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[Aetat. 27] J O Y C E 295Nora, as with his mother, he was a prodigal son, full of love and misbehavior;he was pleased that she 'saw through him,' as he said, anddetected the boy in the man. This view of himself he encouraged. InUlysses and Finnegans Wake he apportioned womanhood in its sexualaspect to Molly Bloom, and in its maternal aspect to Anna Livia Plurabelle.But he understood and marveled that Nora had no sense of thedichotomy that bothered him. He represented her attitude, which he tookto be feminine in general, when Molly, though primarily the sensualist,thinks of Stephen Dedalus as child and as lover, without incompatibility,and Anna Livia, though primarily the mother, recollects her once passionateattachment to her husband.Joyce studied his mental landscape and made use of it in his books.Dubliners is written on the assumption that Ireland is an inadequatemother, 'an old sow who eats her farrow,' and he associates himself withthe masticated children. As he wrote to Georg Goyert, the book did notdescribe the way 'they' are in Dublin, but the way 'we' are. 3We arefoolish, comic, motionless, corrupted; yet we are worthy of sympathy too,a sympathy which, if Ireland denies us, the international reader maygive. But the reader must be tested like a loving mother by an errantchild, must be forced to see the ugly, undecorated reality before he isallowed to extend his pity, a pity compounded of outraged affection,amusement, and understanding.Joyce's own preoccupations emerge through the impersonal facade ofDubliners. Two stories, 'A Mother' and 'The Boarding House,' portraymothers who fail in their role by browbeating, a type Joyce could neverendure. 'The Dead' represents in Gretta a woman with genuine maternalsympathy, which she extends both to the dead boy who loved her and toher inadequate husband. She overwhelms Gabriel's sexual passion by lettingher thoughts dwell upon the boy, with whom Gabriel at the lastassociates himself. Other stories, especially 'Araby' and ivy Day in theCommittee Room,' play on the theme of the loss of warmth in the past:the bazaar closed, the radiant image of Parnell chilled by small feelings.Throughout the book the women usually hold together when the mendo not, 'The Sisters' in that they survive so solidly their brother the priest,Chandler's wife in 'A Little Cloud" in her relegation of her husband infavor of her child. Yet there is pity for them too, especially for thosewho, like Corley's girl in 'Two Gallants,' like 'Eveline,' like Maria in'Clay,' cannot achieve full maternal being, and for Gretta in 'The Dead'because of her inevitably lost girlhood. In the book women act (or fail toact) the mother, men drink, children suffer.To write A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Joyce plunged backinto his own past, mainly to justify, but also to expose it. The book'spattern, as he explained to Stanislaus, is that we are what we were; ourmaturity is an extension of our childhood, and the courageous boy isfather of the arrogant young man. But in searching for a way to convert