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Narration under a Blindfold: Reading Joyce's “Clay”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Margot Norris
Margot Norris*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
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Abstract

Traditional allegorical readings of Joyce's Dubliners story “Clay” have tended to collude with the story's rhetorical aim of aggrandizing the figure of Maria. The estimation of the “old maid” is indeed the story's crux, and the exigencies of desire compel the manipulative textual strategies that render the story ambiguous and produce conflicting interpretations. The story thereby achieves a fine dramatization of the precarious ontology of the old maid, a dramatization in which the fragmented reader (whose ear and eye are in conflict) participates as a principal actor.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 102 , Issue 2 , March 1987 , pp. 206 - 215
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1987

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References

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