|
|
|
|
|
Hi everbody We have had some good contributions on Mother so far. Jay, your analysis of the reoccurring image of simony was particularly clear and helpful. You suggested a comparison between the characters of Mrs Mooney in The Boarding House and Mrs Kearney in A Mother adding that "both ruin their daughters chances of true happiness by imposing their own views of success on the next generation." I agree that Mrs Kearney tramples over her daughter's wishes. When Kathleen Kearney darts out onto the stage with Mr Bell, with her mothers words "This is four shillings short." left ringing in the air, we see how the daughter must struggle to be allowed to act according to her own free will. But it seems to me that when Mrs Mooney engineers the proposal of Mr Doran for her daughter's hand, her daughter is in love with the man, or at the very least infatuated with him. When Mrs Mooney is downstairs, no doubt, making out to Mr Doran how untennable his social position would be were he to refuse to mary Poly; Poly herself is upstairs sat at the foot of his bed. There she day dreams of "secret, amiable memories" awakened by the sight of the pillows, her mind slowly turning to cheerful thoughts of the future. As you pointed put Mrs Mooney and Mrs Kearney are from different ends of the the social world. Mrs Kearney is convent educated and Mrs Mooney received no formal education. This social divide is particularly obvious when we compare Kathleen Kearney's piano accompaniment of trained voices, to Poly Mooney's singing of the baudey song: "I am a....naughty girl Though the two worlds are not that far apart. We could well imagine some of the artistes that stay at the boarding house appearing on stage at on of mr Holohans productions; and when Poly Mooneys brings punch to Mr Doran it echoes Mrs Kearney's bringing of punch to her husband. Like Mrs Kearney, Mrs Mooney does exercise a large amount of control over her daughter's life. Poly is sent to work as a typist then brought back to avoid the chance that she migjht re-establish relations with her dissolute father. The plans for Poly to marry one of the guests of the guest house are no less overbearing, than Mrs Kearney's manoeuvring her daughter into the right socail set, by having her learn Irish. In fact both Mrs Mooney and Mrs Kearney are at heart controllers: Mrs Mooney runs the guest house, Mrs Kearney takes over as much of the management of Mr Holahan's project as she can. Mrs Mooney is particularly good at exercising social power to her advantage "She governed the house cunningly and firmly, knew when to give credit, when to let things pass". Her decisions about exactly when to intervene in the affair between her daughter and her guest, are carefully thought through and very astute, as is her delicate handling of the discussion about the affair with Poly. Mrs Kearney, however, whose truest desire seems to be an advancement in socally power, posses the tragic flaw of no social imagination: her ambitions blind her to the true nature of the enterprise she is involved in, the artistes are hardly top international performers; and crucially, she just doesn't seem to grasp that relationships can't be held together by sticking to the letter of formal contracts. Mrs Mooney is a far more human, likeable character than Mrs Kearney whose social pretentious and disdain for the working class are seen as pompous. Compare the amiable description of the bass, Mr Dugan whose use of the ungrammatical "yous" is noted without criticism, to Mrs Kearney's disdain for a lower-class dialect. The narrator's use of colloquial speech in The Boarding house when describing Mrs Mooney's thoughts draws the reader in to the character, valuing her by authenticating her working class speech "She Knew he [Mr Doran] had a good screw for one thing, and she suspected he had a bit of stuff put by." There is something refreshingly clear about Mrs Mooney attitude to people. It stems from her working class background: a butchers daughter who remains a butchers daughter in essence "She dealt with moral problems as a cleaver deals with meat: and in this case she had made up her mind". Something that the convent educated Mrs Kearney can't ever achieve: her closest relationship, that to her husband, is based on his "abstract value as a male" and his comforting resemblance to the "General Post Office"; and her relations with her daughter marred by her own frustrated pretentious. Joyce has given us to scenarios in which a mother seeks to secure the future of her daughter. In The Boarding house the salt-of-the-earth Mrs Mooney achieves some degree of success, in A Mother the pretentious Mrs Kearney is seen to fail. Kiri |
|
|
|
|
|