Throughout “Ivy Day in the Committee Room,” Joyce alludes to the Catholic Church in Ireland, highlighting how the Church is both morally and politically corrupt. The Church comes up for the first time when Old Jack complains about how the Catholic school he sent his son to didn’t help him to become a “decent” man:
– Ah, yes, he said, continuing, it’s hard to know what way to bring up children. Now who’d think he’d turn out like that! I sent him to the Christian Brothers and I done what I could for him, and there he goes boosing about. I tried to make him someway decent.
Here, Old Jack explains to O’Connor how he sent his son to “the Christian Brothers” (the name of the school, likely run by a Catholic religious community of the same name that began in Ireland), only to find his son “boosing about,” or getting drunk all the time. That Old Jack’s son is only 19 years old and struggling with alcohol dependency highlights how the Church wasn’t able to set him on a morally upright path.
Father Keon’s presence in the story is also a subtle allusion to the moral bankruptcy of the Catholic Church. Father Keon is only present in the story briefly—about midway through the story, he enters the Committee Room, asks where Fanning (the sub-sheriff of Dublin) is, and then heads out. Like the other characters, Father Keon and Fanning represent certain patterns in Irish politics—the fact that Father Keon (representing the Church) and Fanning (representing city government) have a close relationship implies that there is something suspicious going on between the church and the state. This is Joyce’s way of encouraging his readers to consider the Church’s inappropriate hidden role in politics.
As the canvassers are gossiping in the Committee Room early in the story, Hynes mentions “Edward Rex,” an allusion to King Edward VII:
– Don’t you know they want to present an address of welcome to Edward Rex if he comes here next year? What do we want kowtowing to a foreign king?
– Our man won’t vote for the address, said Mr O’Connor. He goes in on the Nationalist ticket.
– Won’t he? said Mr Hynes. Wait till you see whether he will or not. I know him. Is it Tricky Dicky Tierney?
King Edward VII was the King of England from 1901-1910, the period in which this story takes place. The reason that the men are against King Edward VII receiving “an address of welcome” when visiting Ireland is because, as members of the Nationalist Party, they believe that Ireland should be free from England’s colonial rule. As Hynes puts it, they don’t want to “kowtow to a foreign king.”
That Hynes isn’t sure if “Tricky Dicky Tierney” will vote for or against King Edward VII’s welcome address is significant. It signals that, even though he is canvassing for votes for Tierney, he doesn’t trust his own candidate to embody the values of the Nationalist Party. This highlights the moral decline of the Party in the wake of Charles Stewart Parnell’s death.
Though this short story is a work of fiction, Ivy Day was an actual yearly event celebrated in Ireland in the 20th century to honor the death of the famous Nationality Party Leader Charles Stewart Parnell. The first allusion to Ivy Day occurs near the beginning of the story when Nationalist Party canvasser Mat O’Connor lights a cigarette:
Mr O’Connor tore a strip off the card and, lighting it, lit his cigarette. As he did so the flame lit up a leaf of dark glossy ivy in the lapel of his coat.
As Joyce assumed his 20th century Irish readers would know, the “dark glossy ivy in the lapel of his coat” is an allusion to the ivy leaf pins that Nationalist Party members would wear every year on October 6th (the date of Parnell’s death).
It is notable that, while wearing this pin, O’Connor is simultaneously tearing and burning a campaign flyer for the Nationalist Party candidate (Tierney) for whom he is canvassing. This is Joyce’s way of signaling that the Party has lost its political power and moral fortitude in the wake of Parnell’s scandalous extramarital affair, exodus from politics, and death. O’Connor shows his lack of belief in Tierney—and the Party generally—by treating Party literature as disposable.
