Subversion of Conventional Gender Roles in James Joyce’s Selected Stories from Dubliners

Abstract

The present research paper analyses how James Joyce in Selected Stories fromDublinerssubvertsconventional gender roles. It claims that Joyce’s protagonists and their actions, behaviors, attitudes and personality as a whole virtually challenge the long-standing heterosexual celebration of traditional gender roles that prevailed at the turn ofthe twentieth century Ireland. It further investigates how the ongoing political, religious and social transformations that spread across Ireland in the late nineteenth and early Twentieth contributed to break the conventional gender roles. Being a witness to the contemporary transformations, Joyce documents the breakthrough that refuted the continuity of hegemonic power distribution between males and females. The research concerns withthe liberation and empowerment of female from the limited traditional roles. The paper incorporates the theoretical insights from Gender Studies in order to historicize the gender hegemony of Ireland’s patriarchal structure. It takesJudith Halberstam’s notion ofFemale Masculinityand Judith Butler’s notion of Performativity of gender to show how Joyce’s characters, especially female characters remain non-conformist to the conventional gender roles for their new social identity. It contends that Joyce suggests the potentiality of women’s independent individuality in the face of modernity. Inthis way, the paper concludes with the finding that Joyce’s portrayal of characters, especially female Dublinersas new women destabilizesdiscursive gender stereotypes under the influence of political, religious and social transitions in Ireland during the early twentieth century. Keywords:female masculinity, male femininity, new woman, individuality, subversion of gender roles, freedom