Moving to Hartstonge Street

Angela’s decision to take the dole money and move the family to Hartstonge Street turns grief and material insecurity into a decisive act of household care. After Oliver’s death, she refuses to remain in the room where he had lived and died, confronts her husband’s claim to control the relief payment, and secures a home better suited to her surviving children and their schooling.

Background: grief and an unlivable room

The move follows Oliver’s burial and is shaped by the family’s accumulated losses. Angela says she cannot spend another minute in the Windmill Street room: memories of Oliver in the bed, on the floor, and beside his father by the fire make the space unbearable. She is also concerned for Eugene, whose twin brother has died. In her view, remaining in the room risks compounding the child’s grief as well as her own.

The family’s circumstances give the decision an immediate practical dimension. The old room has one bed for the household and is marked by fleas and dampness. Angela has found a room on Hartstonge Street with two beds, a lavatory down the hall, and a warmer, more comfortable environment. It is also on the same street as Leamy’s National School, making it possible for the boys to come home at noon for tea and fried bread. Housing, health, food, and education are bound together in her choice.

Taking control of the dole

Angela plans to follow her husband to the Labour Exchange on Thursday and take the weekly dole as soon as it is handed over. He objects that this would disgrace him among the other men: collecting the money is treated as a man’s role, and a woman’s intervention as an affront to that convention. His argument invokes the public expectations surrounding men’s relief money, including the possibility of spending some on a horse or a pint.

Angela is unmoved. She points to the consequence of her husband squandering the money in pubs and reminds him that she followed him in Brooklyn for the same reason. On Thursday, she goes to the Labour Exchange behind him and takes the payment when the clerk pushes it toward him. The other men nudge one another and grin; her husband feels humiliated. Yet the practical result is immediate: Angela has secured the money, and the family moves to Hartstonge Street.

The new home and the children’s schooling

Angela’s decision extends beyond removing the family from painful surroundings. Once they have moved, she carries Eugene with her to Leamy’s National School, where she enrolls the boys. The headmaster instructs them to return on Monday with a composition book, pencil, and pen, and gives them rules about cleanliness and school attendance. He places Malachy in the infants’ class and Frank in first class, both in the same room with one master.

The boys’ return from America also marks them out among their classmates. Other pupils ask whether they are Yanks, gangsters, or cowboys. Against this scrutiny, Angela’s move gives them a nearby school and a more stable daily arrangement. The new room is not simply an escape from the past; it is the setting from which the boys begin their schooling in Limerick.

Significance: care against convention

The episode presents care as work carried out through concrete decisions about money, housing, meals, and children’s routines. Angela’s action challenges a gendered custom not through abstract argument but by taking the relief payment herself and using it to secure a different room. Her husband’s concern for his standing among the men is set against the family’s need for warmth, space, and reliable access to school.

The move also shows how household survival depends on Angela’s willingness to assume responsibility when the existing arrangement fails. The family’s grief over Oliver remains present, but it does not prevent her from making a change for Eugene and the other children. By taking control of the dole and choosing Hartstonge Street, she turns limited public assistance into a material change in the family’s living conditions and prospects.