Duffy's Painful Case

"Joyce appropriated one of Stannie’s bile beans for Duffy’s journal entry that expresses his pain at the prohibition against love between men, according to Jackson: “Love between man and man is impossible because there must not be sexual intercourse and friendship between man and woman is impossible because there must be sexual intercourse.” Duffy’s straightforward articulation of the double-bind created for gay men by the Labouchere Amendment indicates his awareness that his homoerotic desires separate him from other men who, Sedgwick argues, must be kept in a state of ignorance about the true nature of their own desires; they must never be certain they are not homosexual.” (335-336)

Joyce, James. Dubliners. Ed. Margot Norris. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006. Print.

This particular passage struck me as interesting because there is a lot of point made in here that say a lot about society. The double bind that Duffy deals with that Jackson speaks of implies that love cannot exist unless sexual intercourse is present, and it also implies that if sexual intercourse is present that a friendship cannot exist. However, this is not the case. Can a father not love his son and vice versa? Cannot a married couple who engages in sexual intercourse be friends? Love between two males can exist because it is quite common for a father to love his son, and a son to love his father. It is also a love that can exist between two brothers. There is more than one type of love, and the love that can exist between two males does not have to be erotic. It is most likely safe to make an assumption that a man and woman that are married engage in sexual intercourse, but are also friends since they have to be life partners, therefore a friendship can exist even if eroticism between the two are there. It was also confusing what Sedgwick meant by his argument. Are men that are not homosexual aware of their desires because they don’t explore erotic desires for other men? Is that not the same thing as saying a homosexual man is ignorant of his true desires because he does not explore erotic desires for a woman?

On Jackson's "The Open Closet in Dubliners"

Roberta Jackson’s “The Open Closet in Dubliners” examines the historical progression of theoretical examination (within a literary and cultural framework) of James Joyce’s short story “A Painful Case.” If queer theory requires research into context—as Donald E. Hall asserts that it does in Literary and Cultural Theory—then Jackson’s analysis provides an excellent analysis. Hall asserts that queer theory analysis is both textual and extratextual because nothing about sexuality or sexual identity is obvious or self-evident. And Jackson asserts that the previous extratextual analysis of Joyce’s short story sorely misses the mark. And I agree. Jackson points out that prior critics asserted that Joyce attempted to assert his own heterosexuality by simultaneously rejecting the homosexual opposite. His treatment of Duffy represented that attempt: “Since Stannie [Joyce’s brother] has been identified as the beast and since he also served as the model for Duffy and is the source for his admission of homoerotic desire, Duffy also becomes a beast that Joyce must drive before him. Joyce must repel the beast” (Jackson 330). Joyce wrote “A Painful Case” around the time of Oscar Wilde’s persecution. Thus, prior critics argued that he felt compelled to separate himself out of homosexual panic: “Joyce must assert his heterosexual identity through ignorance of its opposite” (Jackson 331).

But these prior critics misinterpret the story. Joyce wrote at the time of the Labouchere Amendment—the same Amendment used to convict Oscar Wilde that criminalized homosexuality. It was not repealed until 1967. Thus, Jackson takes critical license to surmise that Joyce’s title squarely confronts the view of homosexuality that prevailed at the time of the story: homosexuality was a medical condition.

Taking Jackson’s analysis one step further, I find it significant that Joyce’s title (if indeed it refers to Duffy’s condition—and I think that it does) also serves as the title of the newspaper story that reports on the woman’s tragic death on the train tracks. In repressing his homosexuality, Duffy too “dies.” His identity dies. Duffy understands that he is different: “[H]e heard the strange impersonal voice, which he recognized as his own, insisting on the soul’s incurable loneliness. We cannot give ourselves, it said: we are our own” (Joyce 93). Duffy directly addresses the fact that he lies outside the socially acceptable norm. More importantly, he understands that he is a part of an entire group. He knows that there are others like him—hence the collective “we.” And I contend that this recognition of similar people like him is the driving force for Duffy’s melancholy when he encounters the lovers in the park: “Those venal and furtive loves filled him with despair” (Joyce 98). And Duffy despairs because he is “alone” in the world, and he always will be because “Love between man and man is impossible because there must not be sexual intercourse and friendship between man and woman is impossible because there must be sexual intercourse” (Joyce 94). Thus, Jackson asserts that Duffy remains closeted because there was no chance (within the prevailing heterosexual patriarchy) for recognition of homosexuality within the culture. Most interesting to me is Jackson’s argument that Joyce purposely avoids direct speech in his story. Only once is sexuality explicitly mentioned, and that occurs in the passage quoted above (Joyce 98). Joyce wasn’t closeting his own sexuality. Instead, he exposes the pain of those who were closeted—who couldn’t assert their sexual identity. If there is anything closeted in this short story, it is Joyce’s effort to critique the prevailing attitude toward homosexuality. Duffy solicits our sympathies—he calls on us to examine our prevailing social constructs of what is acceptable and what is not. That assertion is where I break from Jackson. She asserts that the phallic worm “conflate[s] her death [Mrs. Sinico’s] with the diminishing possibility of love between men for Duffy, laying both at the feet of the patriarchy” (Jackson 341). I argue that the worm illustrates humanity’s attempt to wind its way through the dark depths of social persecution and constructs of acceptability.

Jackson's Tenuous Projection

In her analysis of Joyce's A Painful Case, Roberta Jackson identifies protagonist Duffy as a closeted homosexual, and gives compelling historical and biographical evidence that this character is based on Joyce's brother Stannie. While the possibility of Duffy's homosexuality is clear from the text of Painful Case, Jackson's assertion that the work represents Joyce himself reflexively asserting his heterosexuality by throwing his brother under the bus of society's judgement, is dubious at best. Duffy's reflective remark on the impossibility of love between men, only made after his rejection of potential lover Mrs. Sinico, is the most obvious, but also the most striking, evidence for Duffy as homosexual. Her claim that Duffy is modeled after Stannie is also well-corroborated by biographical evidence, especially the direct extraction of some of Stannie's actual diary entries for inclusion in "Duffy's" diary in A Painful Case. Jackson claims that Joyce, acting out of the "homosexual panic" defined by fellow critic Eve Sedgwick, used this fictionalization of his brother's dilemma to distance himself from homosexual identification. If Joyce, however, were truly trying to blot out any doubts as to his own sexuality from the public eye, it seems that he would have been more careful than to write a piece which shows such clear support and even compassion for the oppressed homosexuals of his time.

Duffy's Painful Case

Joyce, James. Dubliners. Ed. Margot Norris. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006. Print.

"Joyce may have veiled Duffy in uncertainty at the end, but the accumulated allusions leave no doubt as to Duffy's sexuality and to the destructiveness of a homophobia that reaches far beyond its intended target."

The above criticism, from Roberta Jackson's article "The Open Closet in Dubliners: James Duffy's Painful Case" is an apt summary of Joyce's short story "A Painful Case." While I agree with what she has said, I think analyses of the story continually leave out another meaning of the title--namely, that the death of Mrs. Sinico is a painful case--not only because suicide is painful for the survivor's relatives, but also because the "case," the death, is particularly painful for Mr. Duffy, who feels responsible. On page 98, the text says "Why had he withheld life from her? Why had he sentenced her to death? He felt his moral nature falling to pieces." I think the text shows another subltlety of homophobia--the ensuing affects cause Mr. Duffy not only to feel alienated, but incapable of making other people happy. The fact that he wonders "Why he had withheld life from her?" shows that he has considered trying to force himself to conform--and therefore shows in effect that his inability to make himself conform tortures him just as much as his subhuman role as the "other."

Joyce's Severe Case of Homosexual Panic

"Since Stannie has been identified as the beast and since he also served as the model for Duffy and is the source for his admission of homoerotic desire, Duffy also becomes a beast that Joyce must drive before him. Joyce must repel the beast. He must claim that the beast speaks a language he does not understand, because knowledge would implicate him in ways that his homophobia cannot permit. As Colleen Lamos observes, to "know about homosexuality is to be its accomplice."" (330)


Joyce, James. Dubliners. Ed. Margot Norris. New York: Norton Critical Edition, 2006.


The above quotation comes from Roberta Jackson's "The Open Closet in Dubliners," where she critiques James Joyce's "Painful Case." I found this particular excerpt to be very interesting as Jackson notes several things that never crossed my mind while reading the story. In the above quote Jackson notes the distinct "homosexual panic" that Joyce seems to be experiencing as he wrote this story. She evaluates it through the words he uses in his work and playing with the often used metaphor of the "beast" that Joyce goes to time and time again throughout his works. Such an analysis never crossed my mind until I read what Jackson had to say. After going back, I agree completely as Joyce uses descriptions such as, "prey to habits," "exotic," and "redeeming instinct," all of which play along with the beast metaphor. However more interesting than this is the notion that Jackson presents that Joyce must "repel the beast." He must do this in order to keep from being seen as a homosexual, because if he were to claim to speaking the same language as the beast, or in the case of the story Mr. Duffy, then he would be admitting to knowing the language of homosexuality which he fears. This again became very prevalent to me as I returned to the story for another look. Joyce does in fact push Mr. Duffy away with the way he portrays him in the text. He outcasts him within the society, and pushes him away from others. Doing this is his way of pushing the beast away, and as Jackson notes, his expression of his own personal "homosexual panic." I found Jackson's article to be very insightful, as she presented many ideas about the story, that I had not originally thought about when initially reading it.

Duffy as an Incorruptible Man

“For Charles H. Peake, Duffy is simply an ‘unhuman egoist,’ a ‘voluntary celibate,’ an ‘upright and incorruptible man’ who freely chooses the ‘cold, dark, silent world of his isolation’” (Jackson 331).

To an extent, I agree with Peake’s characterization of James Duffy, but I disagree with the idea that Duffy “freely chooses” to be isolated. Duffy is “incorruptible” in a sense that he does not make motions towards Mrs. Sinico. Before Sinico’s death, it can be interpreted that Duffy does not make motions either because of his sexuality or his respect for Sinico’s marriage. Duffy views Sinico as someone he can talk to, not a lover. Sinico accepts the role as his confessor, but she thinks beyond this role, looking for intimacy. Duffy stays true to his sexuality, but the aftermath of Sinico’s death shows that he is unwilling to choose his isolation, but rather that he is trapped. Jackson makes several arguments as to why Duffy cannot come out of the closet, mainly focusing on the social pressures Duffy faces.

Jackson does not focus on the symbolism of “an overripe apple which might have been left there and forgotten” (Joyce 90). Joyce does not mention the apple beyond this line. The apple is hidden in Duffy’s desk drawer. I interpret the apple as a way in which Duffy proves to be “incorruptible.” Biblically, the apple represents sin. Duffy does not participate in sexual intercourse because he is trapped by society’s interpretation of sexuality. The rotting of the apple supports what he writes in his diary: “Love between man and man is impossible because there must not be sexual intercourse and friendship between man and woman is impossible because there must be sexual intercourse” (Joyce 94). All in all, the rotten apple smell symbolizes Duffy’s lack of sexual intercourse and his sexuality.

By not having intercourse with Sinico, he upholds his beliefs. Through her death, we see that Duffy is at the expense of society’s view on sexuality and is therefore trapped in the same way that the overripe apple smell demonstrates his inability to commit heterosexual sin.

Pilkings and the Other

When Pilkings is first introduced in Death and the King's Horseman, he is adorned in a death mask for an impending costume party. Amusa, a native administration policeman, approaches, but is horrified at the specter of the mask and what it represents. He is unwilling to discuss the impending death of Elesin with the District officer while he is wearing the death mask, as he respects and fears the local religion even though he himself is a Muslim. Pilkings and his wife Jane mock and disparage the man as being superstitious and for having his "big pagan heart" shocked (19-20). In another passage Pilkings is talking to his servant Joseph and facetiously asks the man if "that holy water nonsense also wiped out [his] tribal memory (24)." Joseph is very insulted, as he has adopted Christianity as his religion and Pilkings is slandering it.
These passage are interesting because in the first case it would not be surprising for the two colonizers to react to the alien religions in the that they do. Imperialism was often rationalized by declaring that natives must be "saved" from their pagan faiths with Christianity. However, the way that Pilkings talks about Joseph's religion reveals that the preceding insult of Amusa was not just cultural insensitivity, but disrespect and condescension towards the Nigerians. He disparages a religion that the colonizers, people from his homeland, have brought to the area, and in effect he others Joseph as well. Pilkings subordinates those over whom he has power regardless of their views or loyalty because they are black.