On the surface, James Joyce’s short story “The Sisters” appears the simplest and easiest of his works within the Dubliners collection. Upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that Dubliners is introduced by “The Sisters” for its in-depth analysis of a darker part of Dublin life. The development of paralysis in the story is simultaneously mild enough to temper into the collection while being overt enough that no doubt could be created over the persistent theme. Paralysis permeates through “The Sisters” with the boy’s forced confrontation of his mentor’s illness and adulthood and the priest’s syphilis and career.
The young boy is forced to confront the priest’s illness and subsequent reputation several times throughout the story, leading to internal conflict the boy is not emotionally ready to handle. As the child waits for the priest to pass away, he thinks, “Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis… It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work” (1). With this first indication that the boy, on some level, is hesitant and distrustful toward the priest, the text better builds the conflicting emotions the death brings up for the boy. Such emotions include the child’s instinct to defend his mentor in public while privately fearing his memory. As old Cotter shows his dislike for the amount of time the boy and priest spent together, the child fills his mouth with food to prevent him from speaking up (3). However, this adult-like will fades at night, and the boy finds himself very much a child, afraid of the priest’s image, describing, “In the dark of my room I imagined that I saw again the heavy grey face of the paralytic. I drew the blankets over my head and tried to think of Christmas. But the grey face still followed me” (3). The clear tension between the townspeople and the dead priest led the boy to become trapped between an adolescent and adult mindset, wanting to think and learn like an adult but being unable to escape his childhood. While this idea is important, it seems to lose emphasis as the story progresses, unlike the boy’s emotional conflict of the priest. As the boy builds up courage to enter the priest’s home, he thinks, “I found it strange that neither I nor the day seemed in a mourning mood, and I felt even annoyed at discovering in myself a sensation of freedom as if I had been freed from something by his death” (5). Yet after this admittance, the boy reminisces on the time the two spent together and priest’s old habits in a manner fit for someone who should be mourning. He still goes to the priest’s house, pays his respects, and stays while the adults converse. The boy is immobilized by the conflicting reports and emotions in his head, making a final opinion or any change impossible.
The priest’s syphilis not only left him paralyzed physically, but mentally, stuck remembering his life’s mistakes while being driven insane. The priest’s sister, Eliza, mentions a strange reoccurrence, saying, “Mind you, I noticed there was something queer coming over him latterly. Whenever I’d bring in his soup to him there I’d find him with his breviary fallen to the floor, lying back in the chair and his mouth open” (9). Given that it is heavily implied, through his syphilis and the disapproval some have of the young boy associating with him, the priest was not staying true to his chastity vow. This sin has made it impossible for him to recite prayer, as he feels he is unworthy and too corrupt to speak holy words. His syphilis-caused insanity appears to have manifested this subconscious thinking. When Father O’Rourke goes looking for the missing priest, he finds that, “[H]e was sitting up by himself in the dark in his confession-box, wide awake and laughing-like softly to himself” (10-11). As the priest is driven mad over his disease, the nature of its contraction leads him to confession, attempting to rid himself of the sin that his reputation is based on. The priest was paralyzed by his illness, but also by Dublin, which would have become a hindrance to his career. When the boy recalls what the priest has taught him, he remembers that he studied at the Irish college in Rome (5). Shortly after, Eliza says the priest had wanted to take a trip to his childhood home for a day with the two sisters (9). Going from living in a poorer area like Dublin to living in a wealthy city like Rome is not a common transition, but given the opportunity not one easily passed up. Despite his education at a privileged, well-off university, the priest returned to Dublin. His desire to visit his childhood home demonstrates a desire to understand life’s trajectory, and how the priest’s great promise led him from Dublin, to Rome, to excommunication, and back to Dublin.
Good post; there’s a lot to unpack in this one.
Joyce introduces his paralysis theme with the double-meaning in the word itself. The priest is literally suffering from paralysis, but the boy also, subconsciously, is teetering in that space between childhood innocence and adult awareness. Later in the collection we find out how the loss of innocence affects these characters as they enter maturity, but here it is a subtext and we have to read between the lines. Adult readers see what the child cannot, and yet, his fears and suspicions and dreams and observations expose a dark secret.
While I think the paralysis relates mainly to the boy–he resists the clear signs that something is wrong with the priest to avoid a spiritual crisis of his own–you could apply the theme to Father Flynn, too. He fails to reach his potential and longs to start again, as you point out, but he is stuck in the poor part of Dublin, living out his days in shame. Here we see the Modernist angle that Joyce is credited with helping to shape: our heroes are mere humans, fallen creatures who disappoint us in the end, not perfect, larger than life conquerors. In a sense, all of Dublin labors under the weight of its own failures and cannot move forward.
You make many good points in your post and your general interpretation is sound. But, do not miss the message Joyce sends here about the corruption of the church which continues to hold its people in a state of guilt and social bondage, without helping them find purpose and redemption. The church is, like England, another exploiter. So the visit to the sisters is a kind of religious service…it is, in fact, a mock mass. But it offers no absolution, and no hope to the boy.
I’m curious, too, that you don’t visit the possibility that the boy was being molested by the priest, as seemingly reflected in the dream visions, and his strange anger at Cotter’s suggestions. I would have liked you to have delved a bit more deeply into the subtlety of Joyce’s diction, which is the key to meaning in his work.