Secrets and Revelations:
Character Co-reference Choice as an Aspect of the Plot
in James Joyce’s Dubliners
(7, 159 words, including 124-word abstract)
Terence Patrick Murphy
Department of English
College of Liberal Arts
Yonsei University
Seoul, Republic of Korea
120-749
Dept of English Tel. 82-2-2123-2300
Dept of English Fax: 82-02-392-0275
Home Tel. 82-2-391-4307 (with answering machine)
31 November 2009
2
Abstract
Co-reference refers to the way in which literary characters are established and
maintained within the active register of the text world. If the first co-reference choice
serves to establish part of a character network of about seven or eight “control centres”
for subsequent plot elaboration, settled co-reference choice maintains that character
within the active register of the narrative discourse. In James Joyce’s Dubliners (1914),
the stories divide up into a large set that employs stable co-reference and a smaller set of
narratives that utilize marked choices as part of their aesthetic design.
Keywords: character co-reference chain; conceptual control centre; definite
description; first co-reference choice; general class word; marked co-reference chain;
procedural attachment; pronoun; settled co-reference choice; text world monitoring;
unmarked co-reference chain.
3
Introduction
Co-reference chains are formed from out of that set of conceptually coherent
choices by which the narrator establishes reference to a particular literary character
(Halliday and Hasan 274-92; Toolan 1998 101-2; Emmott 1999 85-6). As Robert de
Beaugrande argues, co-reference involves “the application of different surface
expressions to the same [character] in a textual world” (Beaugrande 133). Literary
characters may be referenced by some form of the proper name, a definite description, a
general class word or a pronoun, or an agent metonym. The stability of a particular co-
reference chain derives from the writer’s frequent use of some form of the proper name
alternating in expected ways with the relevant pronoun. Critics have long recognized
that this basic pattern may be varied for creative purposes, citing a distinction between
writers who utilize stable co-reference chains and other writers, such as Henry James,
who employ “elegant variation” (Short and Leech 107; Short 273). Far from being an
issue of individual whim, however, unexpected co-reference choice is a strategic part of
the narrator’s management of the plot (Emmott 1999 61n34). Writers possess different
voiceprints, which can be uncovered by an analysis of the frequency of the grammatical
and lexical word choices they make. Character co-reference, which lies on the borders
of that major language division, would appear to differ from writer to writer, in ways
that contribute meaningfully to the reader’s enjoyment and comprehension of the stories
they tell. In James Joyce’s Dubliners (1914), for example, the stories divide up into a
large set that employs stable co-reference and a smaller set of narratives that make
purposeful use of marked choices as part of their aesthetic design. In “Counterparts”,
co-reference choice serves to create distance from the central character. In “Eveline, the
co-reference pattern helps establish a text world that is vague and half-irresolute, a
4
world that is appropriate to the story’s theme. In “A Little Cloud”, a persistent pattern of
discrepant co-reference choices serves to undermine the prospects of one character and
bolster those of another. In both “The Sisters” and “The Dead”, co-reference choice
enacts local patterns of plot defamiliarization in order to suggest secrets and make
revelations. In both stories, the co-reference choices to the pivotal character are
particularly marked; these patterns set apart that character whose function it is to send
the main character on a journey of inward discovery.
The Conceptualization of Literary Character
For Paul Werth, the establishment of characters is one of the basic tasks in
building a text world. “A world is first defined by deictic expressions of place and time,
and is then furnished with [characters] by reference establishment (Werth 158). For
Werth, reference maintenance involves procedures for keeping those characters active
within the narrative fiction. This procedure involves “the chaining of references to a
single [character] to preserve continuity … with clear guidelines to handle cases of
reference-crossing” (Werth 158). Understood in this way, the task of the reader is an
continual act of conceptualizing, monitoring and occasionally discarding one or other of
the set of characters established at the story’s outset (Werth 1999 158-162; Emmott
1999 41).
First Co-Reference Choice
A central aspect of text-world building relates to the different surface
expressions that may be used to reference the characters. The first mention of a
particular literary character within the text world may be termed the first co-reference
5
choice. In James Joyce’s Dubliners, it is typical for some form of the proper name to
perform this function. This is because the proper name is the most efficient item for
establishing a conceptual control centre for character definition and description,
motivation and action. As Table 1 suggests, in Dubliners, there are at least thirteen
forms that the proper name as first co-reference choice can take.
Settled Co-Reference Choice
Once a character is established within the register of the text world, the
character needs to be maintained there. Settled co-reference choice is the name for the
manner in which the narrator chooses to keep that character in the active register of the
text world. Settled co-reference choice signifies the narrator’s most frequent form of
character reference. As Table 2 confirms, the second or subsequent or settled co-
reference choice offers a more restricted range of options. In Dubliners, there are four
forms that cover almost all the examples of settled co-reference. The first form is that of
(a) Given Name alone (Gabriel). This is the most familiar form of character address and
may be considered to be entirely unmarked. The second form is that of (a) Title +
Family Name, (Mr Duffy). This form is a little more marked than the first form. It is
used more with characters who function as helpers and accomplices rather than as major
actors in their own right. Nonetheless, it is an entirely unobjectionable mode of address,
used to indicate the gentlemanly status of a given character. The third form is that of (c)
Family Name alone (Farrington). In comparison with the first two forms, the use of the
Family Name alone is marked. This form indicates the lack of gentlemanly status and is
used with some of the more disreputable figures in Dubliners, such as Lenehan and
Corley in “Two Gallants”. The fourth form is that of (d) Given Name + Family Name
6
(Freddy Malins). This form is marked because it is redundant. According to the
principle of textual economy, it should therefore not be available for use as a settled co-
reference choice (Leech 1983). Two characters out of all the many characters the reader
meets in the course of these short stories are referred to in this way: Freddie Malins in
“The Dead” and Ignatius Gallaher in “A Little Cloud”. The fifth form of settled co-
reference choice is (e) Epithet + Family Name (Little Chandler). The passage in which
Little Chandler is established calls attention to this highly marked form of his name:
He was called Little Chandler because, though he was but slightly under the average
stature, he gave one the idea of being a little man. His hands were white and small,
his frame was fragile, his voice was quiet and his manners were refined. He took the
greatest care of his fair silken hair and moustache and used perfume discreetly on
his handkerchief. (Joyce 53)
7
Table 1: First Co-reference Choice for the Proper Name in Joyce’s Dubliners
Form of the Proper Name Example, from Dubliners
1. Title + Given Name + Family Name Mr James Duffy (“A Painful Case”)
2. Title + Family Name Mrs Mooney (“The Boarding House”)
3. Title + Given Name Miss Julia (“The Dead”)
4. Given Name + Family Name Freddy Malins (“The Dead”)
5. Given Name Maria (“Clay”)
6. Family Name Farrington (“Counterparts”)
7. Epithet + Given Name Old Jack (“Ivy Day”)
8. Epithet + Family Name Old Cotter (“The Sisters”)
9. Title + Family Name + Definite
Description
Mr Holahan, assistant secretary of the Eire Abu Society (“A
Mother”),
10. Given Name + Family Name +
Definite Description
Charles Ségouin, the owner of the car (“After the Race”)
11. Given Name + Definite Description Lily, the caretaker’s daughter (“The Dead”)
12. Definite Description + Title + Family
Name
The secretary of the society, Mr Fitzpatrick (“A Mother”)
13. Definite Description + Family Name A young Englishman named Routh (“After the Race”)
8
Table 2: First Co-reference and Settled Co-reference Choice in Dubliners
The Significance of First Co-reference Choice
While the proper name establishes the conceptual control centre for the
elaboration of literary character, the pronoun functions as the most compact of the four
forms of reference (Halliday and Hasan 1976; Beaugrande 1980; Leech 1983). If the
stability of a co-reference chain requires the frequent invocation of the proper name, its
narrowness suggests that the proper name should alternate, in non-ambiguous
environments, with the relevant pronoun. The ordinary alternation of the proper name
and pronoun in non-ambiguous environments is explicable in terms of the principles of
textual efficiency and economy, respectively (Toolan 1990; Beaugrande 1980).
First Co-reference Choice Settled Co-reference Choice
Mr James Duffy (“A Painful Case”) Mr Duffy
Mrs Mooney (“The Boarding House”) Mrs Mooney
Freddy Malins (“The Dead”) Freddy Malins
Maria (“Clay”) Maria
Old Jack (“Ivy Day”) Jack
Mr Holahan, assistant secretary of the Eire Abu Society
(“A Mother”),
Mr Holahan
Charles Ségouin, the owner of the car (“After the Race”) Ségouin
The secretary of the society, Mr Fitzpatrick (“A
Mother”)
Mr Fitzpatrick
A young Englishman named Routh (“After the Race”) Routh
He (“A Little Cloud”) Little Chandler
9
Marked First Co-reference Choice
(a) Definite Description
In contrast with the proper name, the use of a definite description, a general
class word or a pronoun as first co-reference choice functions as a form of stylistic
alienation. Definite descriptions as first reference choice are rare in Dubliners. Beside
the partial example of “Mr Holohan, assistant secretary of the Eire Abu Society” in “A
Mother”, the closest example of the phenomenon occurs at the beginning of “The
Dead”:
Lily, the caretaker's daughter, was literally run off her feet. Hardly had she brought
one gentleman into the little pantry behind the office on the ground floor and helped
him off with his overcoat, than the wheezy hall-door bell clanged again and she had
to scamper along the bare hallway to let in another guest. (Joyce 138)
In this passage, the expected choice would be Lily, the maid. While the use of the given
name alone makes Lily familiar to the reader in the way a maid may be said to be
familiar to her employers, the use of the somewhat unexpected appositive definite
description—“the caretaker’s daughter”—calls attention to her lower class status. Since
nothing further is said about either Lily’s father or family, most readers will recognize
this marked first reference choice is a subtle in-joke at the maid’s expense. The true
irony, however, is that a receptivity to this joke may lull the reader into a false sense of
superiority in relation to the concerns of uneducated women, mirroring the initial
disposition of the main character Gabriel Conroy himself.
Continuing reference at the level of the definite description or general class
word, however, tends to render characters static. As a result, these co-reference forms
are only used for minor characters or for characters who carry out only minor plot-
10
advancing or plot-retarding functions: “two poor women”, “a telegram boy”, “the clerk”,
and “another priest”, for example, all of whom appear briefly in “The Sisters” or “a
tramload of business people”, “a crowd of ragged girls” and “two ragged boys”
mentioned in “An Encounter”. As Table 3 indicates, these stories demonstrate the basic
distinction between the foreground and the background characters.
Table 3: Foreground and Background Characters
Third Person Narrative Character Co-Reference
Narrative
Deixis
Close Familiar and Stable
(e.g. Nanny, Eliza Old Cotter)
Remote
Unfamiliar and Stable
(a crowd of ragged girls,
another priest)
(b) General Class Word
A more significant form of marked first reference choice is the general class
word. In “Counterparts”, the first co-reference choice is “a man”, even though the
reader knows that the character in question is actually named Farrington:
The bell rang furiously and, when Miss Parker went to the tube, a furious voice
called out in a piercing North of Ireland accent:
"Send Farrington here!"
Miss Parker returned to her machine, saying to a man who was writing at a desk:
11
"Mr. Alleyne wants you upstairs." (Joyce 66)
As Jeri Johnson has commented, the use of the general class word is not accidental. For
large parts of the story, the narrator refers to Farrington by the general class word man,
switching to the use of the family name alone only when Farrington is ensconced in the
safety of the bars (Joyce 2000 233n). The use of the general class word serves to
maintain the reader’s critical distance from this unhappy, sensual, violent individual:
The man walked heavily towards the door and, as he went out of the room, he heard
Mr. Alleyne cry after him that if the contract was not copied by evening Mr.
Crosbie would hear of the matter. (Joyce 67)
A passage like this is particularly striking because of the contrast between the general
class word used to reference Farrington and the proper names used to refer to each of
the other characters. The consistent invocation of the general class word prevents the
reader from making common cause with Farrington, a deliberate narrative strategy that
foreshadows the darkness of the story’s ending in which the man violently beats his
small son for a trivial offense.
(c) Pronoun
The use of the pronoun as first co-reference choice is the most marked of all.
An extended example of its use may be discovered in Joyce’s “Eveline”:
She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was
leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the odour of dusty
cretonne. She was tired.
Few people passed. The man out of the last house passed on his way home; she
heard his footsteps clacking along the concrete pavement and afterwards crunching
12
on the cinder path before the new red houses. One time there used to be a field there
in which they used to play every evening with other people's children. Then a man
from Belfast bought the field and built houses in it—not like their little brown
houses but bright brick houses with shining roofs. […] But in her new home, in a
distant unknown country, it would not be like that. Then she would be married—she,
Eveline. (Joyce 25-6)
The co-reference chain that unites the first reference choice with the proper name
extends over two pages. It sets up a small textual mystery that forces the reader to read
on in the hope of discovering the identity of the young woman sitting at the window.
Other co-reference choices are probably governed by this central decision: the reader
never learns the name of Eveline’s father or mother, while her two brothers are
introduced using only the given names of “Ernest” and “Harry”. Even the man Eveline
intends to elope with is simply “a fellow” and then “Frank”, while the figure responsible
for the changes is “a man from Belfast”. The other families are the Tizzies, the Dunns,
and the Waters. The only marked choices that emerge are Tizzie Dunn, presumably
because she is dead, and Little Keogh, presumably because of his handicap. In this
respect, a distinction can probably be drawn between text worlds in which co-reference
functions partly in order to create an atmosphere of vagueness and irresolution and texts
in which character co-reference is richer and more specific.
In “Grace”, there is a related example of the use of the pronoun as first co-
reference choice to create a sense of mystery about the identity of the central character.
Here too, it is of significance that the two other figures in the tableau with which the
story begins are referred to as “two gentlemen”. This choice contrasts with the use of
the more simple “man” in “Counterparts”. The irony of the unseemly encounter in the
13
lavatory is offset by the strong sense of moral or religious purpose that emerges during
the course of the story: that of saving Mr Kernan, the errant soul, from the sinfulness of
his drunken ways:
Two gentlemen who were in the lavatory at the time tried to lift him up: but he was
quite helpless. He lay curled up at the foot of the stairs down which he had fallen.
They succeeded in turning him over. His hat had rolled a few yards away and his
clothes were smeared with the filth and ooze of the floor on which he had lain, face
downwards. (Joyce 117)
It is not for two pages that the reader discovers the unfortunate man’s true identity, with
the invocation of his proper name and an extended description of his circumstances:
Mr. Kernan was a commercial traveller of the old school which believed in the
dignity of its calling. He had never been seen in the city without a silk hat of some
decency and a pair of gaiters. By grace of these two articles of clothing, he said, a
man could always pass muster. He carried on the tradition of his Napoleon, the
great Blackwhite, whose memory he evoked at times by legend and mimicry. (Joyce
119-20)
Both “Eveline” and “Grace” are stories about characters who attempt to reappraise their
situations. In Eveline’s case, this concerns the promise made to her now-dead mother to
keep the house together, even after she has been offered the chance to leave Ireland. In
Mr Kernan’s case, this concerns his efforts to reform himself by accepting an invitation
to attend a Catholic retreat. The use of an inverted co-reference chain moving slowly
from pronoun to proper name signals the story’s structure, alerting the reader to the
relative instability of character identity.
14
Unmarked and Marked Co-reference Chains
The possible variety of co-reference choice offers a demonstration of the
extraordinary facility of the human mind to impose conceptual order on an apparently
diverse array of word items. The following simple text, which is borrowed from
Beaugrande, can serve as an illustration of the range of co-reference options:
Napoleon entered the room. The famous general made some announcement. The
man was very excited. He spoke at top speed. (Beaugrande 145)
This artificial text offers a short connected narrative about Napoleon, without the
appearance of other characters to create ambiguity. It can thus offer an illustration of the
manner in which character co-reference chains operate: the reader is required to draw
upon his or her conceptual understanding to recognize that the same character is being
sequentially referenced via the use of a proper name, definite description, general class
word, and pronoun. By means of the reader’s procedural attachment to the concept of
literary character, with its attendant concepts of stability, continuity, and partial
changeability, the writer’s task of configuring the fictional world is significantly
reduced. Procedural attachment naturally places a burden on the reader: he or she must
process at a deeper conceptual level a sequential order established at the surface level of
the text. In this case, the reader utilizes the concept of character continuity to
comprehend that it is Napoleon who possesses these attributes (generalship, famous)
and performs those actions (entering the room, making an announcement, being very
excited, talking at top speed). As Beaugrande notes, co-reference chains are utilized
partially for the purposes of increasing textual compactness. By utilizing shorter forms
of the proper name and frequently employing pronouns in non-ambiguous contexts, the
writer is able to increase the text’s effectiveness and efficiency.
15
In a short passage like this, the reader may verify the identity of the literary
character by means of anaphora: a backward textual search to the first occurrence of the
proper name. In the next example, however, this unmarked sequence is neatly reversed.
The Sergius text requires the reader to move forward in the text from the least specific
pronoun reference to the most specific reference of the personal name:
Who should walk in but a venerable old man in whom his Grace immediately
recognized one of the saints of the church, no other than the Right Reverend Sergius
(Beaugrande 146).
In this text, the reader is expected to perform the reverse operation: the various co-
reference items may be resolved cataphorically, via a search forward in the text to solve
a small textual mystery. This latter textual pattern represents a form of local
defamiliarization: the pattern may be used by the narrator in order to re-create in the
mind of the reader the experience of the way in which one literary character views
another. This cataphoric type of co-reference chain is a significant part of the repertoire
of a variety of the narratives in Dubliners, including “The Sisters”, “Eveline”, “A
Mother” and “The Dead”.
Marked Chains and Plot Defamiliarization
In the majority of the short stories in Dubliners, the co-reference choices are
not unusual and the use of marked chains is infrequent. “After the Race” offers itself as
a useful confirmation of this point. In this story, the settled co-reference choice is
established by Given Name alone (Jimmy) or Family Name alone (Ségouin, Rivière,
Villona), with one exception. In sharp contrast to the way the other major characters are
16
introduced, Farley, the rich American yacht owner, is first established within the
monitored thought of Jimmy Doyle:
The five young men strolled along Stephen's Green in a faint cloud of aromatic
smoke. They talked loudly and gaily and their cloaks dangled from their shoulders.
The people made way for them. At the corner of Grafton Street a short fat man was
putting two handsome ladies on a car in charge of another fat man. The car drove
off and the short fat man caught sight of the party.
--André.
-- It's Farley!
Farley was an American. (Joyce 33)
The first co-reference choice is a general class word (man), modified by Jimmy’s
evaluative attributes (short, fat). Rivière’s excited use of the family name (Farley) is
then set off against the narrator’s definite description (American). In this way, the naïve
Irishman’s negative underestimation of this extremely wealthy newcomer is a
foreshadowing of his later financial setback in the course of a disastrous drunken game
of cards on the American’s yacht. Unlike the stable co-reference choices to the other
characters, Farley demonstrates a movement from deictically remote to close. A second
example of this movement from deictically remote to close occurs in “A Mother”. In
this story, Mrs Kearney, the mother of a young singer named Kathleen Kearney,
endeavors to extract her daughter’s full wages from a Nationalist society that has
organized a series of poorly attended musical concerts:
An unknown solitary woman with a pale face walked through the room. The women
followed with keen eyes the faded blue dress which was stretched upon a meagre
body. Someone said that she was Madam Glynn, the soprano.
17
--I wonder where did they dig her up, said Kathleen to Miss Healy. I'm sure I never
heard of her.
Miss Healy had to smile. Mr. Holohan limped into the dressing-room at that
moment and the two young ladies asked him who was the unknown woman. Mr.
Holohan said that she was Madam Glynn from London. (Joyce 111)
Mrs Kearney’s ignorance of things theatrical, which takes the form of her failure to
recognize the accomplished soprano, Madam Glynn, is mirrored in this local pattern of
marked co-reference.
Table 4: Deictic Movement in Character Co-reference
Discrepant Patterns of Co-reference Choice
Narrative voice and directly quoted speech do not exhaust the possibilities for
verbal representation in fiction (Hough 1970). A third important form of speech
presentation is that of monitored thought. In monitored thought, the character’s thoughts
Third Person Narrative Character Co-Reference
Narrative
Deictic
Stable
Close
(Ségouin, Rivière, Villona,
Routh, Jimmy )
(Kathleen; Mr Holohan)
Unstable
Remote to Close
(a short fat man Farley)
( An unknown solitary
woman with a pale face
Mrs Glynn
18
or perceptions are monitored by the narrator. Monitored thought is thus the narrator’s
mimicry of character thought or inner speech, representing the deliberate blending of
the potentially disjunctive idiolect of a particular character with the norm established by
the narrator. Since the narrative voice typically employs "a language formal and correct
both in syntax and vocabulary", which conveys "material information …as briefly and
simply as possible" (Hough 207-8), monitored thought distinguishes itself by means of
the judicious use of the possible forms of discourse marking. In Joyce’s Dubliners, these
forms include: (a) exclamations; (b) questions; (c) the invocation of the second person
(“you”); (d) character idiolect, including colloquial speech and mild swearing; (e)
parentheses; (f) dashes; (g) near-synonymous repetitions; (h) thematic modalization; (i)
modal verbs; and (j) ellipsis.
The issue of voice style is important in the analysis of character co-reference
because of the possibility of subtly discrepant choices within the narrative fiction. These
patterns of discrepant choice often take the form of a divergence between the way in
which the narrator refers to a character and the way in which the other literary
characters refer to him or her. In “A Little Cloud”, for example, a complex pattern of
discrepant co-reference choice is used in relation to Ignatius Gallaher, the somewhat
disreputable Irish refugee who has subsequently established a position for himself in the
London journalistic trade. When Ignatius Gallaher is referenced within the monitored
thought of his friend Little Chandler, the reference is almost always to “Gallaher”:
Eight years before he had seen his friend off at the North Wall and wished him God-
speed. Gallaher had got on. You could tell that at once by his travelled air, his well-
cut tweed suit, and fearless accent. Few fellows had talents like his, and fewer still
could remain unspoiled by such success. Gallaher's heart was in the right place and
19
he had deserved to win. (Joyce 53)
In contrast, the narrator repeatedly uses the marked form “Ignatius Gallaher”, even in
the non-ambiguous context of directly quoted speech:
--You don't know what's good for you, my boy, said Ignatius Gallaher. I drink mine
neat.
--I drink very little as a rule, said Little Chandler modestly. An odd half-one or so
when I meet any of the old crowd: that's all.
--Ah well, said Ignatius Gallaher cheerfully, here's to us and to old times and old
acquaintance.
They clinked glasses and drank the toast.
--I met some of the old gang today, said Ignatius Gallaher. O'Hara seems to be in a
bad way. What's he doing? (Joyce 57)
In a subtle manner, the narrator would appear to be making Ignatius Gallaher out to be a
figure of more significance than his friend Little Chandler will sometimes allow. And
even when Little Chandler begins to doubt the extent of his friend’s greatness, the
narrator appears to be secretly in league with Gallaher’s plot to create the impression
among his former friends that he has become eminently successful.
Flynn Again Wakes?: The Pivotal Fourth Character in “The Sisters”
Both “The Sisters” and “The Dead” rely for part of their overall aesthetic
design of secrecy and revelation on the manipulation of character co-reference chains.
Appropriately enough, these stories begin and end the collection as a whole. Both
stories are marked order narratives, stories not so much about a character who goes out
in search of something she truly desires but rather stories in which a character discovers
20
something about the past that he previously knew nothing about. Both stories set up
mysteries about the pivotal fourth character, a character who is not the main character
but a character whose function it is to send the main character on a journey of self-
discovery. As a consequence, both stories use character co-reference chains to indicate
that there is something that the main character has not fully understood and the story’s
outcome depends on the wisdom or otherwise of making a re-interpretation of the past.
In the case of “The Sisters”, the mystery persists to the story’s end because of the
absolute silence of the first-person narrator in the face of would-be revelation. “The
Sisters” begins with the use of a pronoun as first co-reference choice in order to set up a
small textual mystery:
There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke. Night after night I had
passed the house (it was vacation time) and studied the lighted square of window:
and night after night I had found it lighted in the same way, faintly and evenly. If he
was dead, I thought, I would see the reflection of candles on the darkened blind, for
I knew that two candles must be set at the head of a corpse. He had often said to
me: `I am not long for this world,' and I had thought his words idle. Now I knew
they were true. (Joyce 3)
The textual mystery is finally solved by Cotter, a friend of the first-person narrator’s
uncle. It is Cotter who reveals that the first-person narrator’s mentor, the old priest
Father Flynn, has passed away. Interestingly, however, in the passage in which Cotter
first makes his revelation, there is a subtle pattern of discordant co-reference choice. For
the young narrator’s uncle and aunt, Cotter is always “Mr Cotter”; for the young
narrator, however, Cotter is “Old Cotter”, when it is not some more colorful definite
description such as “tiresome old fool!”:
21
My uncle saw me staring and said to me:
--Well, so your old friend is gone, you'll be sorry to hear.
--Who? said I.
--Father Flynn.
--Is he dead?
--Mr Cotter here has just told us. He was passing by the house.
I knew that I was under observation, so I continued eating as if the news had not
interested me.
My uncle explained to old Cotter.
--The youngster and he were great friends. The old chap taught him a great deal,
mind you; and they say he had a great wish for him.
--God have mercy on his soul, said my aunt piously.
Old Cotter looked at me for a while. I felt that his little beady black eyes were
examining me, but I would not satisfy him by looking up from my plate. He
returned to his pipe and finally spat rudely into the grate.
--I wouldn't like children of mine, he said, to have too much to say to a man like
that.
--How do you mean, Mr Cotter? asked my aunt.
--What I mean is, said old Cotter, it's bad for children. My idea is: let a young lad
run about and play with young lads of his own age and not be... Am I right, Jack?
(Joyce 3)
Since the story hinges on whose words about the old priest are ultimately to be trusted,
the initial discordance between the first-person’s narrator’s persistent use of “Old
Cotter” and his aunt and uncle’s persistent reference to “Mr Cotter” is of consequence.
22
This is all the more significant since in the story, there is no ultimate resolution of the
secrecy that surrounds the identity of Father Flynn. Should the reader consider the old
priest, who once was called to study at the Irish college in Rome, a beneficial influence
on the young first-person narrator? Or should he side with Old Cotter and the sisters,
who appear to want to assign a darker meaning to the curve of a life ending in paralysis
and apparent madness? The silence that the young narrator observes in the company of
the sisters at story’s end may perhaps be a clue. The Latin phrase de mortuis nil nisi
bonum dicendum est, or more briefly, de mortuis nil nisi bonum may be translated as
"Let nothing be said of the dead but what is good." There is reason in the proverb. As
Richard Ellmann first suggested: “That the dead do not stay buried is … a theme of
Joyce from the beginning to the end of his work. Finnegan is not the only corpse to be
resurrected” (244). Faced with this unresolved textual mystery, does the reader not draw
back from the act of reinterpretation of this man’s life? Is the reader not frightened by
the presence of a potentially devastating pun? In this sense, “The Sisters” is perhaps a
kind of mirror image of Joyce’s last major work, Finnegan’s Wake (1941)? While the
sisters rehearse their half-educated guesses, the body of the priest they are maligning
lies in a coffin in the room upstairs. His name is Father Flynn.
Co-reference Choice and the Pivotal Fourth Character
The most spectacular and sustained use of patterns of discordant co-reference
choice, however, can be discovered in “The Dead”. This highly complex marked order
fiction begins unexpectedly with the monitored thought of Lily, the maid of the Misses
Morkans:
Lily, the caretaker's daughter, was literally run off her feet. Hardly had she
23
brought one gentleman into the little pantry behind the office on the ground floor
and helped him off with his overcoat, than the wheezy hall-door bell clanged
again and she had to scamper along the bare hallway to let in another guest. It was
well for her she had not to attend to the ladies also. But Miss Kate and Miss Julia
had thought of that and had converted the bathroom upstairs into a ladies'
dressing-room. (Joyce 138)
As Hugh Kenner originally pointed out, the idiomatic expression “literally ran off her
feet” belongs to Lily (Kenner 16) and prepares the way for the use of Lily’s monitored
thought to conjure up the atmosphere of a breathlessly-awaited Christmas party in a way
that might be closed off from the more aloof descriptive repertoire of the narrator. But
the decision to employ Lily’s voice at this point is stylistically conscious for other
reasons too: it is guided ultimately by consideration of the pivotal plot function of
Gretta Conroy. Gretta is the pivotal fourth character, the character whose function it is
to send the main character on a journey (Propp 80; Murphy 2008a; Murphy 2008b). But
the journey of discovery that Gabriel will undertake remains hidden from him for much
of the narrative. Ostensibly, “The Dead” is to be the triumphant story of Gabriel
Conroy’s after-dinner speech, a speech in which he intends to flatter his audience
insincerely, while showing off his education to a gathering he secretly considers beneath
him. It is only at the speech’s conclusion, when the majority of the guests are beginning
to leave, that there is the first hint of the greater consequences that this Christmas night
holds in store, with the distant sound of Bartell D’Arcy singing upstairs.
As the guests depart, Gabriel, in seeming triumph at the memory of the after-
dinner speech he has just made, catches a glimpse of an enigmatic figure, whose identity
is obscured temporarily by the darkness of the house and of the evening:
24
Gabriel had not gone to the door with the others. He was in a dark part of the hall
gazing up the staircase. A woman was standing near the top of the first flight, in
the shadow also. He could not see her face but he could see the terra-cotta and
salmon-pink panels of her skirt which the shadow made appear black and white. It
was his wife. She was leaning on the banisters, listening to something. (Joyce 165)
This short passage requires the reader, like Gabriel Conroy himself, to resolve a small
textual mystery. The co-reference chain begins unexpectedly with the general class
word a woman and ends with the definite description his wife. In this way, Gabriel’s
undoing at the hotel is elegantly foreshadowed: his failure momentarily to recognize
Gretta in the gloom of the old house of the Morkans serves as a foreshadowing of his
later more profound ignorance of his wife’s youthful passion for the now-dead Michael
Furey.
Because the story ends by surprising both Gabriel and the reader in its
revelation of something significant in Gretta Conroy’s past, it is important for the
narrator to muffle Gretta’s entrance, to make her appear at first only as an appendage of
her husband. The way in which the narrator does this is through the simultaneous
adoption and repudiation of Lily’s co-reference choices. As the housemaid of the
Morkans, Lily thinks of “Miss Kate” and “Miss Julia”; and it is because she is on less
familiar terms with Gretta than with Gabriel that she refers to “Gabriel and his wife”,
while addressing them directly as “Mr Conroy” and “Mrs Conroy”:
Besides they were dreadfully afraid that Freddy Malins might turn up screwed.
They would not wish for worlds that any of Mary Jane's pupils should see him
under the influence; and when he was like that it was sometimes very hard to
manage him. Freddy Malins always came late, but they wondered what could be
25
keeping Gabriel: and that was what brought them every two minutes to the
banisters to ask Lily had Gabriel or Freddy come.
--O, Mr Conroy, said Lily to Gabriel when she opened the door for him, Miss Kate
and Miss Julia thought you were never coming. Good night, Mrs Conroy.
--I'll engage they did, said Gabriel, but they forget that my wife here takes three
mortal hours to dress herself. (Joyce 139)
The narrator will later repudiate the majority of Lily’s co-reference choices. Instead of
“Miss Kate” and “Miss Julia”, the narrator will refer consistently to “Aunt Julia” and
“Aunt Kate”; instead of “Mr Conroy”, the narrator will refer to “Gabriel”. Unexpectedly,
however, the narrator accepts Lily’s spoken reference to “Mrs Conroy”, and it is the
more distant “Mrs Conroy” that becomes the narrator’s settled co-reference choice also.
This is remarkable because the formal term of reference “Mrs Conroy” is markedly
discordant with the spoken references of each of the major characters to “Gretta”. The
sense of the other characters too not truly seeing Gretta is indicated at more than one
point. For example, the famous passage in which Gabriel fails to recognize his own wife
on the stairs is almost immediately echoed in the words of Aunt Julia during the long
series of goodbyes before Gabriel and Gretta set off for the hotel:
Seeing that all were ready to start she shepherded them to the door, where good-
night was said:
--Well, good-night, Aunt Kate, and thanks for the pleasant evening.
--Good-night, Gabriel. Good-night, Gretta!
--Good-night, Aunt Kate, and thanks ever so much. Goodnight, Aunt Julia.
--O, good-night, Gretta, I didn't see you. (Joyce 167)
26
The unusual choices used to refer to Gretta Conroy are explicable in terms of her pivotal
plot function. Although this function is intimated very early on, it is not actually
executed until Gabriel and Gretta leave for the hotel at dinner’s end. It turns out that it is
this journey to the hotel, rather than the visit to the house of the Morkans, that
represents Gabriel’s journey of emotional discovery. On the way to the hotel, Gabriel
will gradually come to a much finer awareness of his inadequacies as his wife’s
husband, lover and friend. His intention of capping off a triumphant evening by a
session of love-making, whether or not Gretta is interested in that, will be thwarted. The
name Michael Furey, a name Gabriel has hitherto never heard before, will become for
him an image of all that his own carefully measured life has lacked. Part of the way in
which the narrator helps to prepare the reader for the extraordinary revelation with
which this most extraordinary story concludes is by means of the use of discordant
patterns of marked co-reference choice.
Conclusion
In narrative fiction, a literary character may be referenced by some form of the
proper name, a definite description, a general class word or a pronoun, or an agent
metonym. While critics have long recognized that co-reference choice may be varied for
creative purposes, the discussion has not proceeded very far beyond the idea that there
is a distinction between those authors who prefer the use of stable coreference choice
and those that employ elegant variation. As this essay argues, however, unexpected co-
reference choice is often the upshot of the narrator’s plot management. Although the
majority of the stories in James Joyce’s Dubliners (1914) do not display particularly
unusual examples of character co-reference choice, a small set of the stories utilize
27
marked choice as part of their aesthetic design. In these latter stories, co-reference
choice is used to creates distance or serves to undermine or bolster character fortune.
More complex patterns of discordant co-reference choice is utilized in order to create
local forms of plot defamiliarization and signal character function within the plot.
28
Bibliography
Beaugrande, Robert de. Text, Discourse and Process. New Jersey: Ablex Publishing
Company, 1980.
Emmott, Catherine. Narrative Comprehension: A Discourse Perspective. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1999.
Emmott, Catherine. “Reference: Stylistic Aspects,” in Encyclopedia of Language and
Linguistics. 2nd
Ed. Editor-in-Chief Keith Brown Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2003:
441-450.
Ellmann, Richard. James Joyce. 2nd
Ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Halliday, Michael and Ruqaiya Hasan. Cohesion in English. London and New York:
Longman, 1976.
Halliday, Michael and Christian Matthiessen, An Introduction to Functional Grammar.
3rd
ed. London: Hodder Education, 2004.
Hough, Graham. “Narrative and Dialogue in Jane Austen.” Critical Quarterly. 13.3
(Autumn 1970): 201-229.
Joyce, James. Dubliners. Ed. Jeri Johnson Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Kennedy, C. (1982). “Systemic Grammar and Its Use in Literary Analysis”. In R. Carter
(ed.) Language and Literature. An Introductory Reader in Stylistics. London:
George Allen & Unwin, 83-99.
Kenner, Hugh. Joyce’s Voices. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978.
Leech, Geoffrey N. Principles of Pragmatics. London and New York: Longman, 1983.
Leech, Geoffrey N., and Michael Short. Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to
English Fictional Prose. London: Longman, 1981.
Murphy, Terence Patrick. “The Pivotal Eighth Function and the Pivotal Fourth
29
Character: Resolving Two Discrepancies in Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the
Folk Tale.” Language and Literature (March 2008): 59-75.
Murphy, Terence Patrick. “Opening the Pathway: Plot Management and the Pivotal
Seventh Character in Daphne Du Maurier’s “Don’t Look Now.” Journal of
Literary Semantics. (October 2008).
Nørgaard, Nina Systemic Functional Linguistics and Literary Analysis. A Hallidayan
Approach to Joyce. A Joycean Approach to Halliday. Odense: University Press of
Southern Denmark, 2003.
Propp, Vladimir. Morphology of the Folktale. 2nd
Edition. Austin and London:
University of Texas Press, 1968.
Short, Mick. Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose. Harlow: Pearson
Education Ltd, 1996.
Toolan, Michael. The Stylistics of Fiction: A Literary-Linguistic Approach. London and
New York: Routledge, 1990.
Toolan, M. Language in Literature: An Introduction to Stylistics. London:
Arnold, 1998.
Werth, Paul. Text Worlds: Representing Conceptual Space in Discourse. London:
Longman, 1999.
30
This is why these forms are typically employed for minor characters mentioned in
passing or for those characters that appear only briefly in order to carry out one
specific task. This serves to explain the mentions of the “two labourers” or the
“foreign sailors” that appear in “An Encounter” Similarly, it is not necessary to
offer further elaboration of the character of “the slatternly girl” who serves
Lenehan a plate of peas in “Two Gallants”. A partial exception to this principle is
provided by the case of immediate family. In “The Sisters”, Joyce’s first-person
narrative of precocious childhood, both first and settled co-reference choice is to
“my uncle” and “my aunt”. Typically, however, the use of general class words as
settled co-reference is a marked choice, indicating stylistic distance.
In contrast, the use of the definite description or a general class word as settled
co-reference choice tends to render that literary character static. A literary character
may also be referenced through the lens of grammatical metaphor (Kennedy 1982). For
example, in the short story “Two Gallants”, it is the character’s eyes, rather than the
character himself, that is regularly made the subject of the clause. This use of what
Michael Toolan has called agent metonyms tends to create the effect of “detachment or
alienation, between an individual and their physical faculties” or “a sense … of the
‘diminished responsibility’ of someone for how their own body is acting” (Toolan 1998;
Nørgaard 2003 84).
This is because each of the major characters will form part of a character network
consisting of about seven or eight “control centres” for subsequent plot
elaboration. For this reason, the manner in which the narrator chooses to refer to
each character is of importance (Beaugrande 44; Propp 1968; Murphy 2008a;
Murphy 2008b).
