The first words of “The Boarding House” are: “Mrs. Mooney was a butcher’s daughter” (Paragraph 1). This indicates that Mrs. Mooney’s socioeconomic background is an important aspect of her character and that class is a key theme in the story. In the context of Dublin, a butcher has social and class connotations, indicating that Mrs. Mooney comes from a working-class family. By her fixation later in the story on Mr. Doran’s job, Joyce further sets up a theme of class and social mobility for both men and women. Mrs. Mooney’s goal becomes to pressure Mr. Doran to propose, trying to improve Polly’s social status, and therefore her own. She is also offering Mr. Doran the chance to preserve his own status among Dubliners, who are in some ways as judgmental toward men as women. Her intentions establish the theme of Gender and Social Mobility in Early 20th-Century Ireland.

As the story moves through Mrs. Mooney’s thoughts, readers begin to see glimpses of Polly’s thoughts as well and, later, Mr. Doran’s. The plot is driven by this movement between the characters’ thoughts, subverting traditional expectations of short stories, which often focus on action.