There are fifteen stories in Dubliners. To me, the first eleven make one set, the next three make a second, and the fifteenth, "The Dead," one of the very best things in the world's literature, stands alone and apart. In the first eleven, there is a central character who keeps getting older: the first stories feature young children, we come eventually to stories about young adults, and then onward to the work-a-day world of the middle-aged, their troubled marriages and unsensational frustrations. These first eleven are incidents from private life that nonetheless show pretty plainly Joyce's view of his native city, circa 1900. The next three stories address themselves to public life in Dublin, its politics ("Ivy Day in the Committe Room"), its cultural life ("A Mother"), and, in "Grace," its religion, which of course is Roman Catholicism.
There are three parts to "Grace" and they may be called "In the Saloon," "In the Sick Room," and "In Church"--or, has been pointed out by more than one critic, the Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso of The Divine Comedy. In the great effort that Joyce was about to embark on, the composition of Ulysses, the wanderings of the main character are modeled, mock heroically, on The Odyssey. But the long section in the sick room will remind most readers, I think, not of Homer or Dante but of Joyce's own "Ivy Day in the Committee Room," wherein the slack conversation of men not above the average is carefully recorded. Here is a sample of the theologizing in "Grace":
Mr Kernan seemed to be troubled in mind. He made an effort to recall the Protestant theology on some thorny points and in the end addressed Mr Cunningham.
--Tell me, Martin, he said. Weren't some of the popes--of course, not our present man, or his predecessor, but some of the old popes--not exactly . . . you know . . . up to the knocker?
There was a silence. Mr Cunningham said:
--O, of course, there were some bad lots . . . But the astonishing thing is this. Not one of them, not the biggest drunkard, not the most . . . out-and-out ruffian, not one of them ever preached ex cathedra a word of false doctrine. Now isn't that an astonishing thing?
--That is, said Mr Kernan.
--Yes, because when the Pope speaks ex cathedra, Mr Fogarty explained, he is infallible.
--Yes, said Mr Cunningham.
--O, I know about the infallibility of the Pope. I remember I was younger then . . . Or was it that--?
Mr Fogarty interrupted. He took up the bottle and helped the others to a little more. Mr M'Coy, seeing that there was not enough to go around, pleaded that he had not finished his first measure. The others accepted under protest. The light music of whisky falling into glasses made an agreeable interlude.
The story ends, in the brief Paradise section, with a sermon by a Father Purdon. It seems to be his point that the businessmen in attendance at the retreat need fear no judgment from Christ, who "was not a hard taskmaster." Mr Kernan had dreaded coming but begins to feel comfortable. He's a relatively minor character in Ulysses, and still a drinker. In Dublin circa 1900, Purdon was the name of a street known for its whorehouses. There was much about Dublin of which Joyce disapproved and the Catholic Church headed the list.
