Two Gallants (short story)

This article is about the short story by James Joyce; for information about the band, see Two Gallants (band).

"Two Gallants" is a short story by James Joyce published in his 1914 collection Dubliners.

The story

In the evening, a young man named Corley is walking with his friend Lenehan and telling him about a woman he has seduced. His attitude towards her is clearly scornful, and he is happy to relate that she pays his tram fare and has brought him cigars stolen from the house where she is a maid. Corley considers the arrangement superior to when he used to take women out and spend money on them. A rendezvous has been arranged with the woman. As Corley meets her, Lenehan appraises her at a distance, yielding an unflattering description of her physical attributes. Over a supper of peas, Lenehan thinks enviously of Corley and contemplates his own lack of achievement at the age of thirty-one. He dreams of settling down with a "simple-minded" woman. After eating, Lenehan wanders around a bit more before meeting up with Corley at a previously arranged time. Corley presents him with a gold coin that he has just swindled from the woman, or that the woman stole from her employer on his behalf. Unbeknownst to the reader until now, the pair have been planning to do this all along.

References

• Joyce, James. Dubliners (London: Grant Richards, 1914)