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The Clay
The Donnellys’ party takes place on Hallow Eve. As a result, the older girls at the party decide to play a traditional Hallow Eve game. The two girls from the house next door help the children to arrange a table of saucers which are filled with different objects that each signify a different omen. To play the game, each guest is blindfolded and led to the table where they choose a saucer at random. When it is Maria’s turn, she touches the saucer and feels something soft and wet. The object is never explicitly stated but, given the short story’s title and the rules of the game, it’s implied Maria touched a mound of clay.
According to the rules of this traditional Hallow Eve game, clay represents an early death. It is obviously a bad omen, which causes Mrs. Donnelly to scold the older girls for putting clay in the saucer in the first place. The guests are unsettled by such a chilling omen and the party’s atmosphere takes on a darker tone as the guests attempt to conceal the truth from Maria. However, the clay’s symbolism extends beyond Hallow Eve superstitions. By titling the short story “Clay,” Joyce draws attention to Maria’s fateful selection of clay in the Hallow Eve game and applies that symbolism of early death to the story as a whole. Rather than implying a literal death, the clay casts Maria’s uneventful, detail-oriented life as a metaphorical early death. Clay also is also indicative of the trajectory of Maria’s life up to that moment because Maria hovers in a state between living and dying, where engagement with her surroundings cannot move beyond a superficial, material level.
The Song “I Dreamt that I Dwelt”
At the very end of the short story, Joe Donnelly convinces Maria to sing “one of the old songs” before she goes home. Maria acquiesces and stammers out a rendition of “I Dreamt that I Dwelt” while Mrs. Donnelly accompanies her on the piano. The narrator writes that Maria repeats the first verse twice instead of moving on to the second verse but that nobody corrects or even points out her mistake. Joe Donnelly is deeply moved by Maria’s song and immediately asks his wife a question in order to conceal the intensity of his emotions.
Maria’s omission of the second verse sounds like an inconsequential detail but a closer look reveals that the moment is ripe with symbolism. The song's opening verse, the full text of which is recorded in “Clay,” is about a speaker wishing for wealth and status. It is an innocuous verse that Maria clearly had no trouble singing. However, the second verse is about a speaker wishing for a different, much more personal thing. The second verse reads, “I dreamt that suitors sought my hand, / That knights upon bended knee / And with vows no maidens heart could withstand, / They pledged their faith to me. / And I dreamt that one of that noble host / Came forth my hand to claim.” In the song’s second verse, the speaker dreams of a marriage proposal. Given the short story’s repeated emphasis on both Maria’s spinsterhood and her discomfort with her unmarried state, it makes sense that Maria skipped the second verse. As a result, “I Dreamt that I Dwelt” symbolizes Maria’s inherent loneliness which is one of the text’s key themes.
