AI-Powered Rewrites: Shifting Perspectives

Harnessing AI to Reimagine Mrs. Sinico’s Voice in James Joyce’s Classic ‘A Painful Case’

One way you can use AI to flesh out a story is to change the character perspective. I decided to test it with “A Painful Case” by James Joyce, as published in Dubliners.

In the original short story, the protagonist is Mr. James Duffy. The short story revolves around his isolated, regimented life and his brief relationship with Mrs. Emily Sinico. Through his perspective, we see the events unfold, including his initial attraction to her intellect, their growing friendship, and ultimately his decision to sever ties with her. The story explores his emotional detachment, regret, and the consequences of his choices. But what if we used AI to change the story and focus on the perspective of Mrs. Emily Sinico?

Read the original short story here first.

Prompt: Rewrite this public domain short story from the perspective of Mrs. Emily Sinico. Focus on her inner thoughts and how she feels about the events unfolding. Draw out her hidden motives and emotions. Capture her unique voice, provide new insights that may not have been clear in the original short story. Provide a perspective that shifts how she is different from the protagonist in their relationship to the main events.

Mrs. Emily Sinico’s Perspective

I still don’t know how it began. How I found myself pulled into this quiet, secluded world that was Mr. Duffy. His words, his restraint, his severity — at first, it felt like a lifeline. A man who spoke in absolutes, in logic. It was all so different from the shapeless, mundane patterns of my own days. His precision, his control… I had grown tired of all the things that could not be spoken aloud in my own life. And so, when I saw him that first time in the concert hall, I took a step closer. It wasn’t an accident. But it wasn’t entirely deliberate, either.

Captain Sinico was a good man, in his way, but he had long since stopped seeing me. Our daughter, Mary, was nearly grown, with her own life emerging, her own world that I could no longer fully inhabit. My husband spent so many nights away, and I found the house — our life — emptier than I ever imagined it could be. I became invisible in my own home, a shadow that flitted through rooms, the walls shrinking around me like a slow suffocation.

When Mr. Duffy spoke to me that evening, I saw in his eyes something that mirrored my own quiet desperation. He was lonely too. Not the same kind of loneliness that I had known, but an aloof isolation, self-imposed, I think. I was drawn to it, that cold distance. I wanted to touch it, to melt it. And perhaps in doing so, to dissolve something within myself as well. When we talked, it was as if we were shedding layers, but carefully, in measured words. I learned that he was a man of few desires, no friends, no lovers. Yet his mind was rich, brimming with thoughts. He was a man of great ideals but little human warmth. He spoke as though life was something that should be examined from afar, as if he feared it might soil him if he got too close.

As we continued to meet, I felt myself drawn into his world — or at least the version of it he allowed me to see. He shared books, ideas, theories. He opened a door to a part of myself I hadn’t realized was there — a thirst for knowledge, for depth. I was no longer just a wife, just a mother. In his eyes, I was someone worth conversing with, worth engaging.

But I began to want more. The thoughts and ideas he fed me weren’t enough. They couldn’t fill the space I had so carefully carved out for him. I started to realize that what I wanted was not just companionship or intellectual stimulation — I wanted connection, warmth, a human touch.

The night I reached for his hand, it was impulsive, an instinct I didn’t fully understand. I had been so wrapped up in his voice, in the ideas we were spinning together, that the line between thought and emotion blurred. I didn’t mean to startle him. I didn’t mean to ask for something he wasn’t ready to give. But I was so hungry for it, so desperate for something to feel beyond the words. His hand, cool and unmoving in mine, was the first real thing I had touched in so long.

I should have known better.

The days that followed were a haze of regret. I replayed that moment in my mind, wondering if I had imagined the distance that grew between us. I had frightened him, I knew that. I had shattered the pristine, sterile connection we had built. He didn’t want what I wanted. He couldn’t. I was a fool to think that he might.

When we finally met again, it was cold, as if he had already buried me in his mind. His words were as rigid as ever, but there was no warmth left in them. He spoke of bonds and sorrow, as if he was delivering a lecture to a room of strangers. We agreed, if you could call it that, to end things. But it wasn’t a mutual decision. I had no choice. He was already gone.

I trembled as we said goodbye, the weight of the finality pressing down on me. As I walked away, I realized how small I had become in his eyes. A passing moment, easily dismissed.

I sent back the books. What else was I to do? They belonged to him. Our entire relationship, in the end, belonged to him. He had crafted it, controlled it. I was merely the vessel, filled with his thoughts, emptied when he saw fit.

Years passed, and I tried to forget. I tried to move on. But the void he left behind was deeper than I could have imagined. At night, when the house was quiet and Captain Sinico was away, I would sit in the dark, feeling the weight of that emptiness. Sometimes, I would drink. It dulled the edges, made the nights shorter.

That last night, I don’t know why I was at the train station. Maybe I was chasing something, or maybe I had stopped running from it. I stood on the tracks, the cool metal beneath my feet. The world seemed to narrow to a single point, the light of the approaching train growing larger, brighter. For a moment, I thought of Mr. Duffy, of the life I had almost touched. But it was too late for such thoughts.

It was a most painful case, they said. But they didn’t know. They didn’t understand how long the pain had been with me. How, long before that train ever came, I had already been lost.

The days felt endless after our final meeting, the silence between us heavier than the conversations we used to share. What had once been evenings filled with the hum of ideas, theories, and debates now became long, hollow stretches of time. He had spoken so passionately about the loneliness of the soul, about how we are each bound to our own existence, unable to truly give ourselves to another. But I hadn’t understood until he left just how lonely I was in his absence. He had preached solitude as though it were a virtue, but it was a weight I could no longer carry.

I didn’t want solitude. I wanted life. I wanted warmth. I wanted to feel something other than the cold rationality he worshiped. But he had made it clear, hadn’t he? With his careful words, with his precise withdrawal. His world was built on logic and reason, and my need for something more — for connection, for affection — had no place in it.

I became someone else after that. I had to, or I would have disappeared entirely. My husband continued his long absences, and when he was home, he was a stranger. We had lived in parallel worlds for years, intersecting only when necessary, as if we were performers in a play that no one bothered to watch anymore. I tried to find solace in Mary, in her company, in her music, but she was young, full of hope and dreams, and I couldn’t bear to burden her with the weight of my disillusionment.

At night, when the house was still, I would sit in that darkened room and replay those months with Mr. Duffy. How had I let myself fall so far into his orbit? How had I allowed his cold intellectualism to replace the warmth I had so desperately needed? I thought I was awakening something in him, but in the end, it was I who had been undone. His words had seeped into me, convincing me that perhaps it was my own desires that were flawed, that my yearning for something more was misguided, even shameful. He made me feel like a child, grasping for something intangible, something unnecessary.

But that night, when I took his hand, it had been a cry for help, hadn’t it? A plea for him to see me, really see me. Not as a mind to be filled or a body to be avoided, but as a woman, with needs, with feelings. His response, or lack of it, told me everything I needed to know. He could never see me as I saw him. To him, I was just a curiosity, an intellectual exercise, a fleeting distraction from his orderly existence. He did not want the messiness of life, of love. He wanted control, and I had disrupted that control.

I drank more in the months that followed, but it wasn’t to forget him. It wasn’t even to numb the pain. It was to fill the silence, to quiet the questions that kept surfacing. Was it my fault? Had I been too needy, too emotional? Was I asking for something he simply couldn’t give? Or was I just another woman, another fleeting moment in a life of carefully calculated loneliness?

I tried to join Mary’s temperance league, but it felt pointless. I was drowning, and there was no lifeline strong enough to pull me back. The people around me didn’t know, couldn’t know. To them, I was still Mrs. Sinico, the dutiful wife, the supportive mother. But inside, I was unraveling, thread by thread.

That last night, I stood by the tracks and thought of all the years that stretched before me. More silence, more solitude, more nights in that empty house, waiting for something — anything — to change. I thought of my husband, absent even when he was present. I thought of Mary, full of life and hope, and how distant we had become. And I thought of Mr. Duffy, that cold, precise man, whose words had once ignited something in me but had left me with nothing but ashes.

The train was coming. I could hear it, see the light cutting through the darkness. In that moment, I felt something stir inside me, something that hadn’t been there for a long time. It wasn’t fear, or even regret. It was a kind of release. I didn’t have to carry this weight anymore. I didn’t have to endure the endless nights, the suffocating silence, the gnawing loneliness.

For a fleeting second, I thought of stepping back, of turning around and walking away. But where would I go? Back to that house, to that life that had become a prison? No. There was no going back. The train was getting closer, and the air was thick with its approach. I closed my eyes, and for the first time in what felt like years, I felt peace.

When I opened them again, it was too late.

The original short story is about 4,300 words. The rewrite has about 1,700 words.

After reading, I was left with the vague sense Mrs. Emily Sinico committed suicide:

Prompt: In the rewrite, was it an accident, or did Mrs. Emily Sinico commit suicide?

In the rewrite, there is a strong suggestion that Mrs. Emily Sinico’s death was not an accident but a deliberate act of suicide. Through her inner thoughts, we see her grappling with deep loneliness, emotional emptiness, and a growing sense of hopelessness after her relationship with Mr. Duffy ends. She reflects on the lack of connection in her life, her failed attempts to find solace in her family, and her increasing reliance on alcohol to dull the pain.

By the time she stands on the train tracks, she seems resigned to her fate, expressing a sense of release and peace, which implies that she has made the decision to end her life. The approaching train becomes a symbol of her escape from the pain and isolation that have consumed her, and while she briefly contemplates turning back, she ultimately chooses not to. This depiction suggests that her death was intentional, driven by her overwhelming despair.

Prompt: What is the most interesting thing about the perspective of Mrs. Emily Sinico compared to the perspective of Mr. Duffy?

The most interesting thing about Mrs. Emily Sinico’s perspective, compared to Mr. Duffy’s, is the stark contrast in how each views their relationship and the emotional stakes involved. Mr. Duffy sees their connection as an intellectual exercise, an engagement of the mind, detached from any deep emotional involvement. He is coldly rational, focused on maintaining control and avoiding vulnerability. When Mrs. Sinico expresses deeper feelings by touching his hand, he is repulsed, interpreting her actions as a violation of the boundaries he has carefully constructed.

In contrast, Mrs. Sinico’s perspective reveals her emotional depth and vulnerability. She craves connection, warmth, and affection, which she cannot find in her marriage or in her daily life. For her, the relationship with Mr. Duffy represents a lifeline, a chance to feel truly seen and understood. She is not simply seeking intellectual companionship; she yearns for an emotional bond, one that transcends the sterile, distant interactions they have shared. Her desperation grows as she realizes that Mr. Duffy is unwilling or unable to meet her emotional needs, and this sense of rejection ultimately leads to her tragic end.

The most fascinating aspect of this contrast is how it reveals the fundamental misalignment in their desires. Mr. Duffy, with his rigid emotional detachment, is incapable of understanding or fulfilling the emotional void in Mrs. Sinico’s life. What is an intellectual dalliance for him is a matter of life and death for her. This difference highlights the profound consequences of emotional isolation and unfulfilled desires, with each character embodying a different side of human vulnerability — one that seeks connection and one that flees from it.

And one final prompt to tie it all together:

Prompt: Give me a title for the rewrite of the story.

“Through Her Eyes: The Untold Story of Mrs. Sinico”

What do you think? Le me know in the comments.