As a matter of fact, I would argue that despite authorial differences (related to nationality and gender) and a span of approximately fifty years, Dubliners and Villette have many things in common. For the sake of comprehension, let's begin with the purpose of each text. Joyce wrote in a letter that this collection of short stories (one of his earliest works) was meant to act as a sort of "looking-glass" into the "moral history" of Ireland's "paralysis," particularly Dublin, which Joyce cited as the "centre of paralysis" (qtd. in Walzl 31). All of this implies, as Florence Walzl states, that Joyce meant this to be an accurate and realistic portrait of his home.
Similarly, Charlotte Bronte's novel Villette has a great deal of realism, stemming from the knowledge base that she had as a governess and teacher, as well has her experiences on the Continent. Bronte still kept with the autobiographical style and Villette, like Jane Eyre, is about a teacher's life and love(s)--something Bronte did well (Smith and Rosengarten loc. 113). Unlike Dubliners, this novel does not appear to be as obviously critical of the narrator's home, but instead saves much of its vehemence for Belgium where much of the story takes place, as well as being subtly but icily critical of the position and place of women in both nations.
Bronte's critique of gender is explored/experienced through her narrator, Lucy Snowe, whose name comes from the Latin luces for "light" and contrasts with her chilly surname: the heat which reveals, the cold which conceals joined together (Smith & Rosengarten loc. 274). Indeed, Lucy is an orphan who grows into adulthood as an intelligent, independent young woman. Despite the fact that she often dresses in dark, somber colors and seems to withdraw herself from others, she burns with a sort of despairing anger which singes the page. All at once, Lucy highly values her independence as a working woman but wishes for the domestic security of a husband and family (Smith and Rosengarten loc. 212).
I suspect that the middle class women that Joyce writes in Dubliners would share in Lucy's divided discontent. According to Florence Walzl's semi-sociological study of Ireland at the time, Ireland had one of the highest rates of unmarried men and women in Europe, which meant a large number of unmarried women were entering the workforce, primarily as teachers, nurses, and housekeepers, just as Lucy and Bronte were teachers on the Continent (Smith & Rosengarten intro.) Most of the women Joyce portrays are music teachers, or at least skilled in the art, as the final story "The Dead" best exemplifies. However, the similarities between female occupations are not the deepest comparisons that the texts allow us to make. And while the collection has many women worth discussing on a deeper level, I will focus on one of whom I believe is the most interesting for the sake of space and time.
In the story "A Mother," we are introduced to a "Miss Devlin," who becomes Mrs. Kearney. I could be wrong, but I don't recall her ever having a first name. In her younger years Mrs. Kearney had been educated in French and music, which she was good at. While she looked for a suitable husband, Joyce writes that she "sat amid the chilly circle of her accomplishments," not encouraging young men because she didn't think they were special enough for herself and her abilities (122). When she reached an age close to spinsterhood, she married a much older man and had a daughter, Kathleen, whom she educated in much the same way that she was (with the exception that Kathleen is proficient in Gaelic as well). When Kathleen is asked to play piano at a concert, Mrs. Kearney becomes nearly obsessed with it: she helps to arrange it, adds expensive fabric to her daughter's good dress, and ensures that her daughter is there for the performances on time (124-5). Towards the end of these four concerts, she is told by the assistant secretary that there will only be three performances, and Mrs. Kearney insists (to the point of what Dubliners would call rudeness) that her daughter still be paid the four guineas promised (Joyce 132). Unfortunately, it ends up getting Kathleen dismissed from the concerts and rumor has it that she will not be asked to do concerts again (133).
Whew. So after that summary, allow me to draw some conclusions. Our nameless Mrs. Kearney is a victim of a system very similar to what Lucy Snowe experiences. She has talents which appear to go ignored except in a few drawing rooms, and she ends up marrying for security's sake a very ordinary man who is much older than she. As Joyce deftly hints, it is not merely her accomplishments which are chilly; Mrs. Kearney becomes increasingly more constrained as she ages, and sees her way out of this deadly cycle by pushing her ambitions on her daughter, who may or may not share her motivation. When these two men attempt to cheat her because she is a woman, she (nearly publicly) rails against them, even stating in her own thoughts that "they wouldn't have dared to have treated her like that if she had been a man" (131). For her actions, her daughter is blacklisted and she and her family are humiliated. Here, Joyce's theme of paralysis shows us a woman of intelligence and ambition who is kept from reaching her full potential thanks to her society.
In "A Mother" and Charlotte Bronte's Villette, we are confronted with two heroines who are, in Joyce's terms "paralysed" by their societies. Both share the fact that they are intelligent and ambitious, but they seem to have difficulty finding people who appreciate these qualities, leaving them either in a tightly-controlled rage or pushing their ambitions on someone else. In the end each woman is concealed by the heavy snow of her society, which tries to push her into a worn mold and set of labels that do not suit her.
Sources:
Bronte, Charlotte. Villette.
Ed. Margaret Smith and Herbert Rosengarten. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000. Oxford's
World Classics. Kindle.
Joyce, James. James Joyce's Dubliners: An Illustrated Edition with Annotations. Ed. John W. Jackson and Bernard McGinley. New York: St. Martin's, 1993. Print.
Walzl, Florence L. "Dubliners: Women in Irish Society." Women in Joyce. Ed. Suzette Henke and Elaine Unkeless. Urbana: Illinois UP, 1982. 31-56. Print.
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