Cleaver Symbol Analysis

In “The Boarding House,” the cleaver—a large knife butchers use to cut bone—symbolizes the forceful and decisive power of social oppression. Mrs. Mooney, a butcher’s daughter who would have grown up around cleavers, left her alcoholic husband after he “went for [her] with the cleaver” one night. Here, the cleaver symbolizes the ways in which Dublin’s patriarchal society oppressed and even terrorized women in early 20th-century Dublin. Later, as a single mother and businesswoman, Mrs. Mooney learns to manipulate society’s oppressive rules for her own gain, and deals with moral problems—like Polly and Mr. Doran’s relationship—“as a cleaver deals with meat.”