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Mr. Duffy’s House
“A Painful Case” opens with a detailed but borderline apathetic account of Mr. Duffy’s home. It is a “somber” house with no carpeting, no decorations, and no pictures on the walls. The only furniture in the house is a black iron bedstead, an iron washstand, four cane chairs, a clothes-rack, a coal-scuttle, a fender and irons, a square table, and a desk. Even the bookshelf, which by definition should be a personal space, is organized by volume size which emphasizes a need for order over intellectual pursuits.
As readers progress through the text, it becomes apparent that Mr. Duffy’s house is meant to symbolize his rigid and repressed personality. For example, the lack of carpeting indicates a lack of warmth and the house's empty interior, void of any and all personal touches, symbolizes that Mr. Duffy is unable to make connections with people and the world around him. Likewise, the house’s “lofty walls” are meant to represent the extent to which Mr. Duffy has placed a barrier between him and humanity. Finally, Mr. Duffy’s house is void of all color except for a black and scarlet rug at the base of his bed. The color red is typically used in literature to symbolize passion and sexuality and the rug’s placement by Mr. Duffy’s bed cements that association. The scarlet fabric, however, is washed out by the house’s empty, void-like state. This is meant to symbolize Mr. Duffy’s repressed sexuality, one of the text’s key themes.
Mr. Duffy’s Desk
One of the items in Mr. Duffy’s impersonal house is a double desk which resides on a table. Mr. Duffy keeps his writing materials on the desk and his writing inside the desk held together by a brass pin. The desk also contains an overripe apple that has long been forgotten.
The desk is a symbol of repression. Joyce pointedly mentions that Mr. Duffy keeps the tools to write on his desk but keeps his actual writing inside. As a result, Mr. Duffy has literally and figuratively buried his thoughts and feelings in a dark desk drawer where nobody can access them but himself. Furthermore, the apple, which is typically used in literature to represent forbidden sexual desires, has long since been abandoned. This symbolizes that Mr. Duffy has repressed and ignored his sexuality to such a degree that he has practically forgotten about it. Joyce solidifies the link between Mr. Duffy’s desk and repression towards the end of the text after Mr. Duffy has ended his relationship with Mrs. Sinico. Mr. Duffy terminates their relationship in a sexual panic after Mrs. Sinico reaches out and touches his cheek. Two months later, Mr. Duffy writes the following line and shoves it in his desk: “Friendship between man and woman is impossible because there must be sexual intercourse.” Once again, the desk is used to symbolize repression because Mr. Duffy entombs his desires away from prying eyes instead of actually acting on it.
