Themes
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.
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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.
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.
Mrs. Mooney’s daring attitude towards social propriety is further emphasized by the musical gatherings she allows in her house, since the touring musicians she lodges would have been on the outskirts of respectable society. And Jack’s behavior implies that she’s not strict about making her children observe the rules of polite Dublin society, either. The implication is that to Mrs. Mooney, the city’s moral rules are worth following only when doing so is beneficial to oneself.
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.
Early 20th-century Dublin could be paralyzing for women: if they weren’t wealthy by birth and they wished to avoid becoming a burden to their families, they could either marry or seek work outside of the house. However, job opportunities for women were few, and in Polly’s case, her father ruins one of the few available options, indicating that men curtailed even the paltry freedoms women did have. When employment doesn’t work out, Mrs. Mooney uses her social cunning to subtly facilitate the only other option for Polly: helping her to marry.
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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.
By silently allowing and even (wordlessly) encouraging Polly to flirt with the boarders, hoping to get something in exchange for her daughter’s affections, Mrs. Mooney seems to live up to her nickname, “The Madam,” referring to the name for a female proprietor of a brothel. And yet she has little choice but to scheme for her daughter’s future: the only other option is outside employment, which has already failed. The scarcity of options for young women is all too clear.
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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.”
Mrs. Mooney uses Dublin’s restrictive rules about social propriety in her own favor, allowing a scandal to grow around Polly and Mr. Doran because it will give her greater bargaining power against him and essentially trap him into marriage with Polly. Mrs. Mooney herself was once trapped in a marriage, her life endangered by a cleaver that seemed symbolic of her social oppression. Now, she’s the one wielding the cleaver and entrapping Mr. Doran.
Themes
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.
“The circus” is an open space where several roads converge, yet the word also recalls traveling circuses, thus diminishing the church’s gravity and suggesting that the city’s strict morality is not rooted in genuine religious conviction but is instead foolish and performative. And in considering her conversation with Polly after making sure the sugar and butter have been locked away, Mrs. Mooney suggests that Polly is merely another commodity she must protect.
Themes
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.
Both religion and marriage are thoroughly debased in Joyce’s Dublin. Marriage is one of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church, but Mrs. Mooney reduces it to a military battleground in which one can “win” or “lose” and “reparations” must be paid. Furthermore, she hopes to squeeze in Mass after entrapping a man in this debased sacrament for economic reasons, thus seemingly cheapening the Mass and, by extension, all of religion.
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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.”
For Mrs. Mooney, the most important considerations in seeking a husband for her daughter are his financial and social stability, as well as how effectively she can manipulate him. Though she is satisfied with herself, and though she has played Dublin’s social rules to her own advantage, she is paralyzed in her own way, her own life diminished by this society’s restrictions, as demonstrated by the loveless language of mothers trying to “get their daughters off their hands.”
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.
Mr. Doran’s angst illustrates the terror of sin that tyrannized so many Dubliners—a terror that runs throughout Dubliners. It’s a terror so acute that, by comparison, the lifelong bond of marriage seems like a fortunate loophole for avoiding sin. And yet Joyce presents the Church—the institution that enforces this terror—as morally questionable. By insisting on hearing the “ridiculous” details of the affair, the priest comes across as more salacious than holy.
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.
Dubliners who transgressed the city’s strict morality didn’t just risk condemnation from the Church—they could fall into poverty after losing their jobs. In Dubliners as a whole, this vice-like social control paralyzes people and strangles the human instincts for freedom (including “free-thinking”) and passion, forcing men and women to lead empty but respectable lives.
Themes
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.
Beyond the threat of poverty and sin, Dubliners were paralyzed by the possibility of social ridicule. Coming from a lower social class, Polly might well inspire this kind of ridicule among Mr. Doran's circles. And yet even as he contemplates all these sources of social paralysis, some instinct in Mr. Doran urges him not to sacrifice his last remaining freedom: his unmarried status.
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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.”
Polly plays the part of a helpless woman—an effective way of manipulating Mr. Doran. Now and during their flirtation and sexual entanglement, Polly led Mr. Doran to believe in her innocence, as symbolized by the purity of her white skin. And yet having witnessed Polly’s calmness while talking to her mother earlier, readers know that Polly is far from naïve.
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.”
As he goes to meet his fate, Mr. Doran is again tortured by his social paralysis and all that might happen to him if the scandal emerges: the loss of his job and even physical violence. Meanwhile, his memory of brutish behavior toward another lodger indicates that, like Mr. Doran, Jack believes Polly to be innocent and in need of protection.
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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.”
Polly has cunningly used the stereotype of the helpless woman to her advantage in manipulating Mr. Doran, and now sits happily awaiting the fruits of her labor: a marriage proposal. And yet even as the victor in this social manipulation, Polly, too, is diminished by the restrictions of Dublin society. Her visions of the future are intricate but remain blank to readers, suggesting that she’s entering a life she’s unprepared for.
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