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In “The Boarding House,” the cleaver—a large knife butchers use to cut bone—symbolizes the forceful and decisive power of social oppression. Mrs. Mooney, a butcher’s daughter who would have grown up around cleavers, left her alcoholic husband after he “went for [her] with the cleaver” one night. Here, the cleaver symbolizes the ways in which Dublin’s patriarchal society oppressed and even terrorized women in early 20th-century Dublin. Later, as a single mother and businesswoman, Mrs. Mooney learns to manipulate society’s oppressive rules for her own gain, and deals with moral problems—like Polly and Mr. Doran’s relationship—“as a cleaver deals with meat.”
Cleaver Quotes in The Boarding House
The The Boarding House quotes below all refer to the symbol of Cleaver. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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The Boarding House
Quotes
At last, when she judged it to be the right moment, Mrs. Mooney intervened. She dealt with moral problems as a cleaver deals with meat: and in this case she had made up her mind.
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Cleaver Symbol Timeline in The Boarding House
The timeline below shows where the symbol Cleaver appears in The Boarding House. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
The Boarding House
...up debt. On one particular night, Mrs. Mooney’s husband tries to attack her with a cleaver, and from then on they live apart from one another.
(full context)
...the right time to deal with the situation, which she plans to do “as a cleaver deals with meat.”
(full context)
