Abstract: This essay examines different female kinship models appearing in Joyce’s works as a way of encouraging productive conversations about inclusive, historically mindful academic practices. It argues that moments of female sociability in Joyce’s works are brief and that relationships between women are complicated and often flawed. But as this contribution also shows, Joyce’s flawed depictions of female kinship roles allow us to consider aspirational models of female solidarity that are relevant for readers, not least for women working in the androcentric world of Joyce studies today.
Abstract: This essay questions the extent to which Gerty MacDowell fits the label of “disabled,” “lame,” or any other contiguous term; and, more broadly, it considers the ways in which “Nausicaa” engages with (or evades) contemporary disability and gender-related discourses. Identity and identification are key themes; I examine the fashioning of Gerty’s identity and address the impact of her multilayered characterization on readers—disabled women readers, in particular—seeking identification and relatability. In doing this, I challenge several ingrained interpretations, including the long-held view that Gerty’s limp was caused by a bicycle accident, the idea that “Nausicaa” can be neatly divided into two clear perspectives, and the identification of Joyce’s Gerty MacDowell with Maria Susanna Cummins’s Gerty Flint. Via genetic and intertextual study, paired with insights drawn from disability studies and personal criticism, I propose alternative models of disability with which Gerty (and her readers) might identify.
Abstract: This essay examines the recent literary reimaginings of Nora Barnacle, James Joyce’s lifelong partner, with particular focus on Mary Morrissy’s Penelope Unbound (2023). Situating Morrissy’s speculative rewriting of Nora’s life alongside Nuala O’Connor’s Nora (2021), the essay explores how both writers move Nora from the margins of Joyce’s biography to the center of her own narrative. By envisioning an alternative life for Nora—one unbound from Joyce—Morrissy reclaims her autonomy and reconfigures the myth of Penelope, challenging traditional gender roles and the trope of the passive, waiting wife. Through intertextual play, fictionalized biography, and feminist critique, Morrissy not only disrupts Joyce’s canonical shadow but also amplifies Nora’s distinct identity and agency. In dialogue with O’Connor and other contemporary Irish women writers, her work highlights the broader feminist project of reinserting women into Irish literary and cultural history, thereby reshaping both Joyce’s legacy and the evolving canon of Irish literature.
Abstract: This essay will consider, and at times challenge, a critical history of reading the “Penelope” episode of Ulysses . I argue that misogyny in various forms has often been a shaping force which has limited our reading of the episode. In fact, the critical record may form a barrier to imaginative and empathetic understanding of women’s experience and so also limit our reading of Joyce’s fictional approach to that experience. I believe that it is important to acknowledge and move on from this misogynistic cultural background given the importance of appropriate citation in our field and beyond. My reflections thus also celebrate more generous previous scholarship by critics like Vicki Mahaffey, Marian Eide, Christine Froula, Katherine Mullin, Casey Lawrence, and Julie McCormick-Weng, which can offer us a way forward to a more nuanced, future-proof account of Joyce’s representation of women. My model is Kathleen McCormick’s 1994 revisionist history of the episode, which addressed how Molly Bloom’s reception went through several phases between 1922 and 1970 including “Earth Mother” and “Satanic Mistress” tropes, with which critics used to respond to Joyce’s work. My essay updates her account of Molly, taking us up to the present day; still, where McCormick originally saw tremendous progress in her own time, I am currently feeling more cautious. My intervention ultimately offers a warning of the dangers of regressing into a previous misogynistic mode of thought at a time of cultural crisis.
Abstract: James Joyce’s short story, “An Encounter,” depicts the lives of two boys on a day when they skip school and are confronted by a sexual predator. In published manuscripts and correspondence, Joyce and his brother Stanislaus claimed that the events in the story were based upon their “actual personal experience,” and they would write about their memories of the predatory man. If the fictionalized encounter represents the nature of the real one, then the children were victim-survivors of a form of non-contact sexual abuse. Today we would describe this abuse as an act of sexual harassment and the exploitation of children. The Joyce brothers’ claim is rarely acknowledged in scholarship or footnotes to critical editions of Dubliners . This essay argues that their experience must be brought into the central discourse of the text, for “An Encounter” tells us a story about Joyce and his time as well as a story about us and our time. Joyce’s troubled efforts to get the story published and the varied reception of his claim of having met the predator himself share relevant connections to the way that we assess and respond to the testimonies of victim-survivors today, including the authenticity and significance of those testimonies. His experience also prompts scholars to consider how ethically to approach fictionalized representations of sexual harassment in literature, such as the one depicted in “An Encounter.” Joyce’s short story is not a testimony but a creative rendering of a biographical event. With this challenging context in mind, the essay provides methodologies for researching and teaching “An Encounter,” while also developing an ethics for placing the story alongside Joyce’s biography.
Abstract: This essay argues for a more inclusive and feminist version of literary history by pointing to the significance of Harriet Shaw Weaver (1876–1961), who is best known as James Joyce’s editor, publisher, and patron. The article seeks to understand Weaver as an individual—her motivations, values, and emotional world—through a detailed examination of approximately 250 letters which she sent to Sylvia Beach between 1920 and 1961. The correspondence is rich in personal detail and offers insight into the emotional and intellectual lives of both women. Topics covered include: Weaver’s relationship with Dora Marsden; her membership of the Communist Party; the challenges of publishing Ulysses ; the significance of her financial support of Joyce; her care for his daughter Lucia; and her efforts to preserve and donate Joyce’s papers, which have shaped his reputation. Weaver’s life exemplifies “lived dissidence”—a quiet but radical commitment to literature, politics, and care. Her correspondence with Beach reveals a woman of deep loyalty, intellect, and emotional complexity.
Abstract: Joyce’s work shows that the categories of male and female are not mutually exclusive; if they were, “pure” men would be helplessly violent and “pure” women mere feeders who double as food for the hunter-men. The qualities of aggression and defense, on the one hand, and of nurturance and care, on the other, work better in tandem. The caricatures of maleness and femaleness spring from an exaggeration of the genitals: the Priapus versus the vaginal doorway of the Sheela na gig. If we turn our attention to the mouth, the opposition breaks down, because the mouth has both penetrative and incorporative powers. The mouth can eat and speak, but it can also kiss. For Joyce, perhaps drawing from Shelley in “The Poet’s Dream” (which Stephen quotes in Stephen Hero ), kissing can be seen as a creative form of relation in which violation and nurturance are not in conflict, and reciprocity is not only possible but pleasurable. The kiss offers a model for the relation between author and reader, mediated by the page.
