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The silence on this list was becoming too painful, and so I thought why not start talking about "A Painful case", the next story in Dubliners. This story relates the life of Mr. James Duffy, a banker, single, a morally upright person, a puritan with very clear notions about what is right and wrong. Mr. Duffy leads a spartan life, lives in the village Chapelizod, outside Dublin. He takes the tram to work everyday. The lunch is unvaried and consists of "a large beer and a amall trayful of arrowroot biscuits". (This fare seems to be a standard lunch in Dublin, at least according to Joyce. When I think of arrowroot biscuits I think of them as being sweet, and a plate of sweet biscuits with beer!!) "He dines in an eating-house... where he feels himself safe from the society of Dublin's gilded youth..." This sentence talks volumes about Mr. Duffy. After dinner he either walks around or engages himself with his Landlady's piano. Friends he has none, relatives he has are few. He visits them at Christmas, and attends their funerals. Mr. Duffy would have lived like this till he himself is carried to the cemetery but for a chance encounter with two ladies - a mother and her daughter - one evening. Surprisingly, (surprising, because I did not expect this from Mr. Duffy's description given so far) they start taking. But obviously Mr. Duffy is not totally immune to female charm. He meets the mother, Mrs. Sinico, a few weeks later at a concert. After the third chance meeting, he makes an appointment with her. So they start meeting; "they met always in the evening and chose the most quiet quarter for their walks together". Because Mr. Duffy does not like meeting like this on the stealth, he forces Mrs. Sinico to invite him to her house. There he meets the husband, Captain Sinico, who actually encourages Mr. Duffy's visits, thinking that he is interested in the daughter. As time went on, Mr. Duffy and Mrs. Sinico become close, they often spent their evenings together in her little cottage outside Dublin. He tells her of the Irish Socialist Party of which he was a member, tells her of his ideas on socialism. Often they would not switch on the light when darkness falls. "The dark discreet room, their isolation, the music that still vibrated in their ears united them." On one such evening "during which she had shown every sign of unusual excitement, Mrs. Sinico caught up his hand passionately and pressed it to her cheek." This one physical touch is the turning point in the story. Mr. Duffy is very surprised at what Mrs. Sinico does, and leaves her. A week later he makes an appointment with her and when she meets him, tells her that they have to break off their friendship: "every bond, he said, is a bond to sorrow". Mr. Duffy's life returns to its normal course. Day in and day out he does the same thing. One evening in the eating-house, just as he is about to drink a glass of water, he reads a surprising news item in the newspaper. The news shocks him so much that he could hardly eat anything. Returning home he reads again in the newspaper. What is that that shocked Mr. Duffy so much? Mrs. Sinico, had thrown herself before a train, the evening before. Though the injuries she suffered were not fatal, she still died, perhaps of shock. A court enquiry had taken place, and the verdict was that the driver of the train was not responsible for the death of Mrs. Sinico. It was a most painful case. Mr. Sinico had testified and said that they had lived happily for twenty years, and that about two years ago, his wife had begun to be rather intemperate in her habits. The daugheter had also testified and said that her mother had been in the habit of going out at night to buy spirits. On reading this news, Mr. Duffy is naturally very shocked. What is surprising is that he feels betrayed by Mrs. Sinico."The whole narrative of her death revolted him and it revolted him to think that he had ever spoken to her of what he held sacred." He had thought of her as "his soul's companion!" He thought that "evidently she had been unfit to live, without any strength of purpose, an easy prey to habits, one of the wrecks on which civilisation has been reared!" These sentences read almost cruel. Luckily Mr. Duffy is not all that bad. Not wanting to stay at home, later he goes out again. Sitting in a bar, he thinks more of her. He wonders what he could have done to help her. He realises that her live must have been very lonely indeed. That evening he goes for another walk, when he feels that she is with him. "She seemed to be near him in the darkness. At moments he seemed to feel her voice touch his ear, her hand touch his. He stood still to listen. Why had he withheld life from her? Why had he sentenced her to death? He felt his moral nature falling to pieces..... and he felt that he was alone." So ends a puzzling story. It is puzzling because Mr. Duffy never apparently realizes, because of his moral uprightness, that he is a very lonely man. Joyce writes "He felt that he was alone" but he does not say that he was lonely. Was he lonely or alone? In my opinion Mr. Duffy was certainly a lonely man, a man to be pitied. His life has only two compartments - black and white. There are no grey zones in it. He goes to work, choses his eating place so that he does not come into contact with any "corrupt" ways. There is no apparently grey zone here. The description of his room is also interesting here. His room is either black or white, except for the rug which is black and scarlet. The iron bedstead is black, all the wooden furnitures are white. The scarlet colour in the rug is perhaps used to show the hidden feelings - not all of them above board - like meeting the lady in secret. But this is an exception in an otherwise "impeccable" character. Perhaps, Mr. Duffy is scared of the consequences if he lets more scarlet colour into his life, if he lets himself go. That is why the very strong reaction to Mrs. Sinico's touching him, to her taking his hand and pressing it to her cheek. It was as if fire had touched Mr. Duffy. He had so long lived alone with his moral uprightness that he could not let himself go. Terence Brown writes in the introduction that "Parallels are drawn across the pages between such texts as 'Eveline' and 'A painful Case', in both of which a failure of nerve leaves a character in a state of terminally destructive self-denial." Mr. Duffy's judgement of Mrs. Sinico comes across very harsh and cruel. The role of the suicide is hinted at twice earlier in the story. Once in the very first line where it is mentioned that Mr. Duffy lives in Chapelizod and the next time when it is said that on his table lay translation of Hauptmann's play, "Michael Kramer." The connction of these two names to the content of the story is interesting, but let me write about it another time. Looking forward to your responses, Chandra |
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