The Lucan Road, mentioned in “A Painful Case,” connects the western Dublin suburbs of Chapelizod and Lucan, incidentally the location of the 1883 Dublin-Lucan Steam Tramway terminus. Running along the south side of the Liffey, the road spans from Lucan in the west to Chapelizod in the east. (Joyce even hybridized the towns in Finnegans […]

Dan Burke’s is named in “A Painful Case” as Duffy’s go-to lunch spot in the city. Although he lives in Chapelizod, he works in the city center, at a bank in Baggot Street, and must therefore find sustenance near his office: “He had been for many years cashier of a private bank in Baggot Street. […]

Very few of the Dubliners stories contain settings very far from the city center. The most significant deviation from this norm is “A Painful Case,” which features the suburb of Chapelizod as the main character’s place of residence. The opening of the story announces this setting in tones much like those of the central character Duffy himself: “MR. […]

Chapelizod is a neighborhood in the western part of Dublin, along the banks of the Liffey. In Joycean contexts it’s best known as the home of the Earwicker residence in Finnegans Wake, but it’s also where James Duffy lives in the Dubliners story “A Painful Case.” The story opens with a very Duffyesque voice explaining “Mr. James Duffy […]

Holland, which, technically, is a name referring only to two provinces of the Netherlands, appears in “A Painful Case” in rather a painful context. Its first mention is innocuous enough: [Emily Sinico’s] husband was captain of a mercantile boat plying between Dublin and Holland; and they had one child. () But the second mention of the […]