Last class, one thing that was discussed was how Joyce portrays dialog. Some characters, like the Uncle in Araby, don’t have many directly quoted lines, while in other cases we get a character’s utterances in exacting detail. I thought that Jennifer Levine, speaking as Louisa, uncovered an interesting dimension to this when she described how Ivy Day would function well as a stage play. The narrator almost never dips into the interior thougts of any of the characters, instead merely viewing events as a theater audience might.

This interests me partly because in the other two stories we read, Joyce delves into the thoughts of his characters and meanders through different settings, fantasies, and memories. In Ivy Day, however, we have to piece all this together ourselves – despite peering in to the relatively intimate setting of the committee room, we are excluded from the scene in a way that seems to be unique to this story.

I have an intuitive sense that this fact is closely connected with the explicitly political nature of the story. Gibson’s essay contextualizes it well, and Levine’s characters’ reactions to it explore this connection somewhat, but I suspect there’s more to be said, even though I’m not sure of what exactly that might be. I’m curious about what other people in this seminar made of it.