Like “Eveline,” this is a story of missed opportunity, and true to its title, “A Painful Case” is perhaps even more agonizing to read than that earlier selection. Just as Eveline’s fiancé presents her the chance to escape Ireland, Duffy is allowed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to connect with a kindred soul, Mrs. Sinico. Tragically (and typically), both are paralyzed: Eveline by guilt and fear, and Duffy by fear as well—fear that his fanatically orderly world will be thrown into disarray by shared passion. As in the earlier story, Joyce seemingly intends the reader to believe that such an opportunity will never come again.
In some ways, “A Painful Case” is the most sophisticated and complex Dubliners story yet, as it achieves its powerful effect through a deft combination of storytelling techniques and symbolism. As in “A Little Cloud,” “Counterparts,” and “Clay,” Joyce employs the limited third-person point-of-view, allowing access to his protagonist’s thoughts and feelings while keeping the reader distant enough from the main character to realize the errors of the protagonist’s ways before the protagonist does. (The reader knows, for example, that it is a terrible mistake for Duffy to terminate his relationship with Mrs. Sinico.)
Unlike the stories “A Little Cloud,” “Counterparts,” and “Clay,” however, “A Painful Case” includes information that was initially beyond the perspective of its protagonist. Because he does not speak with Mrs. Sinico for the four years immediately prior to her suicide, Duffy has no way of following what goes on in her life during that time, nor does the reader. Joyce includes the newspaper article documenting her death and the inquest that follows it, and the article retroactively shares Mrs. Sinico’s life since of the past four years with Duffy and the reader. The author’s use of this document to tell his story is an inventive way of surmounting his limited point-of-view strategy without violating its restrictive rules.
Joyce characterizes Duffy by means of his possessions: the picture-free walls of his uncarpeted room, and the fastidious, eminently practical manner in which he has arranged his books (by weight!). Though Joyce reveals that Duffy “abhorred anything which betokened physical or mental disorder,” he doesn’t really have to because he has taken care to dramatize Duffy’s character. The reader can generalize about the man Duffy is based on the evidence presented.
The colors yellow and brown (which Joyce uses to indicate paralysis and decay) are everywhere in “A Painful Case”—in Duffy’s uncarpeted floor, his hazel walking stick, and the beer and biscuits he eats for lunch. Even Duffy’s face is brown: “the brown tint of the Dublin streets.” An apple rots in his desk (that is, turns yellow and then brown), a symbol of Duffy’s own decaying possibilities. The newspaper that announces Mrs. Sinico’s suicide is buff in color, yellowish brown. The use of these colors by Joyce to symbolize decay and paralysis is consistent both within individual stories and across the collection as a whole. It thereby links the stories of Dubliners together, reiterating the common lot of the book’s many disparate characters.
