“If I go, I will bring you something.”
The boy’s quest of this gift closely parallels the crusades of a knight.
After the Middle Ages, Christianity has developed a twisted idea in elevating
Virgin Mary, which might somehow reflects a psychological process of
desexualization under Catholic church’s repression of earthly love. The boy’
s denial of sensuality is incomplete, for he is constantly distracted by
Mangan’s sister’s petticoat, “the white curve of her neck,” etc., yet
still goes on his journey to the oriental Araby, the eastern Holy Land of
medieval knights who commonly dedicate themselves to “the lady.” Under the
shadow of Joyce’s conflict with the church, his dream is doomed to shatter,
mocking the fruitless crusades over and over.
If the Virgin Mary is a sublimation of a knight’s object of desire, does
the boy indeed love Mangan’s sister? Throughout the story his actual
knowledge of her remains limited, and his desperate pursuit is rather
internal. Is this love merely a transition, under Freud’s terms, from the
cathexis of the ego to the object cathexes, a process which “derives its
principal support from biology” (Freud, “Beyond the Pleasure Principle”)
and has to be gone through? Does his later lamenting of the foolish youth
imply a triumph of secondary narcissism? Either way, it seems impossible for
the boy to escape the disillusionment.
(B95B01074)