“There must be reparation”: A Sacrificial Reading of “The Boarding House”

The ritual of sacrifice is an important feature of Joyce’s “The Boarding House” because of its traditional components of confession, expiation, and reparation. After his unspecified but suggestive interactions with Polly Mooney, Bob Doran finds himself caught between the Catholic Church, with its demands for confession and penitence, and Mrs. Mooney and her son Jack with theirs for family reparation, in this case, marriage. In a similar way, the narrative follows the same structural organization with its sacrificial textual cuts and its expiatory drive. Plot incisions and ruptures here conform to Joyce’s expressed wish to write with “scrupulous meanness” about his fellow Dubliners.