The Dead–Mother Knows Best

I read the short story the dead by James Joyce and also saw the musical of it performed at George Mason University. There were many small additions that the director chose to include in their version of the dead. And a striking difference is that Miss. Ivory stayed through dinner rather than leaving before dinner as seen in James Joyce the dead short story text version. It was also interesting to see how the director chose to have Aunt Julia die as opposed to the text version. With the musical portraying the death of Aunt Julie, it makes it seem that both Gabrielle and Gretta bears a lost of losing a love one.

 Here is Gretta who suffers the lost of a childhood friend who dies for her sake in the short story and musical and here’s Aunt Julia who dies of old age and joy from Gabrielle’s speech. With both of these deaths, there is a sense of equilibrium. While reading the text version, one recalls that Gabrielle states that he does not know how to love someone that much to cause that person to die for his sake.

I could not help but feel sympathy towards Gabrielle. Here is a faithful husband who desires nothing more than to make love to his wife in the concluding scene and is faced with a dreadful truth that his wife’s heart belongs to a childhood lover. It is not surprising that Gabrielle’s mother opposed his marriage to Gretta, because she felt “Gretta as being country cute and that was not true of Gretta at all.”(Joyce, the dead, 30) I believe that it is true, mothers do know best. Gabrielle’s mother could sense before her tragic death of an illness that Gretta heart does not truly belong to her son Gabrielle.