Joyce’s “The Dead” and the Midlife Crisis

The idea of a midlife transition was first developed in detail as a concept of modern psychological practice by Elliot Jacques in his 1965 article ‘‘Death and the Mid-life Crisis.’’1 As is clear from his title, for Jacques the most important cause of the crisis is a person’s realization that, following an upward course of life, the course after middle-age is one downward to death. Persons experiencing a midlife crisis are typically dissatisfied with what they have so far accomplished in life, experience boredom with their current careers and partners, and have a strong desire to make radical changes in these areas. The midlife crisis is a controversial concept in current research: some researchers believe it is mainly due to mental, emotional, and social causes, while others stress the importance of biological, hormonal changes. Still others reject the concept altogether, calling it a ‘‘public myth,’’2 or ‘‘an unreal creature of the imagination.’’3 Notwithstanding this controversy, the phenomenon of midlife crisis has become part of our common wisdom, and it has frequently appeared in Western literature: Dante’s being lost at midlife in a Dark Wood; Don Quixote’s middle-aged dissatisfaction—so great that he changes his identity completely;4 Faust’s discontentment with his former career as scholar and professor;5 Mann’s exhausted Aschenbach; Eliot’s Prufrock, who has ‘‘seen the moment of my greatness flicker.’’6 Writing in 1907, Joyce could not have been aware of the midlife crisis syndrome as detailed in modern psychology. But research has shown that major personality adjustments are common in middle age, and Joyce, as an acute observer of human nature (his own nature included) incorporated in his fiction features of the midlife crisis, or to use a less dramatic phrase preferred by clinicians, the ‘‘mid-life transition’’ (Kruger). We find many of the key characteristics of this experience, as defined by late twentieth century psychology, embodied by Gabriel and Gretta in ‘‘The Dead.’’7