In “Araby”, James Joyce presents the dreams and desires of a teenaged boy living in Dublin, Ireland, in the late 19th century. It is a story of sexual awakening and self-realization, and as such provides an insight into the gender stereotypes that were prevalent in that particular society.
Restrictions on the movement of women is one of the ways in which the feminine gender seems to have been constructed in that particular time and place. The female characters in “Araby” are not allowed to move about as freely as the male characters. For example, the narrator and his male companions used to play in the streets till daylight had long faded away, and the light from the windows fell on the road:
Our shouts echoed in the silent street. The career of our play brought us through the dark muddy lanes behind the houses where we ran the gauntlet of the rough tribes from the cottages, to the back doors of the dark dripping gardens where odours arose from the ashpits, to the dark odorous stables where a coachman smoothed and combed the horse or shook music from the buckled harness. When we returned to the street light from the kitchen windows had filled the areas.
The boys had free run of the neighborhood, including its less savory parts and dark nooks and crannies, and also the parts inhabited by people belonging to ‘low culture’, such as the “rough tribes from the cottages” or the coachman lurking inside the dark stables. These parts are way from the reassuring, domestic “light from the kitchen windows”, to which they returned only when it was time to go home.
It is remarkable that the playful teenagers are all boys – there are no girls among their numbers. Perhaps most, if not all, of them are students of the Catholic Brothers’ School, bu...
... middle of paper ...
...t the girl could not look back at him, or even perceive that she was being observed:
Every morning I lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her door. The blind was pulled down to within an inch of the sash so that I could not be seen.
He would follow her part of the way, so he “kept her brown figure always in [his] eye”. This is the typical attitude of the stalker, who sees yet remains unseen. The power contrast is perhaps best expressed through the situation of Mangan’s sister standing in the doorway, virtually blinded by the light that framed her from behind, peering out into the darkness, while the boys lurked in the dark nooks and crannies, looking at her and enjoying the curves of her figure in silhouette.
Thus the story “Araby” gives us a vivid sense of the ideology and cultural practices that defined masculinity and femininity in James Joyce’s Dublin.
cold, harsh, wintry days, when my brothers and sister and I trudged home from school burdened down by the silence and frigidity of our long trek from the main road, down the hill to our shabby-looking house. More rundown than any of our classmates’ houses. In winter my mother’s riotous flowers would be absent, and the shack stood revealed for what it was. A gray, decaying...
higher education, choice of a husband and access to a prosperous/independent future-that a woman would be positioned to escape gender oppression. However, this is not the case for the Arab women of Fatima Mernissi’s Dreams of Trespass and Ahdaf Soueif’s In the Eye of the Sun. The two main characters of these novels-Asya and Mernissi herself-enable the reader to understand how gender inequality is rooted in the frontiers and accepted social norms that are defined by the community and adhered to by the individual. Although these woman have access to an equal education with the hopes of becoming an enlightened, liberated women, education does not guarantee that they will ever become truly liberated. This paper will discuss the differences between the educated and seemingly liberated women of Dreams of Trespass, and In the Eye of the Sun, in hopes to understand whether cultural and educational frontiers are the only characteristics which govern a woman's right to escape the gendered Arab hierarchy. Why do some women, with access to westernization and an equal education still fall victim to the subservient expectations of an unliberated and uneducated female in the Arab world? Why are these women maintaining such domination when they are surrounded by tools of
In the novel She and in the stories of The Arabian Nights, both Haggard and Haddawy explore the expanding gender roles of women within the nineteenth century. At a time that focused on the New Woman Question, traditional gender roles were shifted to produce greater rights and responsibilities for women. Both Ayesha, from Haggard’s novel She, and Shahrazad, from Haddawy’s translation of The Arabian Nights, transgress the traditional roles of women as they are being portrayed as strong and educated females, unwilling to yield to men’s commands. While She (Ayesha) takes her power to the extreme (i.e. embodying the femme fatale), Shahrazad offers a counterpart to She (i.e. she is strong yet selfless and concerned with the welfare of others). Thus, from the two characters emerge the idea of a woman who does not abide by the constraints of nineteenth century gender roles and, instead, symbolizes the New Woman.
In her story, "Araby," James Joyce concentrates on character rather than on plot to reveal the ironies inherent in self-deception. On one level "Araby" is a story of initiation, of a boy’s quest for the ideal. The quest ends in failure but results in an inner awareness and a first step into manhood. On another level the story consists of a grown man's remembered experience, for the story is told in retrospect by a man who looks back to a particular moment of intense meaning and insight. As such, the boy's experience is not restricted to youth's encounter with first love. Rather, it is a portrayal of a continuing problem all through life: the incompatibility of the ideal, of the dream as one wishes it to be, with the bleakness of reality. This double focus-the boy who first experiences, and the man who has not forgotten-provides for the dramatic rendering of a story of first love told by a narrator who, with his wider, adult vision, can employ the sophisticated use of irony and symbolic imagery necessary to reveal the story's meaning.
“Araby” tells the story of a young boy who romanticizes over his friend’s older sister. He spends a lot of time admiring the girl from a distance. When the girl finally talks to him, she reveals she cannot go to the bazaar taking place that weekend, he sees it as a chance to impress her. He tells her that he is going and will buy her something. The boy becomes overwhelmed by the opportunity to perform this chivalrous act for her, surely allowing him to win the affections of the girl. The night of the bazaar, he is forced to wait for his drunken uncle to return home to give him money to go. Unfortunately, this causes the boy to arrive at the bazaar as it is closing. Of the stalls that remained open, he visited one where the owner, and English woman, “seemed to have spoken to me out of a sense of duty” (Joyce 89) and he knows he will not be able to buy anything for her. He decides to just go home, realizing he is “a creature driven and derided with vanity” (Joyce 90). He is angry with himself and embarrassed as he...
“These boys, now, were living as we'd been living then, they were growing up with a rush and their heads bumped abruptly against the low ceiling of their actual possibilities. They were filled with rage. All they really knew were two darkness’s, the darkness of their lives, which were now closi...
A collection of short stories published in 1907, Dubliners, by James Joyce, revolves around the everyday lives of ordinary citizens in Dublin, Ireland (Freidrich 166). According to Joyce himself, his intention was to "write a chapter of the moral history of [his] country and [he] chose Dublin for the scene because the city seemed to [b]e the centre of paralysis" (Friedrich 166). True to his goal, each of the fifteen stories are tales of disappointment, darkness, captivity, frustration, and flaw. The book is divided into four sections: childhood, adolescence, maturity, and public life (Levin 159). The structure of the book shows that gradually, citizens become trapped in Dublin society (Stone 140). The stories portray Joyce's feeling that Dublin is the epitome of paralysis and all of the citizens are victims (Levin 159). Although each story from Dubliners is a unique and separate depiction, they all have similarities with each other. In addition, because the first three stories -- The Sisters, An Encounter, and Araby parallel each other in many ways, they can be seen as a set in and of themselves. The purpose of this essay is to explore one particular similarity in order to prove that the childhood stories can be seen as specific section of Dubliners. By examining the characters of Father Flynn in The Sisters, Father Butler in An Encounter, and Mangan's sister in Araby, I will demonstrate that the idea of being held captive by religion is felt by the protagonist of each story. In this paper, I argue that because religion played such a significant role in the lives of the middle class, it was something that many citizens felt was suffocating and from which it was impossible to get away. Each of the three childhood stories uses religion to keep the protagonist captive. In The Sisters, Father Flynn plays an important role in making the narrator feel like a prisoner. Mr. Cotter's comment that "… a young lad [should] run about and play with young lads of his own age…" suggests that the narrator has spent a great deal of time with the priest. Even in death, the boy can not free himself from the presence of Father Flynn (Stone 169) as is illustrated in the following passage: "But the grey face still followed me. It murmured; and I understood that it desired to confess something.
The short story “Araby” by James Joyce is told by what seems to be the first person point of view of a boy who lives just north of Dublin. As events unfold the boy struggles with dreams versus reality. From the descriptions of his street and neighbors who live close by, the reader gets an image of what the boy’s life is like. His love interest also plays an important role in his quest from boyhood to manhood. The final trip to the bazaar is what pushes him over the edge into a foreshadowed realization. The reader gets the impression that the narrator is the boy looking back on his epiphany as a matured man. The narrator of “Araby” looses his innocence because of the place he lives, his love interest, and his trip to the bazaar.
In his brief but complex story "Araby," James Joyce concentrates on character rather than on plot to reveal the ironies within self-deception. On one level "Araby" is a story of initiation, of a boy's quest for the ideal. The quest ends in failure but results in an inner awareness and a first step into manhood. On another level the story consists of a grown man's remembered experience, for a man who looks back to a particular moment of intense meaning and insight tells the story in retrospect. As such, the boy's experience is not restricted to youth's encounter with first love. Rather, it is a portrayal of a continuing problem all through life: the incompatibility of the ideal, of the dream as one wishes it to be, with the bleakness of reality. This double focus-the boy who first experiences, and the man who has not forgotten provides for the rendering of a story of first love told by a narrator who, with his wider, adult vision, can employ the sophisticated use of irony and symbolic imagery necessary to reveal the story's meaning. The story opens with a description of North Richmond Street, a "blind," "cold ... .. silent" (275)street where the houses "gazed at one an-other with brown imperturbable faces.".(275) The former tenant, a priest, died in the back room of the house, and his legacy-several old yellowed books, which the boy enjoys leafing through because they are old, and a bicycle pump rusting in the back yard-become symbols of the intellectual and religious vitality of the past. Every morning before school the boy lies on the floor in the front parlor peeking out through a crack in the blind of the door, watching and waiting for the girl next door to emerge from her house and walk to school. He is shy and still boyish.
James Joyce’s “Araby” and the story of “A & P” by John Updike have many characteristic similarities as well as literary traits. These stories focus on a young man trying to learn the difference between the romantic fantasies that play in their mind and the bitterness that reality can bring to a young man. In both stories a young man has built an unrealistic expectation of women only to meet the tragic despair of being rejected by the object of their boyish fantasy. In both of these stories the authors choose to show that life is not always what it may always appear.
Although “Araby” is a fairly short story, author James Joyce does a remarkable job of discussing some very deep issues within it. On the surface it appears to be a story of a boy's trip to the market to get a gift for the girl he has a crush on. Yet deeper down it is about a lonely boy who makes a pilgrimage to an eastern-styled bazaar in hopes that it will somehow alleviate his miserable life. James Joyce’s uses the boy in “Araby” to expose a story of isolation and lack of control. These themes of alienation and control are ultimately linked because it will be seen that the source of the boy's emotional distance is his lack of control over his life.
In “Araby”, author James Joyce presents a male adolescent who becomes infatuated with an idealized version of a schoolgirl, and explores the consequences which result from the disillusionment of his dreams. While living with his uncle and aunt, the main character acts a joyous presence in an otherwise depressing neighborhood. In Katherine Mansfield’s, The Garden Party, Mansfield’s depicts a young woman, Laura Sherridan, as she struggles through confusion, enlightenment, and the complication of class distinctions on her path to adulthood. Both James Joyce and Katherine Mansfield expertly use the literary elements of characterization to illustrate the journey of self-discovery while both main characters recognize that reality is not what they previously conceptualized it as.
The narrator in “Araby” is a young man who lives in an uninteresting area and dreary house in Dublin. The only seemingly exciting thing about the boy’s existence is the sister of his friend Mangum that he is hopelessly in love with; “…her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.” (Joyce 2279) In an attempt to impress her and bring some color into his own gray life, he impulsively lies to her that he is planning on attending a bazaar called Arab. He also promises the gi...
I believe Araby employs many themes; the two most apparent to me are escape and fantasy though I see signs of religion and a boy's first love. Araby is an attempt by the boy to escape the bleak darkness of North Richmond Street. Joyce orchestrates an attempt to escape the "short days of winter", "where night falls early" and streetlights are but "feeble lanterns" failing miserably to light the somberness of the "dark muddy lanes"(Joyce 38). Metaphorically, Joyce calls the street blind, a dead end; much like Dublin itself in the mid 1890s when Joyce lived on North Richmond Street as a young boy. A recurrent theme of darkness weaves itself through the story; the boy hides in shadows from his uncle or to coyly catch a glimpse of his friend Mangan's sister who obliviously is his first love.
In many cultures, childhood is considered a carefree time, with none of the worries and constraints of the “real world.” In “Araby,” Joyce presents a story in which the central themes are frustration, the longing for adventure and escape, and the awakening and confusing passion experienced by a boy on the brink of adulthood. The author uses a single narrator, a somber setting, and symbolism, in a minimalist style, to remind the reader of the struggles and disappointments we all face, even during a time that is supposed to be carefree.