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Summary
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Boarding House, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Social Manipulation vs. Social Paralysis
Female Innocence vs. Female Cunning
Religion, Guilt, and Sin
Summary
Analysis
The daughter of a butcher, Mrs. Mooney is a “determined woman” who opens a butcher shop with her husband. But soon, Mr. Mooney begins to lose control over his life, overindulging in alcohol, making poor business decisions, and racking up debt. On one particular night, Mrs. Mooney’s husband tries to attack her with a cleaver, and from then on they live apart from one another.
Dublin in the early 20th century is presented as a traditional city in which children follow in their parents’ footsteps and men hold the social and economic power. These social mores make the city a paralyzing and even dangerous space for women, in which men (including alcoholic, irresponsible men) can wield power and even weapons against them. Making one’s own way as a woman in this city requires great determination, even cunning.
Active
Themes
Literary Devices
After Mrs. Mooney visits a local priest and secures a separation from her husband, Mr. Mooney is forced to take a lowly job in a debt-collection office. Mrs. Mooney uses her own money from the butcher business and establishes a boarding house. Her residents are mostly clerks, plus some touring performers in musical shows, all of whom call her “The Madam.”
Mrs. Mooney recognizes Dublin’s strict social rules but is prepared to live at their outer edges: divorce was still illegal in Dublin in the early 20th century, so she seeks a separation instead. And her boarding house has a dubious reputation: “The Madam” is also the name for a female proprietor of a brothel. Mrs. Mooney’s willingness to push the limits of respectability seems to come from her determination to survive as a single woman and mother.
Active
Themes
The boarding house is a lively place where the residents get along well and often socialize and hold musical gatherings in the common areas. It’s also home to Mrs. Mooney’s two adult children. Her son, Jack, likes to swear, fight, bet, and come home late at night.
Active
Themes
Mrs. Mooney’s daughter, 19-year-old Polly, previously worked as a typist for a local corn trader, but her mother ended the employment when Mr. Mooney kept dropping in to see her. Instead, Mrs. Mooney has put her to work doing housework at the boarding house, intending to allow her as much contact as she wants with the resident young men.
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Literary Devices
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Under Mrs. Mooney’s watchful eye, Polly flirts with the boarding house’s residents. When none of the flirtation progresses into anything more, Mrs. Mooney considers sending Polly back to work as a typist—until she notices a closeness developing between Polly and a lodger named Mr. Doran.
Active
Themes
Literary Devices
Mrs. Mooney silently watches the relationship develop. Polly knows her mother is observing her, but the two never discuss the affair. Though the other lodgers begin to gossip about Polly and Mr. Doran, Mrs. Mooney keeps quiet until she deems it the right time to deal with the situation, which she plans to do “as a cleaver deals with meat.”
One bright Sunday morning, Mrs. Mooney sits alone in the boarding house’s breakfast room, watching churchgoers “traverse the little circus before the church” across the street. She watches the servant clear the leftover breakfast food from the table and lock up the sugar and butter, then recalls the conversation she had with Polly the night before, in which she confirmed that her relationship with Mr. Doran had gone beyond flirtation.
Now, Mrs. Mooney is planning to speak to Mr. Doran, before going to “catch short twelve,” or attend a very short Mass, nearby. She reminds herself of the reasons society would condemn his behavior and “felt sure she would win.” On winning, she plans to exact a “reparation” from Mr. Doran: marriage. She’s determined to get a reparation because society scorns young women more than men after affairs.
Mrs. Mooney counts her playing cards and sends the servant to fetch Mr. Doran. While she waits, she considers his good job and serious character, and the gossip about the affair in the boarding house, and reassures herself that “she would win” because he will want to avoid a scandal. Finally, she stands up and takes a satisfied look at herself in the mirror, thinking of other mothers who “could not get their daughters off their hands.”
Active
Themes
Meanwhile, Mr. Doran is in his bedroom, so anxious that his hand is shaking too much to shave. He suffers acute pain every time he remembers confessing his affair with Polly to the priest the previous night, and the way the priest “had drawn out every ridiculous detail of the affair.” The confession was so agonizing that he was relieved to be offered “a loophole of reparation” in the form of marriage.
Active
Themes
Mr. Doran goes on to imagine his employer finding out about his affair with Polly, which could result in him losing his job. He feels that after growing out of some “free-thinking” in his youth, he has worked hard at living a respectable life—but now he’s thrown those efforts away, leaving himself no choice but to marry Polly.
Mr. Doran is ashamed of his own indiscretion and also a little of Polly herself. He anticipates his family looking down on her because of her disreputable parents, and his friends laughing about the affair. He’s ashamed of Polly’s poor grammar and what he sees as her mild vulgarity. He can’t decide whether she’s to blame for trapping him, but he does know that his instinct is urging him not to marry.
Polly comes to Mr. Doran’s bedroom, crying, and explains that she’s told her mother everything. She’s distraught and even threatens to kill herself. Mr. Doran tries to comfort her, and he remembers some of the temptations that drew him to her, such as the pure white skin of her foot’s instep. He recalls all the delirium of their early flirtation, then remembers that “delirium passes.”
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Themes
The servant knocks on the door to tell Mr. Doran that Mrs. Mooney would like to speak to him downstairs. Mr. Doran comforts Polly one last time and then goes downstairs, terrified. As he descends, he pictures his employer’s face, and Mrs. Mooney’s, then passes the brutish Jack and remembers how enraged he was one night, when he thought a lodger at the boarding house “had made a rather free allusion to Polly.”
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In the bedroom, Polly’s tears dry very quickly, and she soon seems quite calm. She waits “patiently, almost cheerfully,” disappearing into intricate (though unspecified) hopes and visions of the future until her mother calls her downstairs, saying, “Mr. Doran wants to speak to you.”
