Painful case

 

 

 

 

     « A painful case as a comedy of deception »            

James Joyce

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                      

  James Joyce

                               was an Irish novelist and poet. He is one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century.

He was born in Dublin in 1882. He entered the university college, Dublin in 1898. In 1900 he began writing lyric poems. After graduation in 1902, the twenty year old Joyce went to Paris where he worked as a journalist, teacher and in other occupations under difficult financial conditions. Most of his adult life was spent abroad. Joyce died in Zürich in 1941

His last words were: \"Does nobody understand?\"

 

His most important works are: Dubliners (1914), a portrait of the artist as a young man (1916), a play Exiles (1918) and Ulysses (1922) and a collection of poems, Chamber music (1917)

 

 

Dubliners

                    published in 1914, it shows episodes of middle-class Catholic life in Dublin at the beginning of the 20th century. The topics related in the opening stories range from the disappointments of childhood, the frustrations of adolescence and the importance of sexual awakening. Joyce was 25 when he wrote this collection of short stories, among which “The Dead” is probably the most famous.

 

But in James Joyce’s short story “A Painful Case,” Joyce portrays the main character, Mr. James Duffy’s life as being controlled by paralysis and his inability to be anything but ordinary. Joyce regarded this as “one of the two weak stories in Dubliners” and gave it as well as the other one, After the Race, special attention during his stay in Rome.

 

         To study the comedy and the deception in this short story, I will shed light first on the title, the setting and the characters. Then I will explain how all this elements, in the course of the events, contribute to say that “a painful case” is one comedy of deception.

 

          James Joyce’s short story, “A Painful Case” depicts the life of a Dubliner, James Duffy, at a specific period in his life. However, hidden in the lines of the text, there lies a tragic love story. In the text, the death of Mrs. Sinico, a married woman that was briefly involved with Mr. Duffy at one point in time, is titled ‘A Painful Case’. However, the title of the story does not refer to her death, but rather to the killing of love, desire and passion; three elements that award us happiness and fulfillment in life. ‘A painful Case’ is yet another suppression of the finer elements that enrich our life.

 

         To summarize, a solitary bank cashier named James Duffy lives in a house in Chapelizod, a suburb of Dublin. Later, he becomes acquainted with a woman named Mrs. Sinico at a Dublin concert. They meet regularly to discuss art and ideas, first at her house (with the full knowledge of her husband, Captain Sinico), and then at her cottage outside the city, where they grow close both intellectually and emotionally. When Mrs. Sinico reaches for Duffy's hand, however, he insists that they stop seeing one another. Four years later, Duffy reads in the newspaper about Mrs. Sinico's death, apparently by suicide. At first he feels revolted, ashamed that he ever considered her a peer.

 Then Duffy begins to feel guilty: Did his rejection of her result in Mrs. Sinico's suicide? Finally he identifies and empathizes with Mrs. Sinico, realizing that her aloneness mirrored his own and that he is now more alone than ever.

 

 

         The story is written in the past tense, and from the third person   point of view.

 

         The setting is essential to the characterization of the characters. Here, in a painful case this refers to two different places: first, Chapelizod , a suburb about Three miles west of Dublin, which mainly housed lower middle class families  at the time Dubliners was written, and secondly, the  city of Dublin, in which Duffy works as a bank cashier and later encounters Emily.

 

         The main characters that lived this comedy of deception are:

Mr. Duffy: a Middle-aged man, solitary: he has no friends and sees his family only at Christmas and funerals, obsessive man who eschews intimacy with Mrs. Sinico. Disdainful of excess and tightly self-regulated, Mr. Duffy lives according to mundane routine, and when a relationship evolves beyond his comfort level, he squelches it. His remorse over Mrs. Sinico’s death makes him realize that his pursuit of order and control has led only to loneliness. He is one of the most tragic protagonists of Dubliners.

 

Mrs. Sinico: Mr. Duffy’s companion in “A Painful Case.” She becomes an alcoholic and dies when she is hit by a train, after being shunned by him.

 She once grasped Mr. Duffy’s hand and held it to her cheek, and this small, affectionate gesture led to the end of their relationship.

 

         The comedy of deception begins that evening in the rotunda. Mr. Duffy is at a thinly attended concert when the woman next to him makes a casual comment about the unfortunately small audience. She has an intelligent, attractive face, with eyes revealing a sensible nature. He takes her comment as an invitation to talk, and they do. She is with her daughter. A few weeks later, he sees her again. He tries to make a more intimate conversation while the daughter is distracted. The woman, whose name is Mrs. Emily Sinico, meet him a third time by accident, and this time Mr. Duffy is bold enough to invite her to meet with him again sometime. They begin to see each other regularly, always in the evening and in rather obscure neighborhoods or at her  own home because her husband Captain Sinico is always traveling on business; he encourages the visits because he thinks Mr. Duffy is interested in his daughter. The idea of his wife being attractive or desirable never occurs to him.

         Mr. Duffy shares his ideas with her, and she opens her heart to him. He loans her books and music. They become very close. He tells her of his former experiences with the Irish Socialist party; the meetings did not appeal to him, as the other men were all workers with very practical concerns. When the party divided, he stopped going to meetings.

         They spend more and more time alone together, including evenings at her college. They speak of personal matters. One night, when speaking of the individual's insurmountable loneliness, she takes his hand passionately and presses it to her cheek “Mrs. Sinico caught up his hand passionately and pressed it to her cheek”. Mr. Duffy is shoked; she has misunderstood. He does not see her for a week, and then sends letter asking to meet her. They meet in a cakeshop near the Parkgate (the main entrance to Phoenix Park), and then walk in Phoenix Park (a large public park in northwest Dublin) for three hours. They agree that they cannot meet again.

         His life continues in its routine. He reads some Nietzsche and avoids concerts, for fear of seeing her. Life goes on. Finally, one night when his is out dining and reading the newspaper, he sees something that stops him. He reads the same piece again and again, unable to eat; he tries to finish his meal, but must stop after a few mouthfuls. When he goes home that night, he reads the paper again. It is an article about the death of Mrs. Sinico. She was struck accidentally by a train; evidence suggests that she was drunk. Her daughter Mary reveals that lately Mrs. Sinico often drank at night.

         Mr. Duffy is at first disgusted by the story; she seems to him crude and degraded for having fallen into drink and having died in such an undignified manner. Even he admits his responsibility in her death. “Now that she was gone he understood how lonely her life must have been”. He realizes that he was the one that made her fall into melancholy from loneliness, a melancholy that literally killed her. Acknowledging his responsibility he asks himself, “why had he sentenced her to death?” Hers was both a physical and emotional death.

             Her death, in my eyes, is also an emotional death. She had to die in order for him to understand that he killed her and himself. Then the memory of her hand touching his hits him, and he goes out to the pub at Chapelizod Bridge. He drinks there for a while, becoming more ill at ease. He struggles with the two images he now has of her: the lonely drunkard and the charming woman he became close to. He wonders if he could have done more for her. He goes out on a walk, even though it is biting cold.

         He thinks of her lonely life, and his, which will simply continue in the same routine until he dies.

         Sinico was his only opportunity to delight in that “feast” but he leaves the table and starves himself…to death. Mrs. Sinico might have made his life a bit complicated because of the fact that she made him feel things that he never felt before. She brought him to life, helping him experience life to the fullest, with all of the emotions a human being has. When he cut himself off from her, he killed himself.

         As he walks, he almost believes that she is there with him; it seems as if his memory is so strong that he can hear her voice, or feel her hand. From a hill, he looks down at the wall of the park, where he sees lovers lying. He feels outcast from human life. He knows the lovers are aware of his presence and want him to leave; so they, too, reject him. He hears a train. The engine seems to be repeating her name.

         He stops to rest under a tree until the rhythm fades. But then he can no longer hear her voice or feel her presence. All is silent: he is completely alone.

         A painful case is both deception and self-deception comedy: deception comedy when he -who believed that “friendship between man and woman is impossible because there must be sexual intercourse”- killed her love, her passion and desire, the three elements which could award her happiness in life and self deception comedy when he went back to his solitude, alone within his silent world: “He lived, he loved, he laughed, he left”