A Boarding House" stands alone in Dubliners for giving us a balanced portrait of what both members of a couple feel and think about their relationship. In "Araby," we really only heard things from the narrator's perspective; in "Grace" we only got Mrs Kearney's thoughts on her husband, and in "The Dead" we only know how Gabriel feels about Gretta (with the exception of Gretta's saying, "You are a very generous person, Gabriel"). Here, we see that, by the time Mrs Mooney has confronted Polly about the affair, Mr Doran starts having serious, serious doubts about how compatible he is with her.