CLAY (KEY SYMBOLS, CONTEXT, NARRATIVE FEATURES)

Question 1

Summarise the story ‘Clay’

Answer 1

• The narrative is set on Halloween, and follows Maria after her shift at the laundary.
• She attends a party at Joe’s and plays a traditional Hallow Eve’s game, where she choses clay rather than water, a ring, or prayer book, suggesting that she will die soon.

Question 2

Key characters?

Answer 2

• Maria (protagonist): An aging unmarried woman, who works at a Catholic Laundary for fallen women.
• Joe Donnelly: Former laundary boy, who is now middle-class and married.
• Elderly gentleman: Speaks with Maria on the tram. He symbolises the many invasive, encroching forces in Maria’s life.
• ‘Stylish young lady’ in the bakery: represents fashionability, modernity juxaposing Maria’s modest clothes.

Question 3

Significance of the title ‘Clay’

Answer 3

• (In the game) Symbolises Maria’s impending death, fading relevance, sterility, and her social and spirtual entombment.
• Clay - is a mallebale subtance, thus highlightis Maria’s pliability, and passivity in the hands of society.

Question 4

Key narrative technqiues

Answer 4

• Climax= the hallows-eve game and clay moment. It is a repressed climax as its awkwardly erased by other characters (like her lonelliness/mortality are socially ignored)
• Third-person narration: Filiterd through Maria’s limited perspective.
• Joycean Irony: Gap between Maria’s perception and reader’s understanding (evoke pathos)

Question 5

Prose/ lexicon

Answer 5

• The Prose + Lexicon is rudimentary/ economical- reflective of Maria’s child-like nature and limited percepective/ possible learning disabiliy.

The learning disability could be the reason for her being in the laundary.

Question 6

Key Settings

Answer 6

• The Laundary (workplace)- symbol of confinement/ marignalisation.
• Joe’s Home- Domestic bliss vs her domestic loneliness.
• Tram-Ride - Symbolic journey into false-sense of belonging.

Question 7

Key Symbols

Answer 7

1. Clay
2. Song
3. Plum-cake and wine (Inverted Eucharistic symbol)
4. Hallows-eve game

Question 8

Link to other stories?

Answer 8

• Eveline= Both feature emotionally paralysed women stuck in domestic roles (Though Eveline was given a chance to escape)
• Counterparts/ Little Cloud: Both feature characters who are inwardly repressed and stunted.

Question 9

Key physical descriptions of Maria

Answer 9

• “Maria was a very, very small person indeed, but she had a very long nose and a very long chin.”

evoke a fairy tale or witch-like imagery, adding a slightly grotesque or comedic aspect to her characterization which perhaps explains the aversion other people seem to have of her. the story is set on Halloween. This establishes a relationship between the character and the theme of death: she is one of the ghouls of Halloween, rather than one of the living.

Question 10

The Song: “I Dreamt That I Dwelt in Marble Walls’

Answer 10

• Aria from Bohemian Girl (Opera)
• Symbolises sentimenatlity, romantic idealism (qualities absent in her life)
• Her repetition of the first-verse and omission of the second (about romance) highlights her aversion to confronting her lonliness/ mental lapse and psychological stuckness.

Question 11

The Hallows-Eve Game

Answer 11

• Traditional Irish Divination Game.
• Prayer book= convent/religious vocation (socially acceptable symbol that masks the truth of her existential isolation)
• Water= life
• Clay= death
• Ring= Marriage/ love
• The game she plays in order to bond with the family, only confirms her intractable state of loneliness.

Question 12

Key Context- Magadalene Sisters

Answer 12

• Magadalene Sisters Laundaries: Laundaries run by Catholic Nuns (Magdalene Sisters), who supervise the washing of clothes completed by ‘fallen women’ (women who had intercourse/babies outside of marriage, prosititutes)

Question 13

Context- Laundaries

Answer 13

• Lauderies were great places of suffering for vulerable women and children who laboured for no pay as penance for transgressing against Catholic Ireland’s moral codes.

Question 14

Magadalene Laundaries Scandal (1990’s)

Answer 14

• The cemetery of Donnybrook Laundary was revealed to be a mass grave, containing 155 unidentified women who had suffered in secrecy

Question 15

Why is Maria in the Laundary?

Answer 15

• (Narrative paralypsis- readers are never told why)

Question 16

The cemetery of……..was revealed to be a mass grave, containing…. unidentified women who had suffered in …..

Answer 16

• DonnyBrook Laundary
• Mass grave
• 155
• Secrercy