Social Manipulation vs. Social Paralysis Theme Analysis

“The Boarding House” depicts the consequences of an affair between a man and a young woman in early 20th-century Dublin. The flirtation between Mr. Doran and young Polly Mooney takes place in the house he boards in, run by Polly’s mother, the formidable Mrs. Mooney. It’s a suffocating environment that serves as a microcosm of Dublin, a city in which “everyone knows everyone else’s business”—and judges that business according to strict social mores and religious morality. Like so many other characters in Dubliners, Mr. Doran is paralyzed by this scrutiny. Facing the judgment of his employer, the priest, his family, and others, he feels he has only two options: to marry Polly or to run away. Mrs. Mooney, meanwhile, takes advantage of this socially induced “paralysis” (to use Joyce’s word from the first paragraph of Dubliners), by turning a blind eye on the flirtation until she’s satisfied that it’s gone too far for Mr. Doran to respectably back out. In this way, she uses rigid social rules to entrap Mr. Doran and marry off her daughter, who turns out to be a willing participant in the ruse. The strictures of Dublin society, then, create both paralysis and opportunities for manipulation. But though it seems Mrs. Mooney will get what she wants, and Polly is pleased with her mother’s intervention, the story’s biting tone clearly indicates that in Joyce’s view, there is no real winner when people are ruled by the rigid, arbitrary forces of social and religious morality.

Though Mrs. Mooney is in some ways the story’s victor, her victory is hollow. She is a great social manipulator (necessarily, after escaping her alcoholic husband who once tried to attack her with a cleaver), but the manipulation impoverishes her life. In considering her negotiation over Polly’s future, Mrs. Mooney “was sure she would win. To begin with she had all the weight of social opinion on her side: she was an outraged mother.” And yet she’s not truly outraged, but rather scheming, even pleased about the affair. She “wins” only by acting a role, and so even while manipulating “social opinion,” she still has to bend to it. And throughout the story, Mrs. Mooney concerns herself only with material gain. She considers Mr. Doran’s “sit” (or job), his salary, and his savings, but not his character or her daughter’s feelings. She clearly cares for her daughter, but she can express this care only through manipulation and fixation on material gain, thus suggesting that she, too, is trapped in her own way.

For Mr. Doran, the prospect of marriage holds only dread. The social strictures that paralyze Joyce’s Dubliners seem to have claimed his whole life. As he descends the stairs to face Mrs. Mooney and discuss the affair, “the implacable faces of his employer and of the Madam [i.e., Mrs. Mooney] stared upon his discomfiture,” and he passes Polly’s brother, the brutish Jack, with a memory of his violence to someone who disrespected his sister. As such, his impending engagement seems to be sealed by the threats of unemployment, social scandal, and violence. The flirtation and lust between Mr. Doran and Polly Mooney are glossed over in just two paragraphs, while many pages are devoted to the inevitable outcome of this momentary outburst of libido. Thus the story’s structure reflects a world in which libido—or life force more generally—is suffocated by social strictures. Even before he hears that Mrs. Mooney wishes to speak to him of the affair, Mr. Doran vividly hears and sees the ways everyone in his life might react to the information: “He felt his heart leap warmly in his throat as he heard in his excited imagination old Mr. Leonard [his employer] calling out in his rasping voice: Send Mr. Doran here, please.” And “he could imagine his friends talking of the affair and laughing.” Thus even before his fate is sealed—while in a less claustrophobic world he might still be enjoying the “delirium” of the affair—he’s tortured by social scrutiny.

Meanwhile, Polly’s behavior is presented as mercenary, but necessarily so. In Mrs. Mooney’s eagerness to marry Polly off, there’s an implication that in Dublin society, it’s necessary for a young girl like her to be married—seen, for instance, in the hardheaded phrasing “she thought of some mothers she knew who could not get their daughters off their hands.” From here readers can deduce that women were under some pressure to marry, whether they wanted to or not. Polly seems to think little about Mr. Doran’s characters or feelings, instead working in silent complicity with her mother to secure a proposal—but Joyce hints at the likely emptiness of such a match. Polly is cheery while Mr. Doran faces his fate with Mrs. Mooney: “She waited on patiently, almost cheerfully, without alarm, her memories gradually giving place to hopes and visions of the future. Her hopes and visions were so intricate that she no longer saw the white pillows on which her gaze was fixed or remembered that she was waiting for anything.” And yet to readers these hopes remain blank, casting an ominous air over the marriage. Joyce further foreshadows the emotional limits of Polly’s marriage by presenting Mr. Doran’s misgivings about her: “She was a little vulgar; sometimes she said I seen and If I had’ve known. But what would grammar matter if he really loved her?” Joyce clearly positions the match between Polly and Mr. Doran as an ultimately joyless, loveless one based on the “delirium” of early infatuation—“but delirium passes.” As such, Polly will also lose out, no matter how happy she is with the way this story ends. Thus, while all three main characters dance with and around the rules of their society, Joyce demonstrates that each one is, in fact, paralyzed or impoverished by those very rules.