Conclusion

Abstract

This almost-idyllic description of an August evening in Dublin serves as the prelude to one of the most disturbing stories in Dubliners. The ‘two gallants’, Corley and Lenehan, gleefully play on the sympathies of a prostitute and extract a sovereign from her to fund their evening’s debauchery.

The grey warm evening of August had descended upon the city and a mild warm air, a memory of summer, circulated in the streets. The streets, shuttered for the repose of Sunday, swarmed with a gaily coloured crowd. Like illuminated pearls the lamps shone from the summits of their tall poles upon the living texture below which, changing shape and hue unceasingly, sent up into the warm grey evening air an unchanging, unceasing murmur.¹