This was normal for women of the time, especially Irish women (Badcock, 38). Throughout the story, Joyce gives Aunt Julia and Aunt Kate a say in the cultural struggle they are going through. Especially Aunt Kate with her struggle to be replaced by a male in the choir. Aunt Kate explains how the Pope revolutionized the choir and women were no longer allowed to be a part of it: “The women work as hard, if not harder than the men, and they get rid of them that way” (Joyce, 36). As a reader, you can tell that Joyce is showing some compassion by showing her voice, she is not quite silenced as she should have been at the time. This brings us to the point of the sudden silence you see in the following pages with dialogue. He mentions the problem, but never develops it. Joyce never delves into the matter more than in a few sentences, which leads back to the silenced characters. What Joyce does is start to allow them to have struggles and problems, then take it back and silence them again. When Norris stated how female characters cannot silence themselves and this is a good example of that