“Limping and Devious”

Abstract

This chapter concerns one of Joyce's least examined stories in Dubliners. The chapter close-reads the story through the lens of disability studies and discusses Joyce's use of a disabled main character, "Hoppy" Holohan, to investigate the fraught relationship between disability and masculinity in Joyce's early work. Previous scholarship on the story is criticized for the recurring assumption that male disability acts only as a metaphor for emasculation or sexual impotence. The use of disability to represent religious degeneration—the body acting as an index of morality—and the stagnation of turn-of-the-century Irish politics is considered alongside these traditional readings. A genetic study of Joyce's early drafts demonstrates the deliberate choice of words used to describe Holohan's limp and the argument is made that the character was intended to mock either a specific person, or at least a certain kind of person, participating in the Irish Revival. The disabled Irish body is thus linked with stage-Irish nationalism and figures such as Cathleen ni Houlihan to create a satire of the "paralyzed" city of Dublin; the chapter also examines the ableism inherent in Joyce's framing of his political commentary. Finally, the story's recurrent phallic symbolism inscribes aging and disabled male bodies with patriarchal power that counterbalances physical weakness with social and political authority. Both Holohan and O'Madden Burke escape the stigma of disability by asserting this power over Mrs. Kearney, who has overstepped the traditional boundaries of femininity and thus must be put in her place.