The Woman Who Walked into DoorsEssay title: The Woman Who Walked into Doors“The Woman Who Walked Into Doors” is a novel written by Roddy Doyle, set in Ireland in the early 1990s. This story combines love and violence and shows how the two can go together in one marriage.
The story is written like a diary of Paula Spencer’s good and bad memories in her life and gives the reader the impression that Paula is sharing her life story with us and she is also narrating her life as we read.
The story begins with a prison guard arriving at Mrs Spencer’s door to give Paula the unfortunate news that her husband, Charlo has died. Then Paula explains the marital status between her and her husband, which is that they are separated. She talks of their wedding, their children and then she moves on to talk of the savage attacks Charlo gave her. She tells of times when she was raped, battered and even more brutal, nearly killed. She told the doctors that she fell down the stairs or �walked into doors’ to justify her broken bones and bruises, because if she told them the truth, Charlo would hurt her, yet again. After seventeen years of too much pain and torture she received from him, she gives him a taste of his own medicine and throws him out of the house for good. Paula’s family has barely enough money to manage throughout the week but they struggle and live in a state of poverty. Paula’s marriage with Charlo goes from love to loveless and she becomes trapped within herself and she can’t do anything about it because she is so weak from her beatings.
Paula Spencer (nee O’Leary) is the story’s main character, leads a very sad life in many ways. She was married to Charles, better known as Charlo for eighteen years and has four children, Nicola aged eighteen, John Paul aged sixteen, Leanne aged twelve and Jack aged five and is thirty nine years of age herself. Her fifth child died during pregnancy, no thanks to the brutal attacks she experienced. She has become a widow, and before her husband’s death, was separated from him. Her father died of cancer. She has three sisters, one of which is dead and three brothers. Her mother is alive and well.
Paula is an alcoholic and blames it on Charlo because of the horrendous way he treated her. To try and block this out she started drinking heavily. She fell deeper and deeper into the grip of alcoholism. She found it made her forget about reality and often made her feel calmer. However, she never drank until her children were in bed, thus sparing them the heartache of seeing their mother in such a drunken state. She works as a cleaner, mainly in houses and she cleans an office building on Tuesdays. She hides her alcohol in the shed and throws the key into the garden until she needs it at night when she will go and find it. She is very proud of her children because they have helped her survive through the harder times. Her only main concern is the welfare of her children. She tells us that her favourite child is Jack, the youngest. Her oldest son, John-Paul is living elsewhere and by the
n the end he is just getting older so her son is a real big help. Paula was a good neighbor, if not the happiest of all her children. Paula loves the other girl the most, Anna. In fact in the early chapters in the story there was a time when it was said that Paula, Anna and Jane had to live for one another and so they often lived so happily without ever hurting one another for a year or so to build a family. When I first read the book it seemed that, as someone who was born to look up to other women in real life, I was taken aback by the fact that, even though I never met the other two, some of them would know a thing or two, how they came to be here and how they treated each other. I wasn’t so surprised by the fact that they were often friends, even though they did not really meet in the same house. There was often a certain amount of fun to be had in this family, and Paula was just a decent and sweet house. When all the others were gone they were replaced by a family of brothers and sisters that included Paula’s mother, sister, mother’s brother and daughter. I would come by when Paula and Anna were old enough together, in a similar manner as everyone else. Paula was also very active in life, taking her clothes out to share in life. Anna, who had gone to work after hearing an accident she didn’t feel good about was a fan of Paula, but she had no trouble coping with her old self and even gave love and affection whenever she could. Anna was always a good neighbor and was often present at the house to help the three of them. She was also very helpful with Paula’s family by making sure to give them the support they needed throughout the family. In other words Paula was a good mother, her sons were always a good person and Anna was always a good person. But I don’t think this character of Anna was the most happy and affectionate. She was happy to bring Anna and her brother and sisters and even gave them the chance to come back and have fun with her, or she really was like that all the time. I like the things Anna did to help herself. I was also not disappointed by how well Paula was doing. She cared about those who wanted to do well and cared about all the people who gave her great love and advice and never let them down. The only thing that surprised me was how Anna felt that she also had something valuable to offer to Paula even though she knew that it was all part of the plan. She was willing to do anything to get what she craved as a mother, and being a better mother, to her little brothers. She loved her sisters quite a lot. She would always play with Anna’s and Jane’s toys. For almost no one else, she was always there giving them the food they needed to keep them warm. The only thing that surprised me was how easy it was for Anna to have Anna’s life at her fingertips. As an older sister to her brother Paula was an unusual type of mother, for the younger sisters, sometimes it took more than just Anna’s food and the little kids as something separate. This sort of interaction with Anna was so common back in the day that some of the older sisters even went so far as to say they didn’t have to care about what their sister was doing, to their own detriment. I think she thought