This paper is to study the negative images of mothers in Dubliners. The images of mothers in several episodes of Dubliners are often ambivalent or contradictory in their portraits. The notion of mother as inhibitor, an instigator of paralysis, proves most ambiguous in the episode "A Mother." Mrs Kearney in the episode is determined in the commercial exploitation of her daughter`s singing. Mrs Mooney, who contrives to arrange her daughter`s match in "The Boarding House", appears selfish and pretentious. Maria of "Clay" represents another ineffective and powerless ``mother,`` or surrogate-mother, with ties to a spiritual mother. In "Eveline", where the spiritual mother exercises control over the living, Eveline fulfills her dead mother`s wishes at the detriment of her own desires. The mothers in "Ivy Day in the Committee Room," "Counterparts," and "The Dead" are also all described as negative images. I claim that the negative images of mothers in Dubliners` episodes have much to do with Joyce`s sense of guilty, exacerbated by his contradictory feelings about his mother.