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Gretta Conroy is Gabriel’s good-natured wife and the mother of their two children, Tom and Eva. Gretta has two primary narrative functions. Her first important role is to demonstrate Gabriel’s controlling and possessive nature that exists just below the surface of this deceptively mild man. When Gretta is first introduced to the reader, she pokes fun at Gabriel to his aunts and says that he emphatically makes everyone wear galoshes in the poor weather, regulates their son’s exercise, and makes their daughter eat the stirabout, which she does not like. These gentle admonishments are delivered with a laugh but they allude to Gabriel’s domineering ways. These seemingly harmless examples set the stage for Gabriel’s more intense displays of control such as his frustration that Gretta disagrees with him about the Aran Islands, his jealousy that Gretta loved another boy in her youth, and his angry realization that he has no claim on Gretta and will never be “master” of her mind. Gretta is also thematically significant because her memory of Michael Furey triggers a discussion of love and loss, one of the text’s key themes.
