl. These three significant incidents bring about moments that problematize his relation with the outside world. The institutions of education he attends fail to mediate between his innocent world view and the problematic nature of reality he confronts in the outside world.