Maria in James Joyces Clay
... And as the ideologies of a society are mirrored into its literature, one can say that it is this love affair with the romantic notion of a “hero” that makes James Joyce’s Maria in his short story “Clay” the unlikely heroine. ... Joyce’s Maria is homely rather than beautiful. ... She is plainly and simply “Maria,” and accordingly James Joyce has not given her a last name. ... Joyce illustrates this when he writes, “Maria had to laugh and say she didn’t want any ring or man either; and when she laughed her grey-green eyes sparkled with disappointed shyness and the tip of her nose nearly met the tip of her chin. ... Though not the wife she once wanted to be, Maria is still a mother, a mother to her younger brother Joe and his children.