Chapter 9 - Parnell and James Joyce’s Dubliners

Summary

Parnell haunts the city in James Joyce’s Dubliners. An admonishing ghost, he tantalizes its citizens with the abandoned dreams that follow Ireland’s rejection of their lost leader to  the warnings and strictures of the Roman Catholic Church following his adultery with Katherine O’Shea. James Duffy, at the centre of the story A Painful Case, is one such individual, searching for his sexual, spiritual, and political solace. A devotee of classical music, he meets the married Mrs Emily Sinico at a concert. What develops shakes Duffy to his soul for he recoils from her physical show of affection. They separate. A short while later he reads of her suicide, intoxicated, throwing herself before a train. Throughout the story strange echoes and eerie parallels between the fall of Parnell and the fall of James Duffy deepen the confusion and tragedies of both men, and of the Ireland that shaped their connected fates.