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he may appear, at first, a positive portrait, but the reader of Joyce's Dubliners soon discovers that there is something wrong with mother-all mothers, whether they be real mothers or surrogates. Just as the priests of Portrait simultaneously convey contradictory impulses-kindness and cruelty, for example-the ambiguous mothers in Dubliners emerge paradoxical and enigmatic. Their "goodness" most decidedly tainted, Dubliners' mothers often seem ineffectual or hardened, sometimes even wildly or sadly perverted. Their positive feelings for their children become suspect when tempered by their harshness or selfishness. Usually paralyzed, either physically, socially, or spiritually, the offspring of Dubliners' mothers suffer. Indeed, Joyce refuses to confine these negative portraits of "Mother" to this life: his mothers can reach far beyond the grave (as evidenced in Ulysses and in Portrait) to encumber and to handicap the living.
Critics still ponder Joyce's relationship with his own mother in hopes of gleaning insight into the writer's multifaceted treatment of females in his works. In "The Song of the Wandering Aengus: James Joyce and His Mother," Mark Shechner speculates that Joyce's surging creative impulse quickly fell upon the heels of his mother's death (75). Acknowledging the general agreement among critics that Joyce felt guilt because of his mother's death, Shechner adroitly recounts the author's confession: "My mother was slowly killed, I think, by my father's ill-treatment, by years of trouble, and by my cynical frankness of conduct" (76). Perhaps this sense of guilt, exacerbated by his contradictory feelings about his mother, ultimately inspired Joyce to explore the veins of motherhood in Dublin. Whatever his reasons for polishing these portraits with ambiguity, Joyce establishes one irrefutable fact: though Dubliners mothers may seem, on the surface, supportive and loving, under this veneer of apparent benevolence lurks an ugly, darker side of motherhood.
Children of Dubliners' mothers often exemplify ambivalent or contradictory feelings about their mothers. The mother of Gabriel Conroy, though long dead, stirs such conflicting emotions in her son. Alone amidst the crowd and festivities, Gabriel's ambivalent feelings for his mother haunt him-her support had provided the impetus for his career, she had pushed him to take his degree in the Royal University, but then, she also had reproached him ("sullen opposition") for his marriage-a "contract" with another woman, perhaps, threatened her...