Joyce, James - The Dead - Dubliners

The Dubliners is one of the most famous works of Joyce and it consists in short stories in which Joyce described the lives of different people living in Dublin, trapped by life in their city. Joyce himself declared that Dublin represented paralysis that imposed to ordinary men and women to accept the limitations of the social context in which they live. The paralysis is both physical and moral. The longest and the last story of Dubliners is ''The Dead''.

In this story, the woman changes her role like in the society in fact her conduct conditions the end of the story itself. In fact, ''The Dead'' is about Gretta and Gabriel who go to the annual party given by Gabriel's aunts but their house is out of Dublin and for this reason, the couple stay in a hotel for the night where they have a good evening full of music and good food. At the end of the night, they return in hotel but Gretta is distracted because during the party, she had singed a traditional song about an abandoned woman. This song, was singed by Michael Furey, a boy who died young because consumptive, he stood outside Gretta's house in the rain because he knew that Gretta went to a convent school in Dublin. She thinks that probably killed him and she told this story to Gabriel who thinks that Michael Furey is less died than him and he realizes that his love for Gretta is insignificant compared to Furey's.
So, in this story Gretta represents Joyce's wife and for this reason, she has the same importance of Norma in the reality. For the first time, the woman receives a central role in the licterature and in the society in fat, in this period, the women received their emancipation.