Eveline, Elsie, and the politics of paralysis: Echoes of Dubliners in Zoë Wicomb’s “Nothing Like the Wind”

This article discusses the presence of a covert but substantial Joycean intertext in Zoë Wicomb’s short story “Nothing Like the Wind”, namely “Eveline” in Dubliners. The two texts tackle similarly the felt experience of their female protagonists, Elsie and Eveline, two colonial or colonized subjects suffering equally because of their physical location, gender, and social class. Apart from the parallels at the level of both content and form, the short stories perform a dialogue centred around the staple thematic concerns of patriarchal family, home, and emigration — over which the paralytic legacy of colonialism hovers. Wicomb’s engagement with these issues finds a ready counterpart in Joyce’s own treatment of British policies in Ireland. This intertextual connection sheds new light on the possibilities of interpretation, both of “Nothing Like the Wind” and of “Eveline”.