Clay (short story)

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Clay is a short story by James Joyce published in his 1914 collection Dubliners.

[edit] The story

Maria, a spinster with a minor job in a rescue mission for prostitutes and alcoholic women, is looking forward to her evening out at the house of Joe, whom she nursed when he was a boy and who is still very fond of her. After attending to a tea service, she goes out to buy cakes for the Hallow Eve party that will be held at Joe’s house. Maria is a bit maliciously teased by the bakery clerk about whether she wishes to buy a wedding cake. During the tea a similar remark was made. On a tram, she has a bashful encounter with an elderly man who chats with her. She is welcomed warmly at the house by Joe’s family, but she is saddened when she realizes she has lost the plumcake she bought for Joe and his wife. Maria is soon enticed into playing a traditional Hallow Eve game with the children in which objects are placed in saucers and a blindfolded player has to pick among them. Each object is supposed to have a prophetic significance. When Maria chooses a lump of clay, everyone goes quiet as clay stands for death. She chooses again and gets a prayer-book, which indicates a future in a convent. Another object in the game is a ring, standing for marriage, which Maria fails to get during this game and during a similar game earlier in the evening at the tea service (where objects were baked into pieces of tea cake). After drinking some wine, Maria sings the aria "I Dreamt That I Dwelt in Marble Halls" from the opera The Bohemian Girl by Michael Balfe. She makes a mistake by singing the first verse twice, but nobody corrects her. The omission is significant as the missing verse imagines the suitors that Maria has not had in her life:

I dreamt that suitors sought my hand,
That knights upon bended knee,
And with vows no maiden heart could withstand,
They pledg'd their faith to me.
And I dreamt that one of that noble host
Came forth my hand to claim;
But I also dreamt, which charm'd me most,
That you lov'd me still the same.

The story ends with a description of how moved Joe is by Maria’s performance.

[edit] References

• Joyce, James. Dubliners (London: Grant Richards, 1914)

[edit] External links

• "I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls" sung by Edith Chapman, from the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara Library.

James Joyce's Dubliners
The Sisters | An Encounter | Araby | Eveline | After the Race | Two Gallants | The Boarding House | A Little Cloud | Counterparts | Clay | A Painful Case | Ivy Day in the Committee Room | A Mother | Grace | The Dead