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Very interseting comments, Jay! I agree with most of what you say. On your following comment: "I think a comparison between Mrs. Kearney and Mrs. Mooney from"The Boarding House" could be a wonderful source of discussion. Both have bagggage--- both have a background that predisposes them to provide for their daughters in very different ways. Both, I think, see themselves as good mothers. And though they are from opposite ends of the social world, both I think ruin their daughters chances for true happiness by imposing their own view of success on the next generation." Here is a comment of interest from Warren Beck: "Perhaps some will not quite agree with Richard Ellmann that both 'The Boarding House' and "A Mother' portray 'mothers who fail in their role.' True, their force marks 'a type Joyce could never endure,' but it is differently motivated, differently exercised , and only in 'A Mother' is Joyce severely satirizing unendurable aggressiveness. Furthermore, as for the madam of the boarding house, she has no sense of having failed in her maternal role; rather, she takes pride in bringing off the scheme (with Polly's ardent connivance), and indeed according to her lights she has done right well by her daughter. As for pity as generally accorded, though Kathleen Kearney is at the moment implicitly deserving of it, the indiscreetly amorous and then panicky boarder Mr. Doran is not. By general consent women probably would condemn his type, especially in its wavering between forwardness and hesitancy. Men will laugh at him, for even if Mrs. Mooney's sugary "Come down, dear. Mr. Doran wants to speak to you" may give certain males a retrospective shiver, this can yield to the amusement felt over others' disasters. The women who would condemn Doran would not be exceedingly merciful to either Polly or her mother, whose operations run beyond the rules a bit too crassly. Pathos is hardly a problem, then, in 'The Boarding House.' Pathos was an inherent something to be excluded from 'A Mother,' and that was done by cool detachment, a skilful superficiality, and a bizarre tone, largely achieved by a wry diction. What Joyce had most strongly on his side for these chosen treatments was that while Mrs. Mooney is understandable, his Mrs. Kearney is insufferable. Mrs. Mooney may even win the sidelong glance of partial approval accorded the truly formidable matriarch in the hour of her relative success, whereas the defeat of Mrs. Kearney is to be fully approved of, especially for its kind of poetic justice in the ruination, by her own excesses, of the very ambitions she most sought to advance. It is satiric not a tragic justice, however. Hence the story's slow drift to a close, like a boat with engine stopped coming to rest at dockside, while lesser gestures secure it. Ther is not enough at issue in 'A Mother' to require that the conclusion be intensely, centrally pointed, as in 'Araby,' 'Eveline,' 'A Little Cloud.' So behind Mr. O'Madden Burke officiously poised upon his large umbrella is the artist more purely poised, with an equanimity that has never wavered in the apt but always easy conduct of his story." Good to see fresh voices speaking out on this list, Jay. We need a lot more of them! --Rasik Shah |
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