Authority and Corruption Theme Analysis

In “The Sisters,” James Joyce follows the young unnamed narrator and his community as they deal with the death of Father Flynn, a local priest. However, the local people have mixed feelings about the priest’s passing: he was a divisive figure in the community, largely because many characters no longer see value or even integrity in the Catholic Church. While on the one hand the narrator admired Father Flynn, he also felt uncomfortable around him at times, which raises the question of if the priest’s character was immoral. By illustrating Father Flynn’s incompetence as a religious leader, as well as his implied spiritual corruption, Joyce undermines the authority of the Catholic Church more broadly, implying that it is no longer able to provide the support that Irish communities need.

The descriptions Joyce provides of Father Flynn while he was alive lead readers to believe that he was an ineffective religious leader. While alive, Father Flynn constantly used snuff as he gave the narrator his religious lessons. Because the priest is elderly, he isn’t able to use snuff gracefully—the narrator observes, “Even as he raised his large trembling hand to his nose little clouds of smoke dribbled through his fingers over the front of his coat. It may have been these constant showers of snuff which gave his ancient priestly garments their green faded look…” In this moment, the way the priest’s clumsiness is described is vulgar, and causes readers to feel embarrassed for him. The word “dribble” in particular characterizes the priest as particularly helpless and infantile, which, in an old man, is disturbing to observe. The narrator’s conclusion that this is what spoils Father Flynn’s “ancient garments” subtly undermines the priest’s authority. While the garments are meant to be beautiful, inspiring respect and admiration from observers, Father Flynn’s are ugly and covered in snuff. In addition, Father Flynn undermines his religious or spiritual authority through his addiction to something in the material world.

At times, Father Flynn’s crudeness makes the narrator feel uncomfortable. The narrator describes that when the priest would smile, “he used to uncover his big discolored teeth and let his tongue lie upon his lower lip – a habit which had made me feel uncomfortable in the beginning of our acquaintance before I knew him well.” This description of Father Flynn is also grotesque, and his lack of awareness of his own body, and of how to present himself, further undermines his authority. His behavior causes the narrator to feel secondhand embarrassment, rather than admiration.

Joyce doesn’t stop at implying that the priest’s work is ineffective: there are several implications in the story that Father Flynn is a corrupt leader, both in terms of the way he relates to the narrator specifically and in the way he leads his church. When the narrator’s family members tell him that the priest has died, they don’t seem too upset about Father Flynn’s passing. The narrator walks in on a conversation in which Old Cotter, “returning to some former remark of his,” says, “No, I wouldn’t say he was exactly … but there was something queer … there was something uncanny about him […] I think it was one of those … peculiar cases …” Old Cotter’s trailing off and exaggerated beating around the bush in this instance subtly points to the implication that the priest may have been pedophilic. The uses of the word “queer” in particular speaks to this, as at the time it was already used as a pejorative term for homosexual relationships. Old Cotter goes on to suggest that the narrator ought to spend more time with people his own age, which further supports the idea that communities suspect Father Flynn of pedophilia. The fact that the narrator is young shouldn’t necessarily mean that there would be anything wrong with his spending time with a priest—unless, of course, that priest is rumored to violate the young people who he spends time with.

There is also an implication in the story that Father Flynn takes advantage of his parishioners. In a dream that the narrator has after the priest has died, he sees Father Flynn’s smiling face and feels “that [he] too was smiling feebly as if to absolve the simoniac of his sin.” Simony refers to the illicit practice of buying entrance to heaven. The implication that Father Flynn may have been engaged in this practice, which is explicit in its corruption, serves to further criticize his character and moral authority. This, in turn, undermines the authority of the Catholic Church.

Through his use of grotesque language to describe the priest and through subtly describing the other characters’ aversion to him, Joyce effectively casts Father Flynn as a suspicious, potentially corrupt character, and in doing so undermines the authority of the Catholic Church in the story’s community. However, his criticism of Catholicism doesn’t stop just at the local level; Father Flynn lives on Great Britain Street, which adds a layer of political corruption to the spiritual and moral corruption that is already present in the story. Great Britain only granted Ireland their independence in the early 1900s, around the time the story was written. Father Flynn is then linked, symbolically, to a force that oppresses and abuses the Irish people. This expands upon the implication that he takes advantage of, and maybe even abuses, the people in his local community and parish.