Gretta Conroy
Gretta Conroy
In Brief
A second character from Dubliners appears in Calypso when Molly asks her husband, "What had Gretta Conroy on?" Gabriel and Gretta Conroy are the principal characters of "The Dead," the novella-length story that concludes Dubliners. Later, Bloom thinks briefly of Gabriel and of his Aunt Julia, one of two maiden aunts who figure prominently in the story. Stephen remembers the other aunt, who was his godmother. The novel also frequently mentions a "Father Conroy" who may or may not be Gabriel's brother Constantine.
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"The Dead" (written in 1907) was Joyce's first fictional
attempt to represent a man's anxiety about the fidelity of his
spouse, followed by the play Exiles (finished in
1915) and then Ulysses (published in 1922). Given
the adultery plot set in motion in Calypso, it is
interesting that one of the first resurrections of a character
from Dubliners takes the form of Molly thinking of
Gretta. Gretta's spouse enters the novel not too long
afterward, when Bloom thinks in Aeolus of J. J.
O'Molloy doing "some literary work for the Express
with Gabriel Conroy." The Daily Express was
a unionist Irish newspaper, and in "The Dead" Gabriel had
endured some uncomfortable taunting from a Miss Molly Ivors,
who called him a "West Briton" for associating himself with
that conservative "rag."
We know that some time has passed between the events
represented in "The Dead" and those of Ulysses
because Gabriel's Aunt Julia has died. In the novella she
performed at the holiday gathering, singing Arrayed for
the Bridal. Although the song's subject matter clashed
grotesquely with her frail appearance, her technique was
excellent, and "To follow the voice, without looking at the
singer’s face, was to feel and share the excitement of swift
and secure flight." In Lestrygonians Bloom remembers
Julia performing a different song: "There is not in this
wide world a vallee. Great song of Julia
Morkan's. Kept her voice up to the very last. Pupil
of Michael Balfe's, wasn't she?"
Stephen, it turns out, has a very close connection to the household represented in the novella: in Ithaca he thinks of "his godmother Miss Kate Morkan in the house of her dying sister Miss Julia Morkan at 15 Usher's Island."
Gerty MacDowell thinks repeatedly in Nausicaa of a "Father Conroy" who is the curate in charge of the "Mary, star of the sea" church in Sandymount. This was also Paddy Dignam's parish church, as evidenced by his son's thought of the same priest in Wandering Rocks: "That was Mr Dignam, my father. I hope he's in purgatory now because he went to confession to Father Conroy on Saturday night." It is tempting to ask whether Father Conroy may be Gabriel's brother, since "The Dead" mentions that "Constantine was now senior curate in Balbriggan," a town just 20 miles north of central Dublin, and some time has passed.
Gifford's research would seem to quash that speculation: he
notes that the actual curate of Star of the Sea in 1904 was
Father Bernard Conroy, who lived at 5 Leahy's
Terrace. But in Nausicaa, after all of Gerty's
thoughts of the good Father, Bloom observes, "Yes, there's the
light in the priest's house. Their frugal meal. . . . Gabriel
Conroy's brother is curate." Joyce appears to have
deliberately blurred the lines between fact and fiction. Did
he seize upon the coincidence of the curates' names to evict
the real Conroy and install his own? Or is Bloom confusing his
Conroys, as other Dubliners confuse him with Bloom the
dentist?
An observation of Ellmann's suggests still another, bizarre possibility: "Joyce deliberately confuses Joseph Bloom the dentist with Leopold in one chapter, and in another he lists as one of Leopold's old addresses 38 Lombard Street, which was actually Joseph Bloom's address."
