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Chapter Three Operatic Fashion: Do the Prince and the Princess Live Happily Ever After? in “A Mother,”Mrs. Kearney Recalled

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Chapter Three Operatic Fashion: Do the Prince and the Princess Live Happily Ever After? in “A Mother,”Mrs. Kearney Recalled Lin 59 Chapter Three Operatic Fashion: Do the Prince and the Princess Live Happily Ever After? When she came to the age of marriage she was sent out to many houses where her playing and ivory manners were much admired. She sat amid the chilly circle of her accomplishments, waiting for some suitors to brave it and offer her a brilliant life. But the young men whom she met were ordinary and she gave them no encouragement, trying to console her romantic desires by eating a great deal of Turkish Delight in secret. —“A Mother”(D 136) Would he never get a home of his own? ... He might yet able to settle down in some snug corner and live happily if he could only come across some good simple-minded girl with a little of the ready. —“Two Gallants”(D 58) In “A Mother,”Mrs. Kearney recalled her maiden expectation to have “some suitors to brave it”(D 136; my emphasis). The pronoun “it”in her romantic desires certainly referred to a marriage proposal. In “Two Gallants,”Lenehar wished to settle down and he meant a happy marriage. First, it was the marriage that these two female and male characters desired. Then, after the unions, they wished that the spouse could offer them “a brilliant”and “a little of ready”life. Over and over again, Joyce depicts the phenomenon that men and women have certain romantic expectations toward marriage and the good lives guaranteed by marriage in Dubliners. However, do the romantic expectations truly promise better living standards and wealth after marriage? The answer was actually “no.”Therefore, if Dubliners have expectations, theirs are certainly false ones rather than great ones. In the second chapter, I assume that the upper-middle-class Doyle family adopts many upper-class fashions, especially the fashion of the car race, for the purpose of aspiring to the top class in the Irish society. In this chapter, therefore, I will continue with the Lin 60 topic of fashion with regard to class aspiring. This time I want to assume that the lower classes are infected with an operatic fashion and because of this operatic fashion, they believe that marriage after courtship would lead them to the higher and better class in the society. I want to reason out that Joyce seemed to satirize Dubliners’ romantic illusions about the relation between marriage and class aspiring and he presented this issue through the contemporary operatic fashion. In the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, opera became one of the most popular forms of musical entertainment. Dublin was then under the influence of this operatic fashion as well. The greatest influence that this operatic fashion brought to people was their attitude toward love and marriage. The operatic fashion made people want to believe that romance was a wonderful thing. However, after men and women were installed with this fashionable idea, they found out that it resulted in disillusions. After wedding, they had to yield themselves to the reality of lives—more family members meant more living expenses. If men and women adopted the operatic fashion and used marital contracts as ways to rid of poverty and aspire to another better class, they would found it impossible at last. The impossibility hence projected upon Dubliners’ disappointment and fury about their lives. As an exceptional tenor and a great writer, Joyce undoubtedly incorporates all the melodies and lyrics he has known into his works in complex ways and Dubliners is no exception. Interestingly enough, I find Michael W. Balfe’s The Bohemian Girl and Glacome Puccini’s La Bohème, which bear the same word “Bohemian” in their titles contributing some romantic ideas for Dubliners. By these two works, I want to indicate that men and women who want to use marriage contracts to achieve class aspiring are greatly influenced by the romantic ideas that the operatic fashion brings. Then, I will figure out that operatic fashion is simply a disillusion. The myth of “the prince and the princess live happily ever after”only exists in operas but not in the Lin 61 real world. In the course of courtship, men manage not to get married because they want personal freedom and because they are not economically stable to get married and support their families. Therefore, the trend of celibacy and the fashion of prostitution provide outlets for their romantic feelings and sexual impulse. As for women, even if they want to get married, the chances are rare. The lack of economic opportunity results in late marriages because men cannot even find stable jobs. Then, they choose to delay marriages or even not to marry in this hard time. As a result, Ireland’smarriage rate at that time was the lowest among all the civilized countries. Many women become celibate and try hard to make livings by themselves. Some other women, however, still choose to hunt and trap men for marriage contracts to secure their economic lives. The element of love is thus less important and the marriage without love therefore bring discontent and unhappiness. I. Operatic Fashion: Dubliners in Romantic Love In music history, the time between the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century was generally called the Romanticism (1850-1920). The Romantic era was a period of great change and emancipation. While the Classical era had strict laws of balance and restraint, the Romantic era moved away from that by allowing artistic freedom, experimentation, and creativity. The music of this period was very expressive, free, emotional and passionate. In the early twentieth century when the World War I broke out, composers even used these expressive means to display nationalism. This became a driving force in the late Romantic period, as composers used elements of folk music to express their cultural identity. On the other hand, operas became increasingly popular, as they continued to tell stories and to express the issues of the day through music. Noticeably, the reason for the increasing popularity had a historical background. During the early ninetieth century, the “Grand Opera”and “Opera Comique”started to target the less “cultured”classes. The Lin 62 subjects of the operas were less serious but more comic so as to attract more and more people to go to the opera houses and the songs from the operas were quickly spread and sung among people at the same time. On top of the “less cultured”class, the rise of the powerful middle class also contributed to its popularity. To cater to people’s increasing needs for operatic entertainment, composers became very prolific and many classic operas appeared in the opera history. Since Joyce was born in this period, it is essential for him to be acquainted with many operas. His mother was a pianist and his father was a tenor. He became a gifted tenor himself. Gifted as he was, he composed his knowledge and passion of music into Chamber Music, Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake. Hence, the study of Joycean music has never been rare. Many scholars have devoted themselves to the studies of musical allusions among those works. Scholars such as Zack Bowen, an internationally recognized scholar and author, had published Musical Allusions in the Works of James Joyce in 1974 and Bloom's Old Sweet Song: a Collection of Essays on Joyce and Music in 1995. As I have mentioned above, it is interesting to figure that the word “Bohemian” in Dubliners is taken from two different operas—The Bohemian Girl and La Bohème. These two operas are both famous love stories and I believe that they have elements that we can tie them together with “Eveline,”“After the Race,”“Clay,”“A Little Cloud,”and “The Boarding House”in terms of a operatic fashion resulting in romantic illusions in Dubliners’courtships and tragic disillusions in Dubliners' marriages. I will start with The Bohemian Girl. There is a short summary of what the opera is all about from Gifford’s note: A light opera (1843), libretto by Alfred Bunn (1796-1860), music by Michael William Balfe (1808-1870). Balfe was a Dublin musician, who Lin 63 conducted, sang, composed opera, and played a virtuoso violin. The opera, in three acts, is set in the romantic vicinity of Presburg in the eighteenth century. The Bohemian Girl, Arline, born to be the nobility, is kidnapped by gypsies in the course of act I. In act II, twelve years later, Arline has matured into a beautiful woman in the midst of pastoral gypsy simplicity, and only vague dream of the “marble halls”of her former existence remains to haunt her. She is betrothed by the queen of the gypsies and coincidentally recognized by the Count, her long lost father. Back in the luxury of her father’s in act III, she longs for the freedom of the gypsy life and for her betrothed (Thaddeus). All is resolved so that Arline is to live happily ever after with the best of both worlds. (50; my emphasis) From this opera, I want to bring up an assumption that Arline is the perfect lady for many Dublin women of all ages to admire. She was born noble and was loved both by her beloved Thaddeus and the long-lost royal father at the end. In addition, the courtship between Arline and Thaddeus was so romantic a union that every tender heart yearned for one. Hence, what this operatic fashion brought to Dublin women was a romantic illusion—love and courtship were essential and important. Above all, love and courtship were wonderful.
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