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Exiles (play)
Encyclopedia
Exiles is a play by James Joyce
, who is principally remembered for his novels. It draws on the story of "The Dead
", the final short story in Joyce's first major work, Dubliners
, and was rejected by W. B. Yeats for production by the Abbey Theatre
. Its first major London performance was in 1970, when Harold Pinter
directed it at the Mermaid Theatre
.
In terms of both its critical and popular reception, it has proven the least successful of all Joyce's published works - only Chamber Music
runs it close. In making his case for the defence of the play, Padraic Colum
conceded: "...critics have recorded their feeling that [Exiles] has not the enchantment of Portrait of the Artist nor the richness of [Ulysses
]... They have noted that Exiles has the shape of an Ibsen play and have discounted it as being the derivative work of a young admirer of the great Scandinavian dramatist."
between Richard Rowan (a Dublin writer recently returned from exile in Rome), Bertha (his common law
wife) and his old friend Robert Hand (a journalist). (There are obvious parallels to be drawn with Joyce's own life - Joyce and Nora Barnacle
lived, unmarried, in Trieste, during the years the fictional Rowans were living in Rome, while Robert Hand is roughly the same age of Joyce's friends Oliver St. John Gogarty
and Vincent Cosgrave, and shares some characteristics with them both.) This arrangement is slightly complicated by a second love triangle, involving Rowan, Hand, and Hand's cousin Beatrice Justice. (The fictional Beatrice, who in the play has recovered from a life-threatening illness, is just two years younger than Joyce's cousin Elizabeth Justice, who died in 1912.)
However, Exiles is by no means straightforwardly autobiographical. Rowan's complicated relationship with his dead parents is subtly different from that of Joyce: Rowan's mother is characterised by her "hardness of heart", in contrast to the generosity of his "smiling handsome father". This hard-heartedness manifests itself in two significant antipathies towards women in Rowan's life: first towards his childhood friend Beatrice (whom his mother calls "the black Protestant, the pervert's daughter"), and second towards Bertha herself, particularly for giving birth to their child out of wedlock: "There were tongues [in Dublin] ready to tell her all, to embitter her withering mind still more against me and Bertha and our godless nameless child."
Rowan, Hand and Beatrice have been friends since childhood. Hand and Beatrice became secretly engaged as teenagers, which Hand admits to Rowan some years later, when the two men share a house in their early twenties. Those house-sharing years are remembered by Hand as "wild nights" involving "drinking and blasphemy [by Hand]... and drinking and heresy, much worse [by Rowan]." On one of those nights, the two friends meet Bertha, who from the very first night chooses to be with Rowan, despite the attentions of Hand.
Rowan and Bertha soon elope, and head to exile in Italy. Hand has tried to dissuade them both, suggesting to Rowan that he should go first alone ("to see if what he felt for [Bertha] was a passing thing") in the hope (as he later admits to Bertha): "that you might turn from him when he had gone and he from you. Then I would have offered you my gift. You know what it was now. The simple common gift that men offer to women. Not the best perhaps. Best or worst-- it would have been yours."
Once in exile, Rowan has physical relationships with other women ("grossly and many times") while he continues to live with Bertha. He also begins regularly writing letters to Beatrice, and sends her the chapters of his novel. For her part, Beatrice recovers from a life-threatening illness and begins to feel "a coldness" towards Hand, whom she now regards as "a pale reflection" of Richard Rowan. This is the background of the characters who meet again, in the suburbs of Dublin, on Rowan and Bertha's return from exile in the summer of 1912.
In the second act, Hand is expecting Bertha at the appointed hour, but instead it is Rowan who appears. Rowan calmly explains that he knows all about Hand's wooing of Bertha. After some minutes of what for Hand is clearly a very awkward conversation, Bertha herself knocks at the door. Hand goes tactfully into the garden, while Rowan explains to Bertha the conversation he has just had with Hand. Rowan then goes home, leaving his wife alone with Hand. Hand again begins to seduce Bertha. The act ends inconclusively, with Hand asking if Bertha loves him, and Bertha explaining: "I like you, Robert. I think you are good... Are you satisfied?"
The third act begins in Rowan's house at seven o'clock, the following morning. Bertha tells the maid that she hasn't slept all night. The maid tells her that Rowan has left the house an hour earlier, to go walking on the strand. In the morning newspapers, Hand has published a favourable article about Rowan, written the previous evening. Exactly what has happened the previous night is not entirely clear. Hand and Bertha have shared "a sacred night of love", although the specifics of this are not explicitly stated, and both characters agree that it was "a dream". Hand supplies more detail in his account of the night to Rowan, although of his time with Bertha, he admits only that "she went away". He then claims to have gone to the Vice-Chancellor's lodge where he drank claret, returned home to write the newspaper article, and then gone to a nightclub where he picked up a divorcée and had sex with her ("what the subtle Duns Scotus
calls a death of the spirit took place") in the cab on the way home. Hand himself leaves "for foreign parts" (his cousin's house in Surrey), while Rowan and Bertha are reconciled. Bertha admits that she longs to meet her lover, but asserts that the lover is Rowan himself.
The resolution of the play lies precisely in the sense of doubt about what occurred between Hand and Bertha between Acts Two and Three. Rowan is wounded by the sense of doubt that he admits he longed for. Indeed, he sees this sense of doubt as what enables him "to be united with [Bertha] in body and soul in utter nakedness".
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
, who is principally remembered for his novels. It draws on the story of "The Dead
The Dead (short story)
"The Dead" is the final short story in the 1914 collection Dubliners by James Joyce. It is the longest story in the collection and is often considered the best of Joyce's shorter works. At 15,672 words it has also been considered a novella....
", the final short story in Joyce's first major work, Dubliners
Dubliners
Dubliners is a collection of 15 short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. They were meant to be a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century....
, and was rejected by W. B. Yeats for production by the Abbey Theatre
Abbey Theatre
The Abbey Theatre , also known as the National Theatre of Ireland , is a theatre located in Dublin, Ireland. The Abbey first opened its doors to the public on 27 December 1904. Despite losing its original building to a fire in 1951, it has remained active to the present day...
. Its first major London performance was in 1970, when Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
directed it at the Mermaid Theatre
Mermaid Theatre
The Mermaid Theatre was a theatre at Puddle Dock, in Blackfriars, in the City of London and the first built there since the time of Shakespeare...
.
In terms of both its critical and popular reception, it has proven the least successful of all Joyce's published works - only Chamber Music
Chamber Music (book)
Chamber Music is a collection of poems by James Joyce, published by Elkin Matthews in May, 1907. The collection originally comprised thirty-four love poems, but two further poems were added before publication .-Summary:Although it is widely reported that the title refers to the sound of urine...
runs it close. In making his case for the defence of the play, Padraic Colum
Padraic Colum
Padraic Colum was an Irish poet, novelist, dramatist, biographer, playwright, children's author and collector of folklore. He was one of the leading figures of the Celtic Revival.-Early life:...
conceded: "...critics have recorded their feeling that [Exiles] has not the enchantment of Portrait of the Artist nor the richness of [Ulysses
Ulysses (novel)
Ulysses is a novel by the Irish author James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, in Paris. One of the most important works of Modernist literature,...
]... They have noted that Exiles has the shape of an Ibsen play and have discounted it as being the derivative work of a young admirer of the great Scandinavian dramatist."
Premise
The basic premise of Exiles involves a love triangleLove triangle
A love triangle is usually a romantic relationship involving three people. While it can refer to two people independently romantically linked with a third, it usually implies that each of the three people has some kind of relationship to the other two...
between Richard Rowan (a Dublin writer recently returned from exile in Rome), Bertha (his common law
Common-law marriage
Common-law marriage, sometimes called sui juris marriage, informal marriage or marriage by habit and repute, is a form of interpersonal status that is legally recognized in limited jurisdictions as a marriage even though no legally recognized marriage ceremony is performed or civil marriage...
wife) and his old friend Robert Hand (a journalist). (There are obvious parallels to be drawn with Joyce's own life - Joyce and Nora Barnacle
Nora Barnacle
Nora Barnacle was the lover, companion, inspiration, and eventual wife of author James Joyce.-Biography:Nora Barnacle was born in the town of Galway, Ireland, but the day of her birth is uncertain. Depending on the source, it varies between the 21st and the 24th of March 1884...
lived, unmarried, in Trieste, during the years the fictional Rowans were living in Rome, while Robert Hand is roughly the same age of Joyce's friends Oliver St. John Gogarty
Oliver St. John Gogarty
Oliver Joseph St John Gogarty was an Irish poet, author, otolaryngologist, athlete, politician, and well-known conversationalist, who served as the inspiration for Buck Mulligan in James Joyce's novel Ulysses....
and Vincent Cosgrave, and shares some characteristics with them both.) This arrangement is slightly complicated by a second love triangle, involving Rowan, Hand, and Hand's cousin Beatrice Justice. (The fictional Beatrice, who in the play has recovered from a life-threatening illness, is just two years younger than Joyce's cousin Elizabeth Justice, who died in 1912.)
However, Exiles is by no means straightforwardly autobiographical. Rowan's complicated relationship with his dead parents is subtly different from that of Joyce: Rowan's mother is characterised by her "hardness of heart", in contrast to the generosity of his "smiling handsome father". This hard-heartedness manifests itself in two significant antipathies towards women in Rowan's life: first towards his childhood friend Beatrice (whom his mother calls "the black Protestant, the pervert's daughter"), and second towards Bertha herself, particularly for giving birth to their child out of wedlock: "There were tongues [in Dublin] ready to tell her all, to embitter her withering mind still more against me and Bertha and our godless nameless child."
Rowan, Hand and Beatrice have been friends since childhood. Hand and Beatrice became secretly engaged as teenagers, which Hand admits to Rowan some years later, when the two men share a house in their early twenties. Those house-sharing years are remembered by Hand as "wild nights" involving "drinking and blasphemy [by Hand]... and drinking and heresy, much worse [by Rowan]." On one of those nights, the two friends meet Bertha, who from the very first night chooses to be with Rowan, despite the attentions of Hand.
Rowan and Bertha soon elope, and head to exile in Italy. Hand has tried to dissuade them both, suggesting to Rowan that he should go first alone ("to see if what he felt for [Bertha] was a passing thing") in the hope (as he later admits to Bertha): "that you might turn from him when he had gone and he from you. Then I would have offered you my gift. You know what it was now. The simple common gift that men offer to women. Not the best perhaps. Best or worst-- it would have been yours."
Once in exile, Rowan has physical relationships with other women ("grossly and many times") while he continues to live with Bertha. He also begins regularly writing letters to Beatrice, and sends her the chapters of his novel. For her part, Beatrice recovers from a life-threatening illness and begins to feel "a coldness" towards Hand, whom she now regards as "a pale reflection" of Richard Rowan. This is the background of the characters who meet again, in the suburbs of Dublin, on Rowan and Bertha's return from exile in the summer of 1912.
Plot
The action of the play is very simple. Bertha is jealous of Rowan's relationship with Beatrice, and Hand is jealous of Rowan's relationship with Bertha. Joyce himself described the structure of the play as "three cat and mouse acts", and the action mostly involves Robert Hand's attempts to pounce on Bertha. In the first act, at Rowan's house, Hand kisses Bertha "with passion" several times "and passes his hand many times over her hair". He asks her to come to his own house for a second meeting later that evening. Bertha tells Rowan about this invitation, and asks if she should accept it. Rowan tells her to decide for herself.In the second act, Hand is expecting Bertha at the appointed hour, but instead it is Rowan who appears. Rowan calmly explains that he knows all about Hand's wooing of Bertha. After some minutes of what for Hand is clearly a very awkward conversation, Bertha herself knocks at the door. Hand goes tactfully into the garden, while Rowan explains to Bertha the conversation he has just had with Hand. Rowan then goes home, leaving his wife alone with Hand. Hand again begins to seduce Bertha. The act ends inconclusively, with Hand asking if Bertha loves him, and Bertha explaining: "I like you, Robert. I think you are good... Are you satisfied?"
The third act begins in Rowan's house at seven o'clock, the following morning. Bertha tells the maid that she hasn't slept all night. The maid tells her that Rowan has left the house an hour earlier, to go walking on the strand. In the morning newspapers, Hand has published a favourable article about Rowan, written the previous evening. Exactly what has happened the previous night is not entirely clear. Hand and Bertha have shared "a sacred night of love", although the specifics of this are not explicitly stated, and both characters agree that it was "a dream". Hand supplies more detail in his account of the night to Rowan, although of his time with Bertha, he admits only that "she went away". He then claims to have gone to the Vice-Chancellor's lodge where he drank claret, returned home to write the newspaper article, and then gone to a nightclub where he picked up a divorcée and had sex with her ("what the subtle Duns Scotus
Duns Scotus
Blessed John Duns Scotus, O.F.M. was one of the more important theologians and philosophers of the High Middle Ages. He was nicknamed Doctor Subtilis for his penetrating and subtle manner of thought....
calls a death of the spirit took place") in the cab on the way home. Hand himself leaves "for foreign parts" (his cousin's house in Surrey), while Rowan and Bertha are reconciled. Bertha admits that she longs to meet her lover, but asserts that the lover is Rowan himself.
The resolution of the play lies precisely in the sense of doubt about what occurred between Hand and Bertha between Acts Two and Three. Rowan is wounded by the sense of doubt that he admits he longed for. Indeed, he sees this sense of doubt as what enables him "to be united with [Bertha] in body and soul in utter nakedness".