James Joyce (1882-1941)
RELATED QUESTIONS:
- How do you
think Mrs. Mooney settled with Mr. Doran about Polly? Did Mr. Moran marry
Polly or pay out compensation?
- Sketch the
character of Mrs. Mooney.
- Write an
interpretation of 'The Boarding House'.
- Briefly
narrate the story of "The Boarding House".
Characters:
- Mrs. Mooney
(butcher's daughter)
- Miss Polly
Mooney (daughter)
- Jack (son)
- Doran
(lover of miss Polly)
- Leonard
(boss of Doran)
Summary of the Text:
James
Joyce’s “The Boarding House” is the suspense story which ends with the
strategic techniques of Mrs. Mooney, central character in the story. She
plays the significant role to settle the love affair of her young daughter and Mr.
Doren with whom she had an affair and special relationship. The story is
all about the character sketch of a strong determined woman named Mrs. Mooney
and her persuasive strategies to settle her daughter’s affair with Mr. Doran.
Mrs.
Mooney is the daughter of a butcher. She marries a man who works for her
father. After the death of her father, her husband starts drinking and taking
money from the shop. He fights with her in front of the customers. After a
short time, he finishes almost all the property and falls into heavy debt. One
night, he runs after her with a knife to kill her. She escapes and saves her
life spending the night in the neighboring house. Then, they can’t live
together any more. Mrs. Mooney sold the meat shop, takes her children and the
remaining money of the shop and starts a Boarding House in Hardwick
Street.
Many
tourists, musicians and the visitors from the city come to stay in the boarding
house. Many young men live and eat in the house. They talk about horses and
sing songs on Sunday nights. Polly Mooney, the daughter of Mrs. Mooney
also sings with them. Polly is a beautiful girl of nineteen with light soft
hair and grey eyes. Her mother gives her housework to do so that she comes in
contact with the young men. The intention of Mrs. Money is to trap a young man
for her daughter. She watches her daughter and the young men carefully but none
of them look serious in the beginning. When Mrs. Mooney notices something
between Polly and one young man named Mr. Doran, she watches them carefully.
Though people begin to talk about them, Mrs. Mooney keeps silent as she is waiting
for the right time to talk about the affair openly. Finally, Mrs. Mooney makes
a decision. She thinks that Mr. Doran must pay for his enjoyment. The money is
not enough, he must marry her daughter.
One
evening, she calls her daughter about the affair. Though Polly seems
uncomfortable, she tells every detail of their relationship. The mother calls
Mr. Doran in her drawing room to talk about the affair. Mr. Doran is helpless
and confused. Though he accepts his relationship with Polly, he does not want
to marry her. He knows that Polly is not educated and her family background is
not good. People talk badly about her drunkard father and the bad reputation of
the boarding house. His family will not accept her and his friends will laugh
at him. He also knows that if he refuses to marry, he will lose his job. He
remembers the hard face of his boss. Though he tries to be free by paying a lot
of money as compensation, Mrs. Mooney makes him in a trap by saying that she
doesn't want to sell her daughter’s virtues. She uses strong reasons and
persuasive strategies and reminds Mr. Doran of his happy moment with Polly. In
this way, Mrs. Mooney very cleverly compels Mr. Doran to marry her daughter.
Character Sketch of Mrs. Mooney:
Mrs. Mooney, the main character in the James Joyce story
“The Boarding House” is described as "a woman who deals with moral
problems as a cleaver deals with meat". She was a butcher’s daughter
who married her father’s foreman. Later she divorced him because she could not
withstand his drinking and bullying nature. Taking charge of her daughter Polly
and son Jack, she opened a boarding house in Hardwicke Street. She was strong,
strict, determined and practical. She knew how to handle matters- when to act and
when to remain silent.
When reading further in the story, we find that the
boarding house is a trap, where Mrs. Mooney is a hunter who's looking for a
decent husband for her daughter Polly within her guests. She is using Polly as
bait to catch Mr. Doran, the victim in the story. Mrs. Mooney manipulates Mr.
Doran into her trap by using her daughter's innocence as the bait and Mr.
Doran's innocence as a victim. Mrs. Mooney is a woman of business and Mr. Doran
is the perfect victim for her and for Polly. Mr. Doran has also a decent job
and he fits perfectly to the economic needs of Mrs. Mooney. Mrs. Mooney also
uses their society and religion as a tool to cause Mr. Doran marrying her
daughter. She knows that her victim is a religious man, who lives in the
religious culture of Dublin that obeys to the rules of the church. He is afraid
of the church and he is afraid to lose his job in the Catholic wine merchant
office. Thus Mr. Doran had no other option than marrying Polly. Mrs. Mooney is
like a watchdog that watches that the prey will not run out of the trap, but
will run into it.
What is Story All About?
Mrs. Mooney, a butcher's daughter, married one of her
father's foreman. Her husband descended into alcoholism, ruining the family
business and becoming increasingly violent until Mrs. Mooney procured a
separation.
She took the last of their money and set herself up in a
boarding house. Her tenants there consist mainly of tourists and artistes from
the music halls. She supervises things firmly and with great competence. Sunday
nights, there is a little reunion with music and gaiety.
Her daughter Polly is nineteen and lively. She works in
the boarding house, because Mrs. Mooney wants to give her a run of the young
men. She flirts with them, but none of the men are serious about her.
Eventually, she begins an affair with a man named Mr. Doran. Everyone seems to
know about it, including Mrs. Mooney, who bides her time.
Finally, Mrs. Mooney intervenes. She first confronts
Polly, who confesses all. And then she tells Polly what she intends to do: she
will confront Mr. Doran and tell him that he must marry Polly.
Mr. Doran is a man of thirty-four or thirty-five. He has
a respectable job in a great Catholic wine-merchant's business. In his youth,
he was a womanizer who proudly announced his atheism. But he'd become a
church-going man with a good job, and he could not risk it. We first see him
shaving, and he is having great difficulty: last night when he went to
confession, the priest dragged out the details of the affair in embarrassing
detail. Doran knows now that he has no choice but to marry the girl or run
away. He thinks about his job. But his family will not approve: her father was
a scoundrel, and her mother's boarding house is getting a bad reputation. Her
grammar is bad.
Polly comes in and tells him that her mother knows
everything now. He comforts her as she cries. He remembers how their affair
began, and how thoughtful she has been. Perhaps they can be happy. A servant
named Mary enters and announces that Mrs. Mooney would like to see him.
Mr. Doran goes downstairs and passes Jack Mooney, Polly's
brother. Jack is strong and belligerent, a drinker who likes getting into
fights. He is very touchy on the subject of his sister's honor. Jack gives Mr.
Doran a dirty look as Mr. Doran passes.
Back in the room, Polly cries and then rests and then
refreshes her eyes with water. Resting on the bed, she looks at the pillows and
dreams of happiness. At last, she hears her mother's voice calling her: Mr.
Doran has something important to say to her.
Analysis:
By this point, observant readers might notice a trend in
the previous three stories. "Araby," detailing a boy's first crush,
closes off the first set of stories about youth and childhood.
"Eveline" inaugurates a series of stories dealing with various kinds
of marriage and courtship. In "Eveline," marriage presents the
possibility of escape. "Two Gallants" reduces marriage and courtship
to its animal level, and makes even that secondary to the pursuit of money.
"The Boarding House" gives us marriage as a social convention and a
trap. We are light years from the boyish enthusiasm of "Araby." Here,
we have the ugly maneuverings of a woman trying to rope down a respectable
match for her daughter. "Two Gallants" gave us seedy men taking
advantage of a young woman. "The Boarding House" gives us a more
respectable social setting, but the basic cynicism about love and relationships
between the genders remains.
One of the striking elements of the story is Mrs.
Mooney's silence. Her daughter's honor is not really a concern, because she
knows about the affair from the start. What matters to her is trading on her
feigned outrage to get a social arrangement that will benefit her daughter.
The theme of powerlessness is conveyed in Mr. Doran's
situation. As with many other characters in Dubliners, various social pressures
(his job, his reputation, Catholic guilt over the affair) combine to rob him of
choice. The final climactic choice is not really a choice at all; Joyce omits
the confrontation between Mr. Doran and Mrs. Mooney, because the pressures on
Mr. Doran are so strong that the reader knows what Mr. Doran will have to do.
Love is not even a consideration, and the Mooneys seem
unbothered that the marriage is based on trickery. Mrs. Mooney manipulates the
weaker Mr. Doran, using his concern for his job and his fear of scandal. We can
infer that Jack Mooney, Polly's brother, also has some idea what is going on.
Fear of Jack also plays a tiny part in Mr. Doran's final decision. The end
result is a marriage based on bullying and manipulation. But somehow, it
doesn't seem to matter to Polly. She contents herself with pleasant dreams of
the future; as far as she is concerned, security is the key issue. A trapped
husband is a faithful husband. Nor, for all her feigned innocence, does she
really not know what to do. The last glimpse of Polly reveals a woman every bit
as sneaky as her mother. She knows well that her mother will take care of things
for her. When she is called downstairs to see Mr. Doran, presumably to hear his
marriage proposal, she is not in the least bit surprised.
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