Mr . Duffy ’ s incapability to return a sincere , generous love is marked by silence : […] every bond , he said , is a bond to sorrow . When they came out the Park they walked in
21 silence toward the tram .
Much has been said of the incapability of Mr . Duffy to reciprocate Mrs . Sinico ’ s love . It could be seen as an anticipation of the solitude of the Modern Man , condemned to a spiritual ‘ waste land ’, echoed by the image of the ‘ empty distillery ’. Or , as Norris insightfully suggests , Mr . Duffy could
22 be a repressed homosexual man , thus seeking just comfort and friendship in a female companion . As reliable as the narrator can be , he gives himself the following explanation , which sounds more like an apology :
he could not have carried on a comedy of deception with her ; he could not have lived with
23 her openly .
So the necessity of concealing an adultery may repel Mr . Duffy as a moral disorder , even if he is not troubled by social or religious issues , being both an atheist and an outcast . He still randomly considers the possibility of robbing his bank , though , thus showing his moral code is problematic and subject to double standards . He is a narcissistic man , with impossibly high standards in relationships , but blind to his own faults , or unwilling to look at them – ultimately unable to give ,
24 and love freely . It is true that his self-constrained , imposed moral rectitude causes him extreme unhappiness :
Those venal and furtive loves filled him with despair . He gnawed the rectitude of his life ; he felt that he had been outcast from life ’ s feast . One human being had seemed to love him and
25 he had denied her life and happiness : he had sentenced her to ignominy , a death of shame .
From this final point on , music becomes noise and , as Epstein rightly says , it turns into a mental assault for the senses , something menacing that makes Duffy question the reality of his own existence :
His life would be lonely too until he , too , died , ceased to exist , became a memory – if
27 anyone remembered him .
This passage contains a veiled textual reminder to Ebenezer Scrooge in ‘ A Christmas Carol ’, when the Ghost of Christmas Future shows an appalling future to the miser , solitary man : a future that ,
28 thanks to the ghost ’ s supernatural intervention , Scrooge is able to alter .
26
21
J . Joyce , ‘ A Painful Case ’, p . 165 .
22
M . Norris , ‘ Shocking the Reader in “ A Painful Case ”’, in Suspicious Readings of Joyce ’ s “ Dubliners ” , University of Pennsylvania Press ( Philadelfia , 2003 ), pp . 158-171 .
23
J . Joyce , ‘ A Painful Case ’, p . 170 .
24
Norris suggests an interesting link between ‘ A Painful Case ’ and two of the most famous processes of Joyce ’ s childhood : that of Oscar Wilde for homosexuality , an Irish writer himself , and that of the Nationalist hero Charles Stewart Parnell , greatly admired by the Joyce family . His adulterous relationship with the wife of one of his party provoked the failure of both his career and of the Nationalist Movement in Ireland , that had to wait until 1921 to gain independence . See ‘ Shocking the Reader in “ A Painful Case ”, pp . 158-171 .
25
J . Joyce , ‘ A Painful Case ’, p . 171 .
26
J . Epstein , ‘ Joyce ’ s Phoneygraphs : Music , Meditation , and Noise Unleashed ’, in James Joyce Quarterly , vol . 48 , n ° 2 University of Tulsa ( Tulsa , 2011 ), pp . 265-289 .
27
J . Joyce , ‘ A Painful Case ’, p . 170 .
28
The link to A Christmas Carol , in which themes as hospitality and giving are concerned , is particularly evident