Abstract
This essay examines narrative vision and its correlation with gender representation in James Joyce's “The Dead,” focusing mainly on how the narration renders Gretta both visible and unseen. The story is framed by the language of sight in which words such as eyes, watching, and looking repeatedly reveal how meaning is formed. Yet the narrative consistently restricts readers from seeing Gretta's interiority, reducing her to a mere reflection of Gabriel's consciousness, which leads Gretta to become an example of what Simone de Beauvoir theorizes as “the Other”. Scholars commenting on “The Dead” often note that Gretta's objectification comes from Gabriel's limited gaze. This essay expands those ideas and illuminates that it is the narrative voice that is participating in that same blindness as Gabriel. By using feminist narrative theory and the biographical context of Joyce’s own experiences of difficulty seeing women as autonomous beings, the essay argues that there is a structural blindness embedded in the narration and that mis-seeing is exemplified through its characterization of Gretta. In the end, Gabriel humanizes Gretta, but the narrative continues its pattern of containing Gretta, which reveals Joyce's own blind spots regarding women. Joyce constructs an entire narrative about the dangers of looking without seeing, while his own narration repeatedly looks past the very woman it depends on.
Issue and Volume
19.1
BYU ScholarsArchive Citation
Reber, Madison
(2026)
"Narrative Blindness: Gretta and the Limits of Seeing in Joyce’s “The Dead”,"
Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism: Vol. 19:
Iss.
1, Article 2.
Available at:
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/criterion/vol19/iss1/2