SOURCE: McFate, Patricia. The Writings of James Stephens: Variations on a Theme of Love. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1979, 183 p.

In the following excerpt, McFate analyzes Stephens's oeuvre.

The Charwoman's Daughter is a remarkably harmonious blend of disparate styles and genres. It ranges in tone from whimsy to objectivity, from sentimentality to “philosophizing,” and in approach from passages reminiscent of the nineteenth-century novelist to those peculiar to Stephens alone. At various times and in varying degrees it is a fairy tale about two characters called the Makebelieves, a realistic look at life in the Dublin slums, and a psychological analysis of the relationship between a widowed mother and her daughter.

The Charwoman's Daughter begins in the style of the Märchen, then becomes realistic and later aphoristic. In The Crock of Gold Stephens works these styles more closely together so that the account of Caitilin Ni Murrachu's union...