AN ESSAY on the Story

"The Boarding House"

by James Joyce

I)

"The Boarding House" by James Joyce is a very interesting story.

James Joyce is a well-known Irish novelist and a short-story writer, who is considered to be the founder of English modernism both in form and ideas. Joyce’s writing incorporates the extremes of satire and symbolism.

He enjoys the reputation of a very able experimentalist, who sought new artistic means and methods, that could adequately express new ideas about man and society.

In "The Boarding House" Polly tempts Mr Doran. And he has to marry Polly because her mother is a determined woman.

As Polly is a pretty girl of nineteen, she is a flirtatious girl.

Mrs Mooney is a butcher’s daughter and usually has her way. Polly is Mrs Mooney’s daughter. I think that Polly is taking after her mother.

James Joyce calls Polly “a little perverse madonna.” That is why I suppose that the theme of "The Boarding House" is the statement “As the tree, so the fruit — like mother, like daughter.”

The main characters of the story are Mrs Mooney, Polly and Mr Doran. On the one hand, I think that Mr Doran is an irresponsible man. He does not want to marry Polly. “He longed to ascend through the roof and fly away to another country.” This is how James Joyce describes Mr Doran’s feelings. On the other hand, he is quite a good man because he has a job, he is hard-working, and he is an educated person. That is why Mrs Mooney does not intervene in the affair between Polly and Mr Doran. “She watched the pair and kept her own counsel,” James Joyce writes.

2) I like "The Boarding House" because the plot is interesting and dynamic. My opinion is that such a plot is typical of many stories written in the nineteenth century.

The characters of "The Boarding House" are flesh and blood. I think that such people can live in real life.

The language of the story is easy, so "The Boarding House" reads well.

3) I believe that the message of the story is the statement “If you cannot have the best, make the best of what you have.” Mrs Mooney thinks that Mr Doran is a good man to be her daughter’s husband. Mrs Mooney understands that there is no man who wants to marry Polly. I think that Mrs Mooney is a schemer. Mr Doran falls a victim to her scheme. He is tempted by Polly. “Then late one night, as he was undressing for bed, she had tapped at his door, timidly. ... She wore a loose open combing jacket of printed flannel. ... From her hands and wrists too, as she lit and steadied her candle, a faint perfume arose.”

Mr Doran is not a naive man. “He was thirty-four or thirty-five years of age, so that youth could not be pleaded as his excuse; nor could ignorance be his excuse since he was a man, who had seen something of the world,” Mrs Mooney thinks.

The story seems convincing, and the background seems authentic.

I think that this story is quite typical of the nineteenth century literature.

I suppose that Mrs Mooney, Polly and Mr Doran are typical representatives of their social stratum.

"The Boarding House" is an instructive story. The author shows that “If you cannot have the best, make the best of what you have.”

I like this story.

Yekaterina Odincova, 2000