Essay - Joyce Dubliners: It's a Women's World Women are Predators, Men...

Joyce

Dubliners: It's a Women's World

Women are predators, men ***** the sorry prey, suggests ***** short story "The Boarding House." Such is James Joyce's overall attitude in his collection of short stories entitled Dubl*****ers. The story that "The ***** House" is paired with, in a kind of a parallel of the *****me of sexual rapaciousness, ***** "Two Gallants," might seem to suggest the opposite, that men such as Lenehan and Corley can be equally pointed in pursuing *****ir sexual desires as Mrs. Mooney and her daughter Polly are upon the hapless border at Mrs. *****'s establishment. However, the jesting and careless nature of the two young men makes the calculated designs ***** ***** and Corley pale by comparison ***** the meaty Mrs. Mooney's urge ***** get her daughter a good husband. The ***** young ***** engage in a jest for a night, while the victim of "The Bo*****rding House" will ***** subjected to a loveless marriage.

*****. Mooney, herself "butcher's daughter" deals with cutting and weighing morals in a very concrete, non-*****bstract fashion. She marries an alcoholic, and leaves Mr. Mooney for good after he attempts ***** cut her down with a meat cleaver. She becomes instead of a proper wife, a "madam"—the verbal associations with being a procuress of female favors to men willing to pay for the privilege should not be underestimated ***** the reader—only in her case she is tenuously, legally a madam to young men *****ing fifteen shillings a week for "bo*****rd and lodgings," ale excluded. But Mrs. Mooney's real occupation as a m*****dam is revealed as the reader ***** ********** ***** she literally farms her ***** out, unlike her son, in search of male companionship that will yield young ***** marriage and stable financial dividends. First, her mother allows Polly to be a typist, then a housecle*****ner when the first, although more prestigious occupation, seems ***** though it will not garner the girl a good enough match, ***** a disreputable "*****riff" only comes around, as a result of ***** girl's job. (1)

Mrs. Mooney does ***** think ***** her girl gaining her own advance*****t through hard work. Polly seems to have no will or desires of ***** own, beyond fulfilling her mother's desires ***** her to get married—***** never objects to e*****her male **********, but neither does she resist her ***** constant overseeing and controlling guardianship. Every emotion of Polly's is eit***** calculated or dominated by her mother ***** both, as Polly "had been made awkward ***** her [Polly] not wishing to receive the news in *****o cavalier a fashion or to seem ***** have connived, ***** Polly had been made awkward not merely because allusions of that k*****d always made ***** *****, but also because ***** did not wish it to be thought ***** in her wise *****nocence she had divined the intention behind her mother's *****lerance." (2) ***** oxymoron 'wise innocence' shows how much of *****'s appearance of innocence or desire is 'put on' with the transparent (to the reader) intention *****