What clay symbolise in james joyce's clay?

Answer 1

uh...death. It can also be interpeted to characterise Maria as being malleable in her attitudes (eg she used to have a bad opinion of protestants, but now she thought they were very nice people), and the colour brown is frequently used across the entire collection of short stories that make up Dubliners, to represent death. Read the dead, and see if you can get an appreciation for the motif with Mr Browne etc.