In the 13 June 2014 article "James Joyce's 'Dubliners' still worth celebrating 100 years later" in the Milwaukee Journal
Sentinel, the author notes:
Joyce used his collection's 15 stories to piteously examine how life in his native city — provincial, intolerant, hypocritical and awash in drink — had deformed its politically frustrated, economically backward and spiritually bankrupt residents.
This captures well the sense I got from re-reading the full
collection of Joyce's short stories.
