Something Disappointing about James Joyce's "The Dead"

While I believe that James's Joyce's story "The Dead" is probably his most satisfying piece of fiction, I have also over time come to believe there is something disappointing about it.

In his autobiographically influenced book  "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," one of the most memorable scenes is a Christmas dinner that devolves into an argument over whether the Catholic Church should be involved in Irish politics. This stemmed from an attempt by the Church to assert its authority in such matters after the death of Ireland's great political leader, Charles Stewart Parnell, whose reputation had earlier been tarnished in the eyes of some when his long-running adulterous affair with an English woman, Kitty O'Shea, had become public. That gave the church running room.

In the story, an older woman named Dante, who had apparently once been a nun before becoming a governess of the family's children, defends the Church on the basis of its moral authority against a family friend named Casey, who is furious about Church-led attempts to condemn Parnell and thus undermine secular authority. This particular question of Ireland's future dominates the dinner.

A similarly controversial issue arises in "The Dead" over whether Ireland should look inward or outward in trying to set matters on a better course in the process of getting out from under British rule and British culture.

During an annual family-and-friends party held on or near the Epiphany, a woman named Molly Ivors accuses the chief character, Gabriel Conroy, of being insufficiently nationalistic. When she invites Gabriel and his wife to visit the Aran Islands, where Gaelic is still spoken, Gabriel tells her that he will instead by cycling on the European continent and that he is tired of his country.

What's disappointing is that Ms Ivors then promptly leaves the party before all sit down to dinner where a general discussion of Ireland's best future course could have taken place. 

Joyce, of course, had other fish to fry when he wrote "The Dead," but this topic arguably looms large, if mostly indirectly, in "Ulysses" as well as in Joyce's own life. It would have been interesting to hear Joyce's characters argue the relative merits of the two paths as they ate the famous roast goose.