Throughout
Dubliners, most of the instances of
paralysis have prevented people from moving or taking action. But in “The Boarding House,” Mr. Doran is
paralyzed not by an inability to act, but by a feeling of obligation to take an
action.
Doran,
caught in an affair with Mrs. Mooney’s daughter, Polly, initially considers his
options. Essentially it comes down to
running away or staying and marrying her.
He cannot try to avoid the problem hoping nobody will find out because, “everyone
knows everyone else’s business” in Dublin (51).
Inevitably his boss would find out and his job would be at risk. He has resigned himself to marriage, seeing
it as the only realistic option.
On his
way down the stairs to meet with Mrs. Mooney, he pauses to clean his
glasses. This small action has symbolic importance. Doran is not seeing clearly, and, considering
that he apparently does this often, may not have been seeing clearly when he
took up with Polly. At one point on the
steps he, “longed to ascend through the roof and fly away to another country”
(53). Doran wants to escape, just as the
boy in “An Encounter” wanted to get away from the creepy man, but in this case
there is no means of escape.
Furthermore, he passes by Polly’s violent brother, Jack, whose aggressive
tendencies strike fear in Doran, further entrenching Doran’s view that he must
agree to marry Polly.
Even
more than being paralyzed because of the necessity of taking a certain action,
Dolan sees marriage itself as a restricting, paralytic force. When pondering whether or not he truly likes
her, his instinct is to, “remain free, not to marry” (51). It also tells him that, “once you are married
you are done for” (51). While it is true
that marriage is a restricting force, it is ideally one taken voluntarily. Is Dolan’s view of marriage skewed? Does this view only apply to his
circumstance? Or is Joyce making a more
modern argument that marriage is an unnecessary, restrictive institution?
In response to your last question I do not think we can suggest that Joyce sees marriage as superfluous. While it does seem in this case that he is criticizing the future union of these two characters, I think that is more situational. It seems as though marriage is the primary way for woman to gain status or social mobility in the misogynistic society that Joyce despises, and therefore I don't think he would be against the institution. I would, however, suggest that his issue is exactly the issue you've pointed out. That the type of marriage these two are engaged in is merely a furthering of the paralysis which pervades his other stories. Because it is not by choice but rather by force with the goal of financial gain, this wedding is somehow corrupted. Although I have no factual evidence of this, I assumed that this type of forced marriage was common at the time and would have made the story more poignant to Joyce's contemporaries.
ReplyDeleteConsidering situational v. general criticism:
ReplyDeleteI think we can take the fact that we have yet to see a "happy" marriage as evidence that Joyce is arguing against marriage as a whole, and as Barrett pointed out, a paralytic force. We can probably say that the institution of marriage as practiced in Ireland is being criticized, because it is inextricably economic in purpose. However, looking at Joyce's life, from what we know, he remained committed to his partner Nora and only married her for legal protections. So I don't think that we can say he is against monogamy in favor of sexual license, but that what he sees as the legally, economically, and socially binding institution of marriage is harmful, and again, paralytic.