THE BOARDING HOUSE

James Joyce (1882-1941)

RELATED QUESTIONS:

1. How do you think Mrs. Mooney settled with Mr. Doran about Polly? Did Mr. Moran marry Polly or pay out compensation? 
2. Sketch the character of Mrs. Mooney.
3. Write an interpretation of 'The Boarding House'.
4. 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.