Joyce’s “The Sisters”: A Development

Abstract

This essay examines the principal textual and stylistic changes found within the many revisions of Joyce’s “The Sisters” and the way these revisions relate to Joyce’s developing concept of Dubliners as a whole. Its analysis takes as its central focus “The Sisters” as published in The Irish Homestead on 13 August 1904; an intermediate manuscript version most likely written in 1905; an enlarged manuscript version of the destroyed Maunsel edition of 1912; the story as published by Grant Richards in 1914; and, finally, the 1969 authoritative text. This study aims, first, to reassess the original Irish Homestead version, second, to determine what changes were designed to make “The Sisters” act as an introduction to Dubliners through a presentation of the book’s main themes, levels of meaning, and images, and, third, to see what light these revisions throw on the vexed question of meaning in “The Sisters,” especially the degree to which the characters should be regarded as typal or symbolic.

No Sisters, No Brother, No Man: “The Sisters” and Joyce’s Gnomonics

“…Though "corner" here refers to an Irish slang (Gifford, 1982, p. 30) meaning "share" or "proceeds" (let him go out and make a living), its geometric implication should not be ignored. Walzl (1973) does not miss this point as she states that the "Dublin youth must develop into a whole person: he must in the geometrical sense "box his corner" and become like the restored parallelogram a complete figure. Maturity requires wholeness" (p. 399).…”