Lenehan and the Pursuit of Happiness

                                            

                Previous posters have established that the title of the story is ironic and that Lenehan’s character is without merit.  I think that Justin is on the right track with his ideas about Lenehan’s “epiphany” and how it literally seems to effect no change in him whatsoever.  Nonetheless, it is worth looking more closely at this passage. 

                Joyce writes that Lenehan’s vision of Corley and the slavey walking together along some dark road “made him feel keenly his own poverty of purse and spirit.” At this point, the reader begins to believe that there is hope for Lenehan.  He is “tired of knocking about…He would be thirty-one in November.  Would he never get a good job?  Would he never have a home of his own?” (43) He goes on to describe how “all hope had not left him…He felt better…less vanquished in spirit.” Joyce has masterfully constructed this long paragraph, setting up the idea that Lenehan might be the first character in Dubliners to somehow break through the paralysis that envelops the city.  However, all these ideas prove only to be illusory in the final words of the passage: “He might yet be able…to live happily if he could only come across some good simple-minded girl with a little of the ready.” (44) It becomes clear at the end of the sentence that Lenehan’s desire for change and for a fulfilling life is undermined by the ideas that Dublin has imparted to him.  He thinks he can only be happy if he marries a girl with money.  He is still absorbed by his desire for some wealth or monetary gain.  After all, at the end of the story, he is only concerned with whether or not Corley succeeded in getting money from the girl. 

                Based on the character Jimmy in “After the Race,” Joyce makes it clear that even those Dubliners who are able to escape from poverty are still impoverished intellectually.  Jimmy’s father obtains wealth, but, besides the fact that he betrays his countrymen to do so, it does not give Jimmy any semblance of culture.  Ultimately, the most commendable character in the story is Villona, a useful comparison for Lenehan.  Villona is, like Lenehan, young and poor.  However, Villona is able to free himself from the mundane world of drinking and card-playing by his intellectual interests.  Although he does seem servile when he plays the piano, it is still noteworthy that he is able to play waltzes and voluntaries.  Furthermore, he commands the respect of the foreigners by discussing “the beauties of the English madrigal, deploring the loss of old instruments” and by prevailing “in ridicule of the spurious lutes of the romantic painters.” Villona, despite his poverty, has still educated himself thoroughly in the arts and in higher European culture.  Even though Joyce does not clearly demarcate Villona as the most admirable character in the story, the fact that he announces “Daybreak” to the party of men suggests that he is more perceptive and aware.  Joyce therefore seems to include Villona as an example of a man that all Dubliners should aspire to become.  He is no different than Lenehan in his economic means, but he still is able to possess a life rich with intellectual activity.  The contrast between Lenehan and Villona proves that poverty of the mind, not of the purse, is the reason why paralysis is entrenched in Dubliners.