What I enjoyed most about this piece of work what is simpilicity. I do enjoy works that make me have to think but its nice when one can keep my interest without stressing me out. This poem definitely possessed a shock factor, one minutes Maria was a “veritable peace-maker” and then turns out she is a prostitute. To my knowledge prostitutes are usually a source trouble, not peace. I don’t know if Maria is a peace-makes but she is ignorant. Maria works in a kitchen in a place for ex-prostitutes and recovering alcoholics. After work one night she attends a party at Joe’s, a man she was the nurse to when he was a boy. This is an odd scene to me at first because I could not understand what Joe would want with her exactly. Then as I continued to read I saw that he “had his way with her, and then they lay by the fire” (1136). This was disturbing to me, I cannot even comprehend the age difference, but that is beside the point. During a game at the party, Maria chooses “clay” This is a significant because the people believed that this meant that she would die soon. She does not understand the significance of her choice.
Besides Maria ignorance, I want to know how one goes from being a nanny to a prostitute and vice versa? She took care of Joe as a child and not she has slept with him. He got her drunk and then slept with her (1136). Joyce shocked and disturbed me, but I did enjoy how he simply put it, he writes, “so Maria let him have his way and they say by the fire talking over old time…” He wasn’t graphic yet I was still disturbed, in fact I had to read it twice because it was presented so non-chantilly, but once I grasped it I couldn’t stop reading it. It was like a car horrible car wreck that I could not pry my arms away from.
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Your interpretation of this short story by James Joyce was really different from what I took from it because I saw it more as how Maria was such a people pleaser that she never was able to make herself happy. She just spent her life as a nanny constantly moving from family to family when the children grew out of her. And then they play the game and she picks up the clay, signifying her fast-approaching death, and then picking the prayer book suggesting a convent. I really liked your interpretation though, I did not think about those lines signifying Joe having his way with her at all, so thank you for supplying me with a different interpretation!
Lindsay,
There are a couple of problems with your interpretation of Joyce's story. First, Maria is not a prostitute, nor does the story say she is. It says she lives at that laundry because otherwise she would be homeless when the boys grew up and she couldn't be their nurse (or nanny) anymore. Second, you misquote the story when you claim it states, he “had his way with her, and then they lay by the fire”--the text actually says he offers her a drink at the party, and "So Maria let him have his way and they sat by the fire talking over old times." "His way" was for her to accept a drink, not to sleep with him. Not nearly as scandalous as your version! It is important to quote accurately, or else your interpretation is bound to get off course.
I like how you interpreted the story... It would have made it more interesting if it was your way.
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