A Painful Case

by James Joyce, Ciaran Hinds (Narrator)

Mr. Duffy is a bank cashier and recluse living in Dublin, who purposely avoids contact with other people--until he meets Mrs. Sinico at a concert. While Mr. Sinico believes their relationship to be purely platonic, Mrs. Sinico indicates otherwise.

Critically acclaimed author James Joyce's Dubliners is a collection of short stories depicting middle-class life in Dublin in the early twentieth century. First published in 1914, the stories draw on themes relevant to the time such as nationalism and Ireland's national identity, and cement Joyce's reputation for brutally honest and revealing depictions of everyday Irish life.

HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.

Genres: Short Stories, Classics, Fiction, Irish Literature, Ireland, Audiobook, School

Audiobook

First published January 1, 1914

About the author

James Joyce was an Irish novelist, poet, and a pivotal figure in 20th-century modernist literature, renowned for his highly experimental approach to language and narrative structure, particularly his pioneering mastery and popularization of the stream-of-consciousness technique. Born into a middle-class Catholic family in the Rathgar suburb of Dublin in 1882, Joyce spent the majority of his adult life in self-imposed exile across continental Europe—living in Trieste, Zurich, and Paris—yet his entire, meticulous body of work remained obsessively and comprehensively focused on the minutiae of his native city, making Dublin both the meticulously detailed setting and a central, inescapable character in his literary universe. His work is consistently characterized by its technical complexity, rich literary allusion, intricate symbolism, and an unflinching examination of the spectrum of human consciousness. Joyce began his published career with Dubliners (1914), a collection of fifteen short stories offering a naturalistic, often stark, depiction of middle-class Irish life and the moral and spiritual paralysis he observed in its inhabitants, concluding each story with a moment of crucial, sudden self-understanding he termed an "epiphany." This collection was followed by the highly autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), a Bildungsroman that meticulously chronicled the intellectual and artistic awakening of its protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, who would become Joyce's recurring alter ego and intellectual stand-in throughout his major works.
His magnum opus, Ulysses (1922), is universally regarded as a landmark work of fiction that fundamentally revolutionized the novel form. It compressed the events of a single, ordinary day—June 16, 1904, a date now globally celebrated by literary enthusiasts as "Bloomsday"—into a sprawling, epic narrative that structurally and symbolically paralleled Homer's Odyssey, using a dazzling array of distinct styles and linguistic invention across its eighteen episodes to explore the lives of Leopold Bloom, his wife Molly Bloom, and Stephen Dedalus in hyper-minute detail. The novel's explicit content and innovative, challenging structure led to its initial banning for obscenity in the United States and the United Kingdom, turning Joyce into a cause célèbre for artistic freedom and the boundaries of literary expression. His final, most challenging work, Finnegans Wake (1939), pushed the boundaries of language and conventional narrative even further, employing a dense, dream-like prose filled with multilingual puns, invented portmanteau words, and layered allusions that continues to divide and challenge readers and scholars to this day. A dedicated polyglot who reportedly learned several languages, including Norwegian simply to read Ibsen in the original, Joyce approached the English language not as a fixed entity with rigid rules, but as a malleable medium capable of infinite reinvention and expression. His personal life was marked by an unwavering dedication to his literary craft, a complex, devoted relationship with his wife Nora Barnacle, and chronic, debilitating eye problems that necessitated numerous painful surgeries throughout his life, sometimes forcing him to write with crayons on large white paper. Despite these severe physical ailments and financial struggles, his singular literary vision remained sharp, focused, and profoundly revolutionary. Joyce passed away in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1941, shortly after undergoing one of his many eye operations. Today, he is widely regarded as perhaps the most significant and challenging writer of the 20th century. His immense, complex legacy is robustly maintained by global academic study and institutions such as the James Joyce Centre in Dublin, which ensures his complex, demanding, and utterly brilliant work endures, inviting new generations of readers to explore the very essence of what it means to be hum

Reviews

[Olga · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is incredible how Joyce manages to talk about so many things in such a short story. In this little illustration of human relationships the author explores, first of all, the degree of responsibility for things happening to someone you did your best to attract and use in a way and then, when the situation has become uncontrollable, just get rid of. It is also a story about selfishness, isolation, loneliness and dramatic differences in the way people feel and what they really want. That's why we find it almost impossible to understand one another.

'He had dismissed his wife so sincerely from his gallery of pleasures that he did not suspect that anyone else would take an interest in her.'

[Arman Keshavarzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

جویس راجع به مجموعه‌ی «دوبلینی‌ها» (که این داستان هم از همون مجموعه است.) گفته که «فصلی از تاریخ اخلاقیات زادگاه من است و من آنجا را انتخاب کردم چون به نظرم می‌رسید این شهر کانون حوادث فلج‌کننده است.» و من هر چی بیشتر از دوبلینی‌ها میخونم بیشتر میفهمم که هیچ چیزی بهتر از این همین جمله توصیفش نمیکنه.

[George Ilsley · Rating 5 out of 5]

The life of an armoured, solitary man, who relies on routine to achieve the appearance of control, is disrupted when he meets a lonely married woman at a concert. He runs into her again, twice, and that creates enough inertia to pursue more of a connection.

I suspect "A Painful Case" was one of the more controversial stories in the collection Dubliners (touching as it does on forbidden topics such as adultery, suicide, and public canoodling) and contributed to the difficulty in the manuscript finding an accommodating publisher (after a convoluted journey it was eventually published outside Ireland).

The nature of the relationship between the solitary man and the lonely married woman is prone to be misinterpreted, and it is this confusion between them that leads to the end of their relations. This confusion is also what gives the story its power: "He asked himself what else he could have done."

A solitary man looking for friendship with a woman—that too can feed speculation.

Within the story, a newspaper article headlined "A Painful Case" adds an air of verisimilitude, and sharpens the reality of the painful predicament.

[K. Anna Kraft · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have arranged my thoughts on this short story into a haiku as best as I could:

"Dear in its forfeit,
The road that was not taken
Resonates with doubt."

[misael · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solidão e o arrependimento medidos e dissecados. A narrativa lembrou-me "Noites Brancas" do Dostoievski, mas melhor. Dos contos mais bem conseguidos do Dubliners.

[Lina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this short story with my ex-boyfriend around the same period of the aftermath of me finding out that he had been cheating on me.
We took turns reading it to one another over a phone call. And by the end of it, I found myself feeling for the husband. The nameless, characterless husband whose wife had been cheating on him.
The word "cheating" is not mentioned at all. In fact, we are brought to empathize with Mr. Duffy and Mrs. Sinico's tragic story. Which I did. I empathized with both the cheaters and the cheatee. Just like I empathized with my cheating boyfriend.
I wonder if I would've had the same reaction in different circumstances. I wonder if I would've seen the cheatee in the story if I weren't one.

[Federico DN · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad.

This was good, but not going to review it.

For the moment at least.

It’s public domain. You can find it HERE.

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PERSONAL NOTE :
[1914] [25p] [Classics] [Conditional Recommendable]
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Nada mal.

Esto estuvo bastante bien, pero no voy a reseñarlo.

Al menos por ahora.

Es dominio público, lo pueden encontrar ACA.

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NOTA PERSONAL :
[1914] [25p] [Clásicos] [Recomendable Condicional]
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[Big Hard Books & Classics · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the story where main character Mr Duffy goes on to become a candidate for the mysterious "Man-in-the-Mac' from Ulysses (Bloom also mentions the fact that he attended Mrs Sinico's funeral at the same cemetery as Episode 6, Hades).

[Gabriel Robb-Wardlaw · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just re read this and wanted to say how fucking perfect it is

[Chandravir Dev · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Her companionship was like a warm soil about an exotic. Many times she allowed the dark to fall upon them, refraining from lighting the lamp. The dark discreet room, their isolation, the music that still vibrated in their ears united them. This union exalted him, wore away the rough edges of his character, emotionalised his mental life. Sometimes he caught himself listening to the sound of his own voice. He thought that in her eyes he would ascend to an angelical stature; and, as he attached the fervent nature of his companion more and more closely to him, he heard the strange impersonal voice which he recognised as his own, insisting on the soul’s incurable loneliness. We cannot give ourselves, it said: we are our own.”

The very best. The very beautiful.

[lita · Rating 5 out of 5]

“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 he had denied her life and happiness: he had sentenced her to ignominy, a death of shame. He knew that the prostrate creatures down by the wall were watching him and wished him gone. No one wanted him; he was outcast from life’s feast.”

[amal · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read for uni, first thing I’ve ever read by him. I like his style if I’m in the mood for smth super well written but I didn’t like the story itself so 2.5/5 I think. I’ll probs forget about it tho so 2/5

[lu ¿ aero · Rating 3 out of 5]

men are trash but "he was an outcast from life's feast" is a little too much relateable

[James Henry · Rating 5 out of 5]

My most favourite fragment of literature ever.

“As the light failed and his memory began to wander he thought her hand touched his.”

The End - Sibylle Baier

[Lullaby · Rating 5 out of 5]

“No one wanted him, he was an outcast from life’s feast.”

“He walked through the bleak alleys where they had walked four years before. She seemed to be near him in the darkness. At moments he seemed to feel her voice touch his ear, her hand touch his. He stood still to listen. Why had he withheld life from her? He felt his moral nature falling to pieces.”

“He began to doubt the reality of what memory told him, he halted under a tree and allowed the rhythm to die away. He could not feel her near him in the darkness nor hear her voice touch his ear. He waited for some minutes listening. He could hear nothing: the night was perfectly silent. He listened again: perfectly silent. He felt that he was alone.”

[Iryna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read a few stories from 'Dubliners', but this one I was able to understand and analyze. I find his stories somewhat abstract, without satisfying conclusions, however not “A Painful Case”. The story is about a middle-aged man who lives outside Dublin. He doesn't invest energy into relationships and spends most of his time in his own company. One day, he meets a married lady who he actually likes to spend time with. Thus, they will get together and talk — not in mystery, since her husband didn't consider her to be interesting to other men. Their connection remained platonic, and they would spend hours walking quiet streets of Dublin. After a while, the woman shows her attraction for the protagonists, which he treats as an indicator to stop their relationship. Fours years later, he finds out from a newspaper that something terrible has happened to her. This story reminded me of Dostoevsky's “White Nights”, which I also recommend. In our lives we can often regret things we didn't say, actions we didn't take. This story is a good reminder that whoever is next to us now might not be there in a moment.

[Claudia Santos · Rating 4 out of 5]

"He could not feel her near him in the 345 darkness nor her voice touch his ear. He waited for some minutes, listening. He could hear nothing: the night was per= fectly silent. He listened again: perfectly silent. He felt that he was alone."

[Sara Hosseini · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of the best in the collection of The Dubliners

[Kate Vols · Rating 5 out of 5]

Changes are an integral part of self-development

[sofia 🦢☕️💌 · Rating 4 out of 5]

this just made me sad, like he’s just lonely. but i enjoyed of course i love james joyce’s stories

[Realini Ionescu · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Painful Case by James Joyce


This is one of the best short stories that I had the chance to read



There is a certain progress in my approach to James Joyce’s work. After the terrible defeat that I suffered at the hands of Ulysses, I have come to conclude that a different route is more appropriate.

Therefore I am reading Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man, the latter for the second time.

With Ulysses, I go through the first chapters with a very low reading speed. I could say that I am still in the first fifty pages, after a few years. The other attempt had to finish in two days- I went through some pages at lightning speed, since it had gotten clear that the message would be lost on me.

Ulysses is demanding.

A Painful Case is not children’s literature, but is more accessible…absolutely.

And it is a wonderful story, the same way the other Dubliners tales that I have read so far are, even if they are all different in subject matter.

There seems to be a common religious thread, the concern with holy matters struck me in A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man, and is very present in all the Dubliners stories I finished.

“MR. JAMES DUFFY lived in Chapelizod because he wished to live as far as possible from the city of which he was a citizen and because he found all the other suburbs of Dublin mean, modern and pretentious”

This is the first phrase of this short saga, where we meet our main character. He is a recluse, yet not unlikeable man. An ascetic type, with books in his room, James Duffy has the Catechism which brings me to the religious theme that I mentioned and is ever present- this time from the first three phrases.


„Mr. Duffy abhorred anything which betokened physical or mental disorder. A medival doctor would have called him saturnine. His face, which carried the entire tale of his years, was of the brown tint of Dublin streets. On his long and rather large head grew dry black hair and a tawny moustache did not quite cover an unamiable mouth. His cheekbones also gave his face a harsh character; but there was no harshness in the eyes which, looking at the world from under their tawny eyebrows, gave the impression of a man ever alert to greet a redeeming instinct in others but often disappointed. He lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glasses. He had an odd autobiographical habit which led him to compose in his mind from time to time a short sentence about himself containing a subject in the third person and a predicate in the past tense. He never gave alms to beggars and walked firmly, carrying a stout hazel.”

Now- I find this description stunning. In fact, I am wondering why Dubliners is not included with the canon, the best books ever. We do have Ulysses and A portrait at numbers one and three respectively, on the Modern Library List of best 100 books, but why not Dubliners as well.

Scholars must know what they are talking about and I can have my own preferences. The description above is among the best I have read.

It portraits a complex man, with an unamiable appearance and yet “no harshness in the eyes”. James Duffy is on a lookout for a “redeeming instinct in others” and is “regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glasses”

Reading all this I am at the same time overwhelmed by the skill of the author, compassionate and impressed by James Duffy and yet amused by his ways.

“His liking for Mozart's music brought him sometimes to an opera or a concert: these were the only dissipations of his life... He allowed himself to think that in certain circumstances he would rob his hank but, as these circumstances never arose, his life rolled out evenly -- an adventureless tale.

This is such an interesting personage! Attending concerts and musing about robbing his own bank...he could be out of Monty Python’s Flying Circus and one of the Proust creations at the same time.

What a pity there is such a poor house tonight! It's so hard on people to have to sing to empty benches."

He took the remark as an invitation to talk.

And then one evening, James Duffy meets this lady and everything changes. Or maybe not- for, without giving you the whole plot- I am not sure to the end what the future has in store for our hero. He is absolutely affected by the events.

But for how long? To what extent will these circumstances change the well established habits and rituals of this man who “had neither companions nor friends, church nor creed.”

This is one more wonderful element which makes me love this story so much: the uncertainty with which I read to the end, where I have no idea what will come next…I mean after the doubtful finale…yes, there is a certain event, with a major impact – but the hero is so complex that we can only speculate on what he will be up to.

I repeat this statement: This is one of the best short stories that I had the chance to read



And you can read it or download it online, legally

http://www.online-literature.com/jame...

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joyce’s A Painful Case is one of the most devastating romantic stories ever written precisely because it is almost entirely devoid of overt romance.

Instead of passion, it offers restraint; instead of union, isolation; instead of love declared, love denied.

Yet few stories examine the emotional cost of emotional refusal with such cold clarity. Romance here exists only as a missed possibility—and that absence becomes the story’s central wound.

The protagonist, Mr. James Duffy, is defined by negation. He lives alone, follows rigid routines, distrusts emotion, and prides himself on intellectual independence. Joyce constructs Duffy as a man who believes detachment is moral superiority.

He reads philosophy, keeps his life orderly, and avoids intimacy as though it were a form of contamination. Into this carefully sealed existence enters Mrs. Emily Sinico—a married woman who offers companionship, conversation, and eventually affection.

Their relationship is initially chaste, almost cerebral. They meet to talk about music and ideas, forming a bond rooted in mutual attention rather than physical desire. Joyce is careful here: Mrs. Sinico is not portrayed as predatory or desperate. She is lonely, emotionally starved, and responsive to the simple dignity of being heard.

Romance enters quietly, almost accidentally, when she presses Duffy’s hand against her cheek—an intimate gesture that terrifies him.

Duffy’s reaction defines the tragedy. He interprets her gesture not as vulnerability, but as moral threat.

Convinced that intimacy leads to corruption, he withdraws entirely, severing the relationship without explanation. Joyce makes no attempt to soften this choice. Duffy’s logic is chilling in its self-justification: emotional distance is framed as virtue, restraint as strength.

Years later, Duffy reads of Mrs. Sinico’s death—apparently struck by a train while intoxicated. The newspaper report implies social disgrace and moral failure. At first, Duffy responds with judgment, confirming his belief that emotional involvement leads to ruin. But slowly, inexorably, recognition dawns.

He understands that her isolation after his rejection may have contributed to her decline—and that he was, perhaps, the only person who had offered her genuine companionship.

This recognition does not redeem Duffy; it annihilates him. Joyce’s brilliance lies in the delayed emotional awakening. Duffy realizes too late that his emotional abstinence has not protected him from suffering—it has ensured it. He sees himself not as virtuous, but as profoundly alone, incapable of connection, condemned to self-awareness without comfort.

Romantically, A Painful Case is extraordinary because it reverses expectations. The “romantic” figure is not the one who loves excessively, but the one who loves insufficiently. Mrs. Sinico’s desire, though socially transgressive, is emotionally honest. Duffy’s restraint, though socially acceptable, is spiritually barren. Joyce refuses to moralise overtly, allowing the contrast to speak for itself.

Stylistically, the story is stark, almost clinical. Joyce’s prose mirrors Duffy’s inner life—precise, detached, and emotionally compressed.

When emotion finally surfaces, it does so not through sentiment but through emptiness. The final image of Duffy realising that he is “outcast from life’s feast” is among the most merciless in modern fiction.

A Painful Case endures as a romantic story because it exposes the quiet violence of emotional denial. It reminds us that love rejected can be as destructive as love betrayed—and that the greatest tragedy may not be heartbreak, but never allowing the heart to break at all.

A classic. Most recommended.

[aml · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mr.Duffy and Mrs.Sinico meet at a concert and begin to see each secretly. Mr.Duffy asks to meet Mrs.Sinico's husband but Mr.Sinico assumes Duffy is interested in his daughter Mary and welcomes him to the house at any time. When Mrs. Sinico tells Duffy that she is in love with him and wishes to leave her husband, he rejects her. Four years later he hears of her tragic death and is filled with remorse

Sinico's death is the catalyst for Mr Duffy's revelation. The circumstances surrounding her demise seem to suggest that suicide was a possibility, although Mrs Sinico may merely have been drunk. The coroner's report indicated that she was taken completely by surprise and died of shock, although one could argue that a moving tram comes as a surprise even when one has stepped in front of it intentionally. The story's climax, as with many other stories in Dubliners, is the protagonist's epiphany. Once her presence leaves him, he realizes that he is alone, that he has been alone all along, and that he will always be alone.
likely imprisonment is self-imposed, he has chosen this life for himself...

[Ru · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.85

A man meets a married woman and they become friends- however, when she begins to show signs of attraction toward him, he cuts her off.

This is an interesting human dilemma, because morally, ending these interactions was technically the right thing to do. Yet, it results in the steady decline of the woman and her eventual death.
I remind the "but it's cheating!" reader that this was written in a time where a woman divorcing her husband, especially with a child in the picture, was unheard of; clearly this woman was lonely and unfulfilled in her marriage. Unlike today though, she couldn't just leave him, in fact as far as I'm aware, divorce was illegal in Ireland until more recently than you might think.

I really enjoyed the gradual mental processing in regards to the narrator too- his initial shock and disgust at her having ended up in such a state and then the gradual realisation and understanding of why it unfolded in that way. The nuance and human complication in this one put it right at the top of the list- one of my favourites in the collection so far.

[ally douglas? · Rating 5 out of 5]

Notes: Mr. Duffy dislikes the "mean, modern, and pretentious" Dublin suburbs and instead prefers a plain, practical living environment. He hates anything broken or sickly and lives a life of monastic existence. He talks about himself in the third person and past tense, implying a disassociation between his body and mind. His only form of pleasure was his frequent trips to the opera, where he meets a special woman. "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."

[Kurt · Rating 5 out of 5]

The second short story by James Joyce that I have read. The first was The Dead. Both stories are about human relationships. Both are excellent in the way the author poignantly describes the emotions and resulting actions of his characters.

This story ends in sadness, regret, and tragedy as so often happens when misunderstandings occur in the course of perceived, hoped-for, or actual romances.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Novellen handler om en ensom mand, som skubber det eneste menneske han har kær fra sig. Efter hendes død forandres hans syn på verden, og han indser hvor stor en fejl han har begået.
Bogen er sørgelig, men giver et smukt udtryk for hvad ensomhed og kærlighed kan betyde.
Fortællingen er skrevet i typisk Joyce stil, og hurtig men spændene læsning.

[Darinda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read in Dubliners.

A man befriends a married woman. When they seem to get too close, he ends their friendship. Four years later she commits suicide, and he goes through a variety of emotions.

[Iris Gozadinou · Rating 5 out of 5]

(11/15 i Dubliners)
Denne var fin, painful som tittelen foreslår. Ga ting å tenke på, og minte på hvor uheldig livet kan være noen ganger. Ga meg litt fleabagcore, men reversed. Det er ikke alltid at det du trenger er noe du kan få.

[Ania · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Now that she was gone he understood how lonely her life must have been, sitting night after night alone in that room. His life would be lonely too until he, too, died, ceased to exist, became a memory_ if anyone remembered him."