James Joyce's Exiles

James Joyce is, perhaps, the most read and discussed author of the twentieth-century English Literature. An Irish novelist and dramatist, Joyce left Dublin in 1904 and except for some brief visits in 1909 and 1912, he never returned back. The play, Exiles, seems to revolve around his supposition and conjecture about what might have happened had he returned to Ireland and stayed there.

A play with very few characters, Exiles has Richard Rowan as the protagonist, who can be easily identified as the reflection of Joyce himself. Then we have Bertha, Richard's common law wife; their son Archie; Richard’s cousin Beatrice Justice, who is also Archie’s music teacher; their maid Brigid; and Robert Hand, with whom Richard shares a complicated old friendship.

From the plot (which will be carefully revealed in this blog), Joyce expected to fight stormy inner challenges and doubts more than external resistance and economic concerns had he returned to Ireland. Amongst other things, these doubts and suspicions are predictably directed against his wife, whom he even forces to be let alone with his friend Robert on a rainy (read: romantic) night. Richard is aware of Robert’s deep-seated, secret and passionate love for Bertha, and rightly suspects that Bertha doesn’t completely reject the idea of love with him either.

Why O why on earth would he let that happen between a friend he envies and a wife he loves? He is a complex character, as you have guessed already. When asked if he fears Bertha would cheat on him, he says this:

Richard: Not that fear. But that I will reproach myself then for having taken all for myself because I would not suffer her to give another what was hers and not mine to give, because I accepted from her, her loyalty and made her life poorer in love. That is my fear. That I stand between her and you, between her and anyone, between her and anything.

So Richard lets Robert call Bertha to his cottage in the suburbs one evening, where Robert tries really hard to convince Bertha to consummate their not-so-secret-anymore love. And it looks like they will do it. You know. The room turning darker. The curtains blocking lamplight. The stormy weather. Robert kissing Bertha's arms, caressing her hair. And ending of the act with the instance of sun rise next morning. Had it been an archetypical Bollywood movie, this was it. But, no. We are told in the end of the play Bertha remained loyal to Richard even during such heated moment. 

Loyalty? Hmm…can't say. We smell fishiness. Why would she go to meet him alone in such a sexy place in the first place. And doesn't denounce him when he touches and kisses her. Well, there's abstractness around the justification of it, and I'd rather call it halfbaked.

The themes of freedom, betrayal and confinement are spread portentously throughout the play, be it Richard’s seemingly confused correspondence with Beatrice or Robert’s transparent advances towards Bertha. Besides, one of the recurrent themes about labor and toils of having an artistic vocation appears strongly in the play, as it does in almost all Joyce’s works I’ve heard of.

  

Joyce wrote only three plays in his lifetime, and Exiles is his only extant play today, and yet it is not considered to be his best of works, which sounds very depressing from Joyce’s lens. Sandwiched between much popular and substantial works Ulysses and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Exiles is a pretty easy, comfortable and conventional work. Not to say that it's not likeable, but the play lacks rich language and has a rather fateful tone. All the characters are grave and solemn, with the exception of Robert, perhaps, who says wonderful things (I mean, things which lack solemnity).

Robert: …I feel too natural, too common. After all, what is the most attractive in even the most beautiful woman?

Richard: What?

Robert: Not those qualities, which she has and other women have not, but the qualities, which she has in common with them. I mean the…commonest. I mean how her body develops heat when it is pressed, the movement of her blood, how quickly she changes by digestion what she eats into- what shall be nameless.

And then in the Act 2-

Robert: For all. That a woman, too, has the right to try with many men until she finds love. An immoral idea, is it not? I wanted to write a book about it… 

Covertly, then, Robert's character is diametrical to that of Richard’s.

Robert: O, Richard, why did you do that?

Richard: Betray her?

Robert: No. But tell her, waken from her sleep to tell her. It was piercing her heart…this is not you as you are. (But) A moment of weakness.

You should read it if you liked these randomly chosen excerpts. Plus, the play definitely has more to it than meets the eye.