Immigration, Social Status, and Reputation Theme Analysis

Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn is a novel that examines the effects of immigration on a person’s life. A lower-middleclass woman, Eilis uproots her life in Ireland to travel to the United States in the hopes of gaining economic opportunity. In her small hometown of Enniscorthy, she has been trying to work as a bookkeeper for quite some time, but even her sister’s employer won’t hire her. As a result, she takes a job in a grocery store, a position that her mother insists should be temporary. She has this mentality because Eilis’s community is fixated on social status and reputation—if Eilis isn’t going to get married right away, she must find a good and respectable job. Unfortunately for her, working in a grocery store doesn’t qualify as this kind of job, so she goes to the United States. And though she never does more than work on a sales floor in America, she’s pleasantly surprised to find when she returns to Ireland that her reputation has vastly improved. In fact, her life begins to drastically change just because she has lived in the United States. In this way, Tóibín gives readers an interesting perspective on the process of immigration, illustrating not necessarily that Eilis’s life in the United States is better than her life in Ireland, but rather that the mere act of migrating to a nation her community respects has the power to completely transform her social standing at home.

Although her mother and sister have grand plans for her, Eilis has never particularly thought she’ll attain much upward mobility. Instead, she has always assumed she’ll stay in Enniscorthy for her entire life, briefly working a job until quitting to get married and have children. This is why she’s surprised when Rose invites Father Flood over to talk to her about the possibility of migrating to the United States. Suddenly, she feels as if she’s about to begin a life for which she may not be ready. At the same time, though, she’s delighted by the sense that everyone around her seems to know she’s going to the United States. She likes that her fellow townspeople look at her “with light in their eyes,” picking up on just how much her community values her decision to travel to America, even if they didn’t previously give her much thought. With this in mind, Eilis fights back any feelings of hesitancy about her decision to migrate, thereby revealing that she cares more about pleasing others than about doing what she actually wants.

Despite the excitement surrounding her departure, Eilis’s life in Brooklyn is no more glamorous than her life in Enniscorthy. Shortly after she arrives, Father Flood takes her to a department store called Bartocci’s and helps her secure a job as a salesperson. Meanwhile, she lives in a boarding house with five other women, where she’s not even allowed to have male visitors. Accordingly, it’s fair to say that her home life is less comfortable than it was in Ireland, and her professional life is no better than it was when she lived in Enniscorthy. The difference, however, is that she can enjoy the prospect of upward mobility in the United States in a way that she couldn’t in Ireland. To that end, Father Flood enrolls her in night classes at Brooklyn College so that she can become a certified bookkeeper, and the owner of Bartocci’s promises to give her a job in their accounting office once a position opens up. This sense of potential, it seems, is why Eilis’s family members and community think so highly of the United States, a place they respect for the chances it gives a person to advance in life.

When Eilis returns to Ireland for an extended visit, she finds that her life in Enniscorthy has completely changed by mere virtue of the fact that she has lived in the United States. What’s most interesting about this is that she hasn’t yet actually made any tangible improvements to her life since she first arrived in America. Although she has earned her bookkeeping certificate, a job hasn’t opened in Bartocci’s accounting office, and she’s still living in the same humble accommodations as when she first immigrated. All the same, living in the United States for two years has transformed the way people treat Eilis in Enniscorthy. She reflects upon this as she settles into her new, altered existence, thinking about the fact that Jim Farrell is suddenly interested in her even though he was “openly rude to her” before she left for America. Now, though, she thinks that she “carrie[s] something with her, something close to glamour, which ma[kes] all the difference to her […].” It’s worth noting the language Tóibín uses in this moment, since he says that the changes Eilis has undergone now suddenly make a difference to her, not just to her peers—a sign that she has internalized her community members’ belief that living in the United States is something worthy of profound respect. After all, she hasn’t actually attained upward mobility quite yet, but she still relishes her new status in Ireland, and she chooses to celebrate her elevated station instead of being cynical about her community members’ rather superficial change of heart about her. By showcasing the transformative power of Eilis’s immigration, then, Tóibín reveals the shallow thinking that sometimes underlies matters of status and reputation. And yet, at the same time, he also illustrates the understandable fact that people often deeply respect even just the idea of upward mobility, which is why Eilis’s immigration earns her so much positive attention.