No Sisters, No Brother, No Man: “the Sisters” and Joyce's Gnomonics

Modern fiction has a certain way of achieving ‘literariness' and ‘sophistication'; it does so by means of “ambiguity”. Being “witty” or “deceitful”, to quote William Empson, ambiguity seems to press home the writers' intention of deferring the meaning by making the ontological status of the text as implicit as possible. Ambiguity, therefore, forms a kind of narrative that determines the writer's style. In James Joyce, however, particularly in the stories of Dubliners, this ambiguity is meant to reach a ‘mysterious' level. Joyce's “mysteries” are utterly different from commonly-believed, so-called textual “problems”. The problems can be solved, but mysteries should be “witnessed” and “attested” to be unfolded. Joyce's mysterious ambiguities bear his unique signature: they represent the complexity, significance, and survival of a “gnomonic” patterning. Being a geometric figure, a gnomon is the part of a parallelogram which remains after a similar parallelogram has been taken away from one of its corners. The gnomon, therefore, represents an incomplete figure, like Joyce's vaguely elliptical and incomplete stories. Joyce introduces the gnomon as the personification of imperfection, hopeless, paralysis, and damnation. The following study is going to elaborate this main principle of Joycean ambiguity in the opening story of Dubliners, “The Sisters”, and demonstrate its distinctively gnomonic narrative and characterization.


INTRODUCTION
Being an indispensible part of modern fiction, ambiguity is intended to imply what is always merited DV WKH µOLWHUDULQHVV ¶ DQG µVRSKLVWLFDWLRQ ¶ RI VXFK WH[WV Ambiguity signifies the determination of the modern fiction writer for not informing the reader explicitly of the ontological status of the text he is reading: the meaning, then, turns into the Holy Grail and the reader into the questing knight. Once William Empson (1970) GHILQHG DPELJXLW\ DV ³VRPHWKLQJ YHU\ SURQRXQFHG DQG DV D UXOH ZLWW\ RU GHFHLWIXO´ WKDW FDQ EH IRXQG LQ DQ\ ³SURVH VWDWHPHQW´ p. 1). Nonetheless, this naïve, rather general, definition cannot seem to be efficient and sufficient in investigation of the textual difficulty of modern fiction. Ambiguity embellishes, rather forms, the ZULWHU ¶V VW\OH 7KDW LV SHUKDSV ZK\ LW KDV EHHQ D primary reason for critics to broaden their textual investigations in order to explain both the complexity and richness of the meaning, and the difficulty of the ZULWHUV ¶ VW\OHV %XW LW LV QRW WKDW RQH ZULWHU ¶V VW\OLVWLF ambiguity is better or worse than the other one; the differences connote a variety of textual richness.
However, in modern fiction, particularly in James -R\FH ¶V VWRULHV DPELJXLW\ DQG LQGHWHUPLQDF\ WUDQV-FHQG WKH WH[WXDO GLIILFXOW\ DQG OHDG WR D µP\VWHULRXV ¶ OHYHO 'HQLV 'RQRJKXH EHOLHYHV ³P\VWHU\´ KDV VXFK D TXDOLW\ WKDW PDNHV LW IDU GLIIHUHQW LW IURP ³SUREOHP´ I want to reinstate mystery and to distinguish it from mere bewilderment or mystification. One of the strongest motives in modern life is to explain everything and preferably to explain it away. The typical mark of modern critics is that they are zealots of explanation, they want to deny to their arts their mystery, and to degrade P\VWHU\ LQWR D VXFFHVVLRQ RI SUREOHPV« $ problem is something to be solved, a mystery is something to be witnessed and attested (Herring, 1987, p. ix The opening page of the first story ³7KH 6LVWHUV´ WKDW will be mainly discussed here) perplexes the readers with three enigmatic italicized words; they have traditionally been read as thematic keys to the meaning of Dubliners as a whole. Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word simony in the Catechism. But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work (Joyce, 1992, p. 5).
Not only do these words suggest some thematic significance here, but also they signal some certain type of narrative. Evidently, most of the stories in Dubliners represent very little action ± paralysis ± which is dramatized by a series of epiphanies. Simony suggests a different kind of narrative: it involves a debasement of spirituality ± an exchange of spiritual for temporal things ± that involves those stories peopled by the present or absent holy fathers.
$QG JQRPRQ" $V PHQWLRQHG LQ (XFOLG ¶V Book II of Elements, a gnomon is the part of a parallelogram which remains after a similar parallelogram has been taken away from one of its corners. What is significant to this discussion is that gnomon is an incomplete parallelogram, and this incompleteness leads meaningfully to the gnomonic existence of Dubliners. Dubliners, each a gnomon taken from the main parallelogram (Dublin), are all caught in the incomplete areas of human relationships. Gordon VHHV HYHQ -R\FH ¶V FRXQWU\ DV D JQRPRQ ZKHQ stating: To make a gnomon, what you do is to take a rectangular piece of paper, crease it in half along width and length, then cut out one of the four smaller rectangles marked by the creases. (The map of modern-day Ireland, properly rendered, approximates such a figure). A gnomon illustrates engineered absence, a sign of something subtracted.
Being also the sign of absence, gnomons indicate imperfection, deficiency, and loss. The failings and IDOOLQJV RI µQR-PHQ ¶ WKHLU GLVORFDWLRQV WKHLU incapacity to communicate and belong make potential cases of gnomons in Dubliners. Gnomonic Dubliners mostly reveal the tragic-comic epiphanies of life-traps in which they are stuck; they are also followed and surrounded by the shadows of the dead (absent gnomons) heading on in the universal marathon of the frustration of the living and the dead.
But as mentioned before, Joyce uses gnomons to form also some narrative strategies that bear his unique siJQDWXUH -R\FH ¶V VWRULHV FDQ EH FDOOHG JQRPRQLF since it is their incomplete and fragmentary language WKDW XQYHLOV WKH PHDQLQJ -R\FH ¶V ODQJXDJH LQ Dubliners is elliptical; that is to say, there are omissions, ellipses marks, narrative cuts, incomplete conversations, as well as unexpected moments of silence that result in, to borrow from Benstock (1988) The following study intends to give a brief analysis of -R\FH ¶V PDLQ SULQFLSOH RI DPELJXLW\ LQ ³7KH 6LVWHUV´ (the first story in Dubliners) demonstrating its distinctively gnomonic aspect of narrative and characterization.

Gnomonic Narrator
As a story about the loss of faith, the corruption of religious values, and maturity, Joyce's "The Sisters" holds mysteries no less complex than that of McIntosh in Ulysses. Contrary to its uncomplicated realism, the story has kept critics busy for years discussing its seemingly unsolved enigmas. There is so much unexplained about the protagonist (the boy), the other characters (the priest, and his old sisters), and the plot. The readers also have to overcome some textual incongruities: while the story restricts itself to the limited point of view of the boy himself, it also relishes an elliptical narrative signified remarkably by unfinished sentences, thoughts, and dreams that are supposed to be filled by the readers. The boy, later at night, becomes angry again recalling how Old Cotter had considered him a child. He does not seem that innocent and naïve as we expect; he could be a couple of years older, and more cunning apparently. He might certainly know something about the dead priest to hide from his family, Cotter, and the readers as well.
The equivocal behavior of the young narrator concerning the priest is also intended to be mysterious.  (Gifford, 1982, p. PHDQLQJ ³VKDUH´ RU ³SURFHHGV´ (let him go out and make a living), its geometric implication should not be ignored. Walzl (1973) does QRW PLVV WKLV SRLQW DV VKH VWDWHV WKDW WKH ³'XEOLQ \RXWK must develop into a whole person: he must in the JHRPHWULFDO VHQVH ³ER[ KLV FRUQHU´ DQG EHFRPH OLNH the restored parallelogram a complete figure. Maturity UHTXLUHV ZKROHQHVV´ p. 399). Joyce is introducing, perhaps, an incomplete/gnomonic portrait of the young artist in A Portrait who has to overcome the same struggle within: to welcome the realm of art and quit the priesthood for good. The young boy expresses unconsciously his desire to get away from the paralyzing aura of the corrupted priesthood that may prevent his maturity and freedom.

Gnomonic Father
One should bear in mind, nonetheless, that the ER\ ¶V vague attitude of making the obvious uncertain cannot be very unfamiliar. Perhaps he practices what he has learned from the priest whose gnomonic implications explicitly outweigh those of the other characters: ³6RPHWLPHV  Tindall (1963), thH ³IDWKHU ¶V JRQH´ p. 17).

CONCLUSION
Joyce identifies the slanted and incomplete figure of WKH µJQRPRQ ¶ ZLWK µSDUDO\VLV ¶ DQG µVLPRQ\ ¶ LQ WKH story so that gnomon can symbolize a social paralysis that can potentially creep through the entire continent. All those characters who are defective psychologically, spiritually, morally, and physically are the products of the gnomonic/distorting Ireland. Ireland is the ruthless mother pig that eats her furrows. For Dubliners, maturity and perfection can never be fulfilled, love is as hopeless as freedom, and salvation is a dream that will never come true. The way to maturity and perfection must be sought beyond the