“It was that chalice he broke…”: James Joyce’s Dissatisfaction with Religion in His Short Story, The Sisters

Abstract

This paper examines James Joyce's dissatisfaction and frustration with the established religion and the Catholic Church in this earliest short story The Sisters. In so doing, the paper focuses upon two strategies or two conditions used by Joyce in the story to represent his relentlessness with the church and the priesthood. One of them is his use of "pederasty" between the priest and young children, by which Joyce disgraces the image of the priesthood and the church. The second one is the "broken" image of the "chalice" as an important symbol. By means of these two strategies, Joyce not only deconstructs the trustworthy image of the church and the priesthood but also becomes able to create a free space outside the influence of the border of the church for his artistic vocation.