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Dublinersby James Joyce |
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A Painful CaseAn Outline CommentaryBob Williams - © 1999Joyce regarded this as one of the two weak stories in Dubliners and gave it as well as the other one, After the Race, special attention during his unpleasant and otherwise unprofitable stay in Rome. In his discussion of the character of Duffy, Tindall mentions that Joyce composed sentences about himself in the third person just as Duffy did but vexingly he does not say how he knows this. He notes too the discrepancy between Dubliners and Ulysses regarding the date of Mrs SinicoÕs death.There are in Dubliners three characters that have the name of James: Father James Flynn ('The Sisters') James Duffy and James Lennon, the engineer of the train that struck down Mrs Sinico. There must be significance in this use of Joyce's given name. In the choice of a common name for the remote and the immediate agents of Mrs Sinico's death there may be a partial explanation and the character of Duffy has some traits of Joyce himself but the link between these characters and Father Flynn is unclear nor can I accept the necessity that Duffy must bear his creator's first name for such a paltry reason. Stanislaus Joyce takes credit for being partially the inspiration for Mr Duffy. He had moreover a commonplace book that Joyce derisively called Bile Beans, a name that Stanislaus found to his liking. Some of the sayings advanced by Joyce as illustrative of Duffy's character came without change from the book that Stanislaus kept. The house in which Duffy has his apartment is interesting. Formerly occupied by some Murrays, it was more importantly the house in the title of Lefanu's House by the Churchyard. The nearby distillery, scene of one of John Joyce's many unspectacular enterprises, was closed during the time of the story although it was reopened to be closed finally in 1923. Joyce used his own experiences among Irish socialists to describe Duffy's futile relationship although Joyce did not make them as funny as they were in reality. The members decided to finance themselves with a bar Ð a very unsocialistic idea Ð and it failed. For a bar to fail in Dublin Ð even in the suburbs Ð seems preposterous. There were another concrete contributions from the world of fact: a newspaper item regarding the death of Mrs Sarah Bishop at the Sydney Parade Station. Joyce borrowed the name Sinico from some Treistine acquaintances. Duffy and his room are alike, both dry and precise. He decorated the room himself. His books are unfeelingly arranged by size. On his desk are a translation of a German play and his book of thoughts Ð "Bile Beans." Inside the desk are the expected items and Ð unexpected but significant Ð the smell of a rotten apple. The unamiable Duffy works in a bank, has routine activities, roams the outskirts of Dublin and likes Mozart. He has no friends and no feeling for his relatives. He attends occasional concerts and at one of these he meets Mrs Em ily Sinico and her daughter Mary. They exchange pleasantries. They meet again by accident at a concert and, while Mary's attention is diverted, Duffy and Mrs Sinico become intimate. This leap to intimacy seems very startling when closely examined. One must wonder at the nature of the distraction that left Mary so diverted as to leave the two so effectively alone. They begin to meet but Duffy, stuffy about proprieties, insists on being introduced into the Sinico home so that there will be nothing underhanded in their relationship. Captain Sinico, not interested in his wife, assumes that no one else is either and imagines that Duffy is courting his daughter. The friends find themselves able to spend much time alone together especially since Mrs Sinico has a cottage outside Dublin. He lends her books and shapes her mind with his ideas. At the cottage she is moved by his eloquence on the soul's incurable loneliness. She catches his hand and presses it to her cheek. Duffy is shocked at this wantonness and does not visit her for a week. He then arranges a meeting and they walk together for hours as he explains that they cannot meet any more. She begins to tremble violently and he leaves her abruptly. She later sends him a parcel of the books and music that he had loaned her. After four years Duffy is living as he lived before he met Mrs Sinico except that he writes less in his book of thoughts. At dinner, one night, he reads of her death. The paper is more anxious to exonerate the rail company than to preserve discretion and makes it clear that the deceased was drunk when she stepped into the path of the train and later died of head injuries. It is, as the paper subhead declares, 'A Painful Case.' His first feeling is one of vindication since her sordid death is revolting. He deplores how he had confided in her his thoughts and aspirations. Alone in his room, however, his imagination overcomes his self-righteousness and he feels once more her hand touch his. Upset, he leaves his room and goes to a pub where he sits brooding over his drinks until it is nine o'clock. He leaves and enters the park. His feelings are now remorseful and guilty. He sees lovers in the shadow of the park wall and knows that they wish him gone. His memory seems to fade as he listens to the sound of the train. He no longer feels Emily's touch or hears her voice. He is alone. Several Dubliners stories concern the relation of the living and the dead. The relationship of Duffy to the dead Emily is more theatrical than significant when compared to 'The Dead' or 'Ivy Day in the Committee Room.' Even the other stories that fall into this group Ð 'The Sisters,' 'Eveline' and 'Clay' Ð show more feeling and expressiveness. One must feel that, impelled by the almost ghostlike occurrence that ruptures his self-complacency, Duffy has no satisfactory choice before him. Apparently his creator did not have one either. Let us ask what could have happened after the story ends. Does Duffy reform? Does he take to drink? Does he revert to his naturally cold-blooded self? It would not be necessary for us to know and we would not ask these questions if Joyce had closed the story satisfactorily but he did not so much end the story as just stop. He faced a brick wall and left us to do the same. A Painful Case: Characters (*mentioned)
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