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Appears in the collection Dubliners
Setting
- Early 20th century Dublin
Point of View
- An omniscient narrator
Characters
Mrs Mooney
·
Has endured a difficult
marriage to a wasteful alcoholic husband
·
A woman with agency:
·
Probably would have arranged
her own marriage to her father’s foreman
·
Gets a separation order and
lives separately from her alcoholic husband
·
Starts a business – is called
“Madam” by her clients
·
Uses her daughter as an
attraction for her clients
·
Stops her husband from
exploiting her daughter: “young men like to feel that there is a young woman
not very far away”
·
Gets Doran to marry her
daughter by acting the part of the “outraged mother, whose hospitality has been
outraged”
·
“She counted all her cards
again before sending Mary to Mr Doran’s room to say that she wished to speak to
him”
Mr Doran
·
“He was a serious young man,
not rakish or loud-voiced like the others”
·
Of a slightly higher social
status than the Mooneys
·
He senses control his reason;
so, Polly is able to seduce him
·
Doran represents the moral
paralysis of Dublin
·
His actions are governed by the
opinions of others
·
When he had visited the priest
he “had magnified his sins that he was almost thankful at being offered a
loophole of reparation”
·
Doran was afraid that Mr
Leonard “the great Catholic wine merchant” would fire him
·
“He had a notion that was being
had”
·
“He could not make up his mind
whether to like her or despise her for what she had done”
·
But immediately he acknowledges
that he “had done it too”
·
Sex is always referred to as
“it” – never directly stated – Ireland
was a Catholic country
·
His “sense of honour told him
that reparation must be made for such a sin”
·
So, he allows Mrs Mooney to
force her into an unsuitable marriage
Polly Mooney
·
A pretty young girl who is used
by her mother to keep the boarders entertained
·
She likes singing slightly
inappropriate songs: “I’m a … naughty girl/ You needn’t sham/ You know I am”
·
“She was a little vulgar. Sometimes
she said ‘I seen’ and ‘If I had’ve known’”
·
“Her eyes … had a habit of
glancing upwards when she spoke with anyone, which made her look like a little
perverse Madona”
·
She has agency – it is she who
seduces the older Mr Doran
Jack Mooney
·
“He was a clerk to a commission
agent in Fleet Street, had the reputation of being a hard case”
·
Represents the typical Dublin working class man –
a loud-mouthed alcoholic bully
·
It is partly the fear of being
thrashed by Jack that forces Doran to marry Polly
Themes
- Marriage as a social convention and a trap
§ Mrs. Mooney’s marriage to her father’s foreman
§ Mr. Doran’s marriage to Polly
·
Moral paralysis of
Dublin/Ireland
§ Dublin, the
capital of Ireland
is full people who have come looking for jobs
§ They are living in boarding houses
§ Cut off from traditions and basic human relationship, these people
lead unnatural lives
§ Joyce thought Dublin
was morally paralysed as a result of poverty and alcoholism
§ Mr. Doren represents the
moral paralysis of Dublin
§ He is weak-willed and inhabited by other’s opinions about himself
§ He knows that he is being tricked into marrying Nora, but he allows
it to happen without putting up a fight
·
Women
§ Marriage as the only honourable occupation for women
§ Pre-marital sex and pregnancies as social stigma
§ Impact of alcoholism on women
§ Widowhood à
poverty and single parenthood
Techniques
·
Stream of consciousness – reveals the inner
thoughts of the characters
·
Symbols
o Music
– ‘low’ taste in Polly
o Mist
– “His glasses became dimmed with moisture” – Doren does not have a clear
vision
·
Irony – Mrs Mooney, the “outraged mother, whose hospitality has
been outraged”
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