Hildebrand- Little Dublin

James Joyce's passionate relationship with Ireland, and particularly the city of Dublin, is animated in every short story that comprises "Dubliners." He paints a portrait of a people dictated by societal expectation, religious standards, a violent need for nationalism, and gross hypocrisy. Joyce animates drunks, perverts, priests, children, battered women, and youths longing for a better life in a new country. They are all bits and pieces of Irish culture and history: the need to conform and fight welded into one entity, a bipolar organism breathing on the Liffey. 

The Boarding House acts as a microcosm of Dublin. Mrs. Mooney extracted herself from an abusive husband and set up a boarding house, where she is know as "The Madam." Her title demands respect, but at the same time imagines her as the manager of a whorehouse. This title suggests that because of her disobedience to her husband, and subsequently all women's disobedience to their husband's, she has gained power at the expense of her reputation. The respect she has is paper thin and an illusion, yet she is satisfied with it. She is an icon for independent Irish women, she is cast away from society but has gained an illusive power secretly desired by most women. 
Her daughter Polly is kept from her office job and tends to the men who stay at the house. She works dutifully, but it is suggested that she has affairs with some of the men. Most notably with Mr. Doran; Mrs. Mooney manipulates this affair and lets it continue past a socially appropriate stage. It's easy to assume that Polly and Mr. Doran have established a physical relationship, or even that Polly has conceived a child, and Mrs. Mooney is aware. She uses this situation to force Mr. Doran to marry Polly and take her out of her mother's care. 
Mrs. Mooney knows the Irish mentality better than any character. She knows Mr. Doran must marry Polly to avoid becoming a pariah. If he does not marry her, he will have to face social critique form his priest, his employer, Mrs. Mooney, and her violent brother.  It is in his nature to abide by the unstated rules of decorum, even though it goes against his intuitive feelings about Polly. Mr. Doran is the ideal Irish citizen. He is chained by the unwritten rules of society; he will follow them wholly despite his instincts (after all, Polly is in a lower class than him).

The boarding house is Dublin: various class and races mix under the roof, but relationships are constantly being gauged and watched, class lines are negotiated, and social standing comes before emotions. The inhabitants are not free to do as they choose because the house is governed by invisible social standards, just as is the city.