SOURCE: Kearney, Martin F. “Robert Emmet's 1803 Rising and Bold Mrs. Kearney: James Joyce's ‘A Mother’ as Historical Analogue.” Journal of the Short Story in English, no. 37 (autumn 2001): 49-61.

In the following essay, Kearney discusses the significance of Joyce's story, “A Mother,” and its place in the Dubliners collection.

For years, Joyce's short story “A Mother” has perplexed readers of Dubliners. Initially, many scholars dismissed it in much the same manner as “Hoppy” Holohan and O'Madden Burke discount Mrs. Kearney at the story's end. The tale's focus was quite clear to these early critics: Kathleen Kearney's mother is a fright—nothing more, nothing less. Self-indulgent and willful, Miss Devlin marries the bootmaker Kearney because the Age, as well as her age, invests a certain urgency. She must soon marry or forever tarry. There is, too, her consolation that like a good pair of boots, Mr. Kearney would wear better...