Hartstonge Street

Hartstonge Street is the Limerick address Angela secures after Oliver’s death, a practical refuge from the room where she remembers him and a step toward greater control over her family’s daily life. Its warmer room, two beds, and proximity to school promise relief, but the family’s poverty and Malachy’s eventual departure for work in England limit what the move can change.

The move from Windmill Street

After Oliver dies, Angela says she cannot remain in the Windmill Street room, where memories of him fill the bed, the floor, and the place beside the fire. She also fears that staying there will deepen the grief of Eugene, Oliver’s twin. The family, initially described as six people and then corrected to five, is living in a single room; Hartstonge Street offers two beds instead.

The new room represents more than additional space. Angela seeks somewhere warmer and more comfortable, with a lavatory down the hall like the one she remembers from Brooklyn, and without the fleas and damp she associates with illness. The move is therefore framed as an effort to protect the surviving children as well as to escape a painful household setting.

Relief money and Angela’s decision

The move depends on money that Angela believes Malachy wastes in pubs. She decides to follow him to the Labour Exchange and take the dole payment herself, despite his insistence that doing so will shame him among the men. His objection reflects a social convention that relief money belongs to men to collect; Angela’s response is to prioritize the family’s need for a home over his standing with other recipients.

On Thursday, she follows Malachy into the exchange and takes the money when it is handed to him. The other men nudge one another and grin, and Malachy is disgraced. Angela nevertheless obtains the payment, and the family moves to Hartstonge Street. Her action turns the address into a consequence of an explicit reversal: the family’s housing improves because she refuses to let convention and her husband’s wishes control access to its support.

School and daily life

Hartstonge Street is on the same street as Leamy’s National School. Angela values that closeness because Frank and Malachy can come home at noon for tea and fried bread. The location connects the new room to a daily routine organized around the children’s schooling and meals, rather than serving only as shelter.

When Angela brings Eugene to the school, the headmaster, Mr. Scallan, tells the boys to return with a composition book, pencil, and pen, and gives instructions about cleanliness and school attendance. The scene places the move within a larger attempt to establish ordinary routines for children whose lives have been unsettled by bereavement and poverty.

A temporary improvement amid separation

The room’s relative comfort does not end the family’s material insecurity. Later, when America has entered the war, Malachy decides to go to England after Christmas and signs with an agent for factory work in Coventry. He tells Frank he will have to be the man of the house. His departure makes the home on Hartstonge Street part of a family life shaped by migration as well as local hardship.

Malachy returns for a time, but after Angela falls ill he leaves again for Coventry, setting out on foot toward the Dublin road. A week later, a letter confirms that he arrived safely, followed by a three-pound money order that briefly raises the children’s hopes. No further payment arrives on subsequent Saturdays. Angela returns to begging for help, and the family’s expectations of food and outings recede. Hartstonge Street thus marks a real improvement in housing, not an escape from the insecurity that repeatedly governs the household.