A Painful Case
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"A Painful Case" is a short story by Irish author
James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influentia ...
published in his 1914 collection ''
Dubliners ''Dubliners'' is a collection of fifteen short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. It presents a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century. The stories were writ ...
.'' The story details a platonic affair between an isolated man and a married woman, the breaking off of the affair, and its aftermath.


Plot

Mr. Duffy, a middle-aged bank cashier, deliberately lives in an isolated suburb of Dublin. He is characterized as very meticulous and ordered, and has little social contact. At a concert one night, Duffy makes the acquaintance of Mrs. Emily Sinico, a married mother. They start up a relationship that is innocent enough to be condoned by Mrs. Sinico's husband, who believes the two's discussions revolve mostly around his daughter and the possibility of a relationship between her and Duffy. The two draw closer together, and one night Mrs. Sinico impulsively takes his hand and presses it to her cheek, but Duffy is not pleased at the development and ends their meetings. Four years later, he reads that Mrs. Sinico has been struck by a train and killed. The newspaper article, the title of which provides the title of the story, contains an account by her husband, who states that she began drinking two years earlier. The details of the accident suggest that she may have caused her own death. He reacts at first with revulsion, concluding that some inherent weakness led to her drinking and the accident, but he slowly comes to believe that it was his rejection that condemned her to solitude and death. He reflects on his own loneliness: "No one wanted him; he was outcast from life's feast." The story ends with Duffy listening to the silence of the surrounding night atop a hill overlooking Dublin where he and Sinico used to sit down and talk, where he realizes just how lonely he really is. Stanislaus Joyce believed that "A Painful Case" was based on an entry in his diary describing two encounters with a young woman when he was eighteen—his brother, writing the story in
Trieste Trieste ( , ; ) is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is the capital and largest city of the Regions of Italy#Autonomous regions with special statute, autonomous region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, as well as of the Province of Trieste, ...
, having given her a Triestine name—and that James Duffy was "intended to be a portrait of what my brother imagined I should become in middle age". There is also the possibility that James Duffy is "what amesJoyce... might have been as bank clerk" had he remained in Dublin.


References


External links

*
Dubliners
' at
Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital li ...
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Painful Case, A Short stories by James Joyce Short stories set in Dublin (city) 1914 short stories