Dubliners

by James Joyce

A Mother

An Outline Commentary

Bob Williams - © 1999

He also sees that O'Madden Burke's umbrella is significant in some way that he can't explain. It figures vividly Ð and equally mysteriously Ð in the Aeolus chapter of Ulysses.

Joyce A-Z observes that the narrative shifts emphasis from music towards "more mundane social concerns" on the evening of the final performance. Joyce had an unhappy experience when he competed at the Feis Ceoil with an incompetent pianist, apparently one inspiration for this story.

May Joyce participated (1888) with a Mrs Kearney in a church musical performance and she was an old acquaintance of the Joyce's. Her family had a music store on Capel Street, which Joyce commemorated in Finnegans Wake as having some of the qualities of Naples. This was probably ironic since Ð even in Bloom's day Ð it had seamy equivalents of today's sex shops.

Mr Holohan, an incompetent concert arranger and beautifully described as muddling about, finds valuable assistance from the competent Mrs Kearney, a woman determined to exploit the situation for the special benefit of her daughter, Kathleen. (This is the man who stood drinks for Lenehan in 'Two Gallants' so the social gap is very large.) Joyce permits a time loop for the consideration of her past. We learn of a hard woman who acts more to confront antagonists and critics more than she does to satisfy more inner needs. We also perceive how greatly she dominates the life of her child and fosters her musical ambitions and her friendship with Irish language students who, Joyce observes, know how to say goodbye in Irish.

This narrative loop is a long one for such a brief story. Kathleen is to be the piano accompanist at four concerts and is to receive eight guineas and has a contract with Mr Holohan's society with these provisions. Gifford comments on the non-binding nature of these contracts. Traditionally flexibility was expected.

The first of the four concerts is poorly attended and begins late. Before it begins Mrs Kearney meets another society official, Mr Fitzpatrick. He has a brown hat and Joyce's concern with the color brown is noteworthy if a little hard to explain. It is, before all else, a sign of ill omen. Mangan's sister ('An Encounter') is described as brown and the houses of the neighborhood are brown. May Joyce was buried in brown cerements and Joyce recreates this when Stephen is haunted by his mother. Whether the color of his hat is or is not a factor, Mrs Kearney finds him to be very unimpressive and is outraged by his commonsense reply to her demand for an explanation that mediocre performers are not a strong attraction. The committee, he tells her, has decided to sa ve the best talent for the fourth evening.

The second performance is better attended but only because of generously distributed complimentary tickets. The audience is unruly and Mr Fitzpatrick, in Mrs Kearney's opinion, acts with reprehensible levity. She learns that the next concert in the series is cancelled. She verifies this from Mr Holohan who is uncertain, or evasive, about if or how this will affect the terms of Kathleen's contract. On application, Mrs Kearney finds Mr Fitzpatrick unable to resolve her doubts or even, at first, to understand them.

Alarmed, she asks her husband who offers to attend the last concert with her and Kathleen. She tries, on the rainy night of the last concert, to talk to anyone from the society but Holohan and Fitzpatrick are not in evidence and the only other society representative is a Miss Beirne whom Mrs Kearney regards as too old and foolish to bother with.

One of the performers, a nervous second tenor, had competed four times at the Feis Ceoil and came from his last competition with a bronze medal, the very prize that Joyce took away from his participation in the Feis Ceoil. We see other performers, listen to their conversation, consider their concerns.

Mr Holohan appears and Mrs Kearney fastens onto him. He fails to satisfy her claims about the eight guineas and she comes away from him in a thunderous state of dissatisfaction. Mr Hendrick of the Freeman and Mr O'Madden Burke arrive. Mr Hendrick must leave almost immediately and O'Madden Burke is to cover the concert for the paper. Joyce describes Burke as a suave elderly man who balances on his silk umbrella. The two men accompany Holohan to another part of the concert rooms to have a drink together before Hendrick leaves.

Mrs Kearney talks to her husband so loudly that he asks her to lower her voice. The tension spreads to the others. Kathleen remains seated although the time for the performance to begin has passed. The nervous second tenor, Mr Bell, is the first to perform and is in agony at the delay. The audience begins a clamor. Holohan enters and begs Mrs Kearney's cooperation but she demands her money first. Holohan fetches Fitzpatrick who pays her half according to his interpretation of what that half should be. Her half, says Mrs Kearney, is four shillings short. Kathleen takes matters into her own hands and escorts the wretched Mr Bell onstage.

In the dressingroom the concert participants are in turmoil. some siding with, others against, Mrs Kearney and a few try very hard to stay out of it. The apparently ineffectual Miss Beirne takes the extreme position: pay Mrs Kearney nothing. O'Madden Burke agrees. At intermission Holohan and Fitzpatrick tell Mrs Kearney that nothing more will be paid her until after the committee meeting on the following Tuesday night. Mrs Kearney, out of control, scolds and vilifies. Holohan, walking away from her, utters his reproach: "I thought you were a lady."

Everyone now condemns her. She stands at the outside door in argument with her husband and daughter. The concert resumes and another pianist consents to play accompaniments. This other pianist is Miss Healy, named, no doubt, for Tim Healy, the betrayer of Parnell and in Joyces's mind the Judas-type of all Irish traitors. The name comes in for more abuse in 'The Dead.' Mrs Kearney dismisses her husband to find a cab and exits with her daughter after one last outburst at Holohan. Mr O'Madden Burke, poised on his umbrella in approval, tells Holohan that he did the right thing. I don't know how he poised on his umbrella in such a way as to convey approval any more than I know how SŽgouin ('After the Race') opened a window and thereby conveyed significance. To Joyce, who found considerable liveliness in inanimate things, this may not have been a problem.

The characters of this story lack in various degrees good manners or good sense or honesty or all of these qualities. Lenehan, even Lenehan, has his moment of pathos before he neatly skewers it before our very eyes by a sordid wish for a wealthy bride. Nobody here rises above the grubby. It is, of course, unnecessary or desirable for characters to be sympathetic or capable of attracting strong identification but there is a deadly sameness about the progress of this tale that creates grave problems. Joyce undoubtedly disliked Mrs Mooney as greatly as he did Mrs Kearney but 'The Boarding House' is distributed in diverting ways among the participants, not, as here, locked to one very disagreeable woman. Joyce's very obvious dislike prevents, unless one has a sense for the comic, any feminist rehabilitation and creates a story closer to failure than any other story in Dubliners.

Another feature of 'A Mother' is the lack of a rich staffing of off- stage characters. If you compare the balance of present to mentioned characters in 'A Mother' with "Ivy Day in the Committee Room,' you immediately perceive that 'A Mother' has an unremitting focus and a greater feeling of a closed world, one not penetrated by any relationships other than those among the characters who are active and present. It has, in short, an air of claustrophobia.

A Mother: Characters (*mentioned)

• Hoppy Holohan
• Mrs Kearney
• Mr Kearney
• Kathleen Kearney
• Mr Meade*
• Stewards
• Mr Fitzpatrick
• Artistes
• Little boys*
• Miss Beirne
• Mr Duggan
• Mr Bell
• Miss Healy
• Madam Glynn
• The first tenor
• The baritone
• Mr Hendrick
• Mr O'Madden Burke
• An American priest*
• Mrs Pat Campbell*
• The young lady reciter