Class Consciousness in James Joyce’s Selected Short Stories

Abstract

This research work on James Joyce’s short stories, “The Boarding House,” “Two Gallants,” and “A Little Cloud” studies the existing gap between haves and have nots. Joyce presents the idea of class division of Irish society. He presents his ideas through his stories that Ireland faces many more problems during his time. The problems such as economic, gender, etc but this research work focuses on economic problems of the people. Economics is the base on which the superstructure of social political, ideological realities is built. Economic power therefore always includes social and political power as well, which is why many Marxists today refer to socioeconomic class.

In order to study class consciousness in the short stories, the theory of Marxism for addressing the lifestyle of key characters of the stories, Ms. Polly, Mr. Chandler and Corley is applied as methodological tool. Consciousness is generally constructed by the situation of character’s lifestyle. At that time, Ireland is on the way to reconstruct the nation. So that through the help of key characters, Joyce presents his idea by taking the theory of Marxism. The Marxist writers whose ideas have been helpful for this research are Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Georg Lukacs, etc. Joyce presents the idea of class division of that society. This thesis focuses on the critical study of the Marxist ideology that highlights upper class and lower class, haves and have nots where many characters are suffering from low financial status.