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Vidya worte (and it certainly made me think again): "But what about Mrs. Sinico's role in it ........ What do you people think about throwing your life off (surely she must have realised she is fading away from life ) over somebody who doesn't even have the courage to judge emotions for what they are ........ " The thing is I don't think Mrs Sinico throws her life off…least not in the way that Tolstoy's Anna Karenina does, or that she simply failed to realise' that she was making no progress in her life. I think Chandra was right in saying that Mrs Sinico is the victim of the story. What could she do? She is economically and socially trapped in the marriage with the Captain, a man who thinks naught of her desires: "He had dismissed his wife from his gallery of pleasures so sincerely, that he did not suspect that anyone would take an interest in her". She explores an avenue of extra-marital love; and faces the emotional difficulties of establishing a socially unacceptable relationship, only to have her feelings, one again, crushingly ignored. She is male centered, she could have pursued her life without the goal of a central supportive heterosexual relationship. It is possible that a 39yr-old mother in turn of the century Ireland could conceive of such a path, however it would require almost heroic emotional courage. Then there is the question of whether she actually "throws off her life". Rasik mentioned Anna Karenina. Anna Karenina's death is a self-conscious suicidal leap between the wheels of the train, with her head full of thoughts of punishing ! those who'd not cared and freeing herself from her worires. Mrs Sinico's death is not so clearly a suicide. The coroner certainly did not see this as the obvious verdict. Could Mrs Simico not have realised the despair the "fading away" of her life and turned to alchohol as a means of self medicating against this depression. Mrs Sinico's death then, was an accident- poor spacial awareness caused by the side effects of her self medication. As Chandra wrote Duffy could have done things differently. Far more easily than Mrs Sinico could have, and as Rasik pointed out at the start of this discussion Duffy does eventually realise this. To my mind this realization of Mr Duffy's is a type of character development that we do not see elsewhere in Dubliners (except in the Dead, but we'll get to that soon enough) Have I missed other points in which characters become that bit more rounded, that bit more than a vehicle for exploring the consequences of one particular way of thinking? Kiri END! |
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