How does Joyce treat isolation in Dubliners?
At the beginning of the twentieth century, chances for marriage in Ireland were slim. Bachelors and spinsters abounded. Indeed, Gabriel and Gretta Conroy in “The Dead,” are the only married couple at the Morkin sisters Christmas party. While Mr. Duffy in “A Painful Case,” and Maria in “”Clay,” who both live alone, certainly illustrate the emptiness of isolation, two married characters also seem upon consideration to be just as isolated. The main characters of the stories “A Little Cloud” and “Counterparts” seem to have nothing in common. Little Chandler, docile to a fault, is a would-be poet and family man who drinks only diluted spirits, and very rarely at that, while Farrington in “Counterparts,” is a full-blown alcoholic who is so broke he has to pawn his watch for drink money. So, on the surface these two characters have nothing in common except jobs they despise. However, their profound sense of isolation and their intense desire to escape unites them. Both are stuck in repetitive
