Blog#3

"She was sure she would win. To begin with she had all all the weight of social opinion on her side: she was an outraged mother. She had allowed him to live beneath her roof, assuming that he was a man of honour, and he had simply abused her hospitality. He was thirty-four or thirty-five years of age, so that youth could not be pleaded as his excuse, nor could ignorance be his excuse since he was a man who had seen something of the world. He had simply taken advantage of Polly's youth and inexperience: that was evident. The question was: What reparation would he make?" (The Boarding House)





During this time, marriage was more about social relations and classes. Marriage acts a circumstantial paradox because at one hand it creates opportunity and open relations with new people, which will enhance experiences. However, it also ends life's freedom and limits you to only a few possibilities. For Mr. Doran, the latter is true and while making his decision, he thinks about what everyone will say about it. The Boarding House serves like a microcosm of the city itself as it consists of a diverse gathering of artists, tourists, and business men. Everyone seems to know what everyone else is doing. Mr. Doran discusses as his actions will be known by everyone and they will all formulate an opinion of him. Although these people are paying to live there, it doesn't seem like they can do whatever they want.
In the story, Polly sings a song to the guest:
I'm a...naughty girl.
You needn't sham:
You know who I am.
It seems Polly is essentially selling her dignity and pride. I view her actions as a paradox. She cares what people think of her and wants to get marriage to get into a higher class, so that people will know and respect her, yet she doesn't care what people think of her as an individual as she is willing to "make herself known" with these prostituted actions.
Mrs. Mooney serves as a symbol of mothers during the 19th to early 20th century as it is the mother's duty to get their daughter in a marriage that will raise their status. This reminds me of Pride of Prejudice where Mrs. Bennett works to do whatever she can to get her daughters married in a higher class. In that time, a woman of low class had no money to her name. In this short story, marriage acts like a fixture of life that can't be avoid. A hardship that must be gone through in the cycle of life.