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"Clay" is a short story by James Joyce published in his 1914 collection Dubliners.

The story
Maria, an elderly woman with a job in a rescue mission for wayward women, is looking forward to a holiday evening at the house of Joe, whom she nursed when he was a boy and of whom she is still very fond. She departs for Joe's after attending a tea service with her fellow laundresses, stopping to buy cakes for the Halloween party on the way. At the bakery, Maria is somewhat teased by the clerk, who asks whether she wishes to buy a wedding cake, mirroring a similar comment that was made at the earlier tea. On a tram, Maria has a bashful encounter with an elderly and drunken man who chats with her. She is welcomed warmly at the house by Joe’s family, but she is saddened and ashamed to realize that she has left the plumcake she bought for Joe and his wife on the tram, probably due to "flirting" with the man. Maria is soon enticed into playing a traditional Hallow Eve game with the children in which objects are placed in saucers and a blindfolded player has to pick among them. Each object is supposed to have a prophetic significance. One of the objects in the game is a ring, standing for marriage, which Maria failed to get during a similar game (in which objects were baked into pieces of barmbrack) back at the laundry. At Joe's, Maria once again misses the ring and instead chooses a lump of clay. Everyone goes quiet, Maria is allowed to choose again, however, and this time fetches the prayer-book, indicating a life of spiritual vocation (service at a convent, suggests Joe's wife). After drinking some wine, Maria sings the aria "I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls" from the opera The Bohemian Girl by Michael Balfe. She makes what the text refers to as "a mistake" by singing the first verse twice, but nobody corrects her. She omits the second verse of the song, this omission is significant as the missing verse imagines suitors such as the ones that Maria has not had in her life:

"I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls

⁠With vassals and serfs at my side

And of all who assembled within those walls

⁠That I was the hope and the pride.

"I had riches too great to count, could boast

⁠Of a high ancestral name,

But I also dreamt, which pleased me most,

⁠That you loved me still the same."

The story ends with a description of how Joe has been "very much moved" by her song, so moved that he needs to ask his wife the location of the corkscrew.

Context
While "Clay" is the tenth story in Dubliners, it was the fourth work to be written for it. Positioning the story there, Joyce intended this area of Dubliners to be concerned with the middle and later parts of life. Joyce wrote "Clay" with his own relatives in mind; Joe and Alphy were Joyce's estranged uncles William and John Murray, and Maria was their diplomatic relative. The story was originally written to be published independently, but was later included in Dubliners after several attempts.

Themes
"Clay" touches on a number of themes:


 * Feminism.
 * The incongruity of an old unmarried woman, taken as either the Old Maid, Hag, or Blessed Mary.
 * The utility of divination.
 * The role of what's "missing" in life.

Mary Magdalene
The figure of Maria as Mary Magdalene is a major theme in the work. Historically, the figure of the Magdalene in Irish Catholic culture painted her as the prostitute figure rather than the independent woman.