Penelope: In Search of the Feminist in James Joyce
Ulysses is an oeuvre in rebellion against society’s standards of race, class, and religion, against traditional images of sexuality and gender. Its final book, “Penelope,” is a reflection of this rebellion, however its true feminist character has been an issue of contention among critics. A more grounded vision of Joyce’s feminism can be found through an understanding of the two main cultural influences that shaped him: Irish-Catholic views on the feminine and Victorian morality. Joyce rebelled against their repressive attitudes toward sexuality and social relationships as evidenced in his unconventional relationship with Nora, his reshaping of the idea of “woman,” the female artists and intellectuals that formed his inner circle, and his support of their movement.
This break from tradition is a central quality in Ulysses. Molly Bloom is not the two-dimensional caricature many have suggested. She is so much more than that. Molly rebels against her traditional domestic role, is a voice for female emancipation, an example for feminine power, and the embodiment of unified sensuality and spirituality. These untraditional qualities have led some critics to accuse Molly of being a mere projection of the male psyche, without a real voice of her own. These criticisms ignore the powerful way in which Molly challenges commonly held beliefs about female sexuality. Despite the hint of the creator’s voice in his creation, Molly is presence unto herself, Joyce’s definitive statement of women as powerful, sexual beings.
When James Joyce wrote Ulysses, it was a rebellion against everything Christian Europe held as moral and true. He questioned tr...
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...7Ellman. James Joyce., p. 41.
18Ellman. Letters., p. 61.
19Ellman, Letters., p. 165.
20Ellman, Letters., p. 169.
21Ellman. Letters., p. 181.
22Staley, p. 18.
23Ellman. Letters, p. 285.
24Brown, p. 99.
25Brown, p. 99.
26Kime Scott, Pp. 16-18.
27Ellman. Letters., p. 259.
28Kime. p. 16-18.
29Power, p. 35.
30Staley, p. 140.
31Staley, p. 103.
32(Letter from George Bernard Shaw) Ellman, Richard. James Joyce., p. 507.
33(Paul Claudel) Ellman. James Joyce. P. 530.
34Ellman, Letters. Pp. 66-67.
35Brown, p. 112.
36Staley, P. 139.
37Adams, p. 169.
38Friedman., p. 210
39Henke., p. 234.
40Ellman. Letters, p. 278.
It is hard to comprehend how and why people lose their sanity and become mad. I will address how the mind’s struggles caused by individual genes, stress and social-cultural influence affect the lives of Naomi, a 24-year-old college student with schizophrenia and Eric, a 27-year-old classical musician with severe depression. Their thoughts and behavior surprised me as this is my first time exposed to what these mental illnesses are. The relation between the mind and the body and the fact that the emotions affect the functioning of the body and vice versa explains the how and why a person become insane.
He was very instrumental in developing the French Sign Language (Langue des Signes Francaise, LSF). Epee's sign language class grew from 2 students in the late 1760's, to 6 students, and ten years later there were 30 students in the class. By his death in 1789 there were over 60 students. Thomas Gallaudet, a Protestant minister, was sent by philanthropists to learn the art of teaching Deaf people. The Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons opened in April of 1817.Laurent Clerc, a student of Epee, was the head teacher. Toward the middle of the 19th century, deaf children were beginning to be more accepted. Most deaf children completed and elementary education and some even went on to "higher" education. An oral school for the Deaf was organized in Massachusetts in the late 1860's. by Samuel Gridley Howe, an American educator. In 1867 there were 26 American institutions for the education of Deaf children and all of them taught ASL, by 1907 there were 139 institutions and NONE of them taught ASL. It was banned by a special congress and only oral teaching was allowed. Even today, ASL still struggles as the main language of the Deaf because of the decisions of those in the late 1800's and early
West Virginia and Kentucky have been faced with a rise in health-related issues, leading the nation in cancer-related deaths. Many of those cases have been said to be caused from greater exposer to pollution from coal-mining activity, which is said to increase your chances for cancer along with other fatal diseases. The Appalachia area has seen a rise in mortality rates, over 60,000 cases of those being cancer-related deaths directly linked to mountaintop removal practices. Mountaintop removal has been deemed as cleaner and safer than men going below ground to mine for coal, but with Appalachian communities- primarily in West Virginia, Kentucky and Southwestern Virginia seeing a high rise in cancer, cardiovascular disease, and birth defects rates, mountaintop removal has been looked at as one of the main causes.
James Joyce author of Dubliners, is a book which examines the everyday life of people who live in Dublin. In this intimate portrayal of Dubliners, Joyce writes short stories about the individuals in Irish society. In Dubliners many characters feel the pressure of society, and show their desires to escape. In the stories “Eveline”, “Counterparts” and “The Dead”, the themes of individuals v. society and journey through escape are present. In each story there is a powerful person present that controls a particular person or situation. In Dublin jobs are very important, since they control the social standing in their society. Dublin itself is a major issue to the characters in Dubliners; they wrestle with the ideas of being able to escape.
Joyce Carol Oates was a true change in American Literature. She associated many novels that revealed political stances along with physical and psychological pain. (1) Joyce grew up in a rough neighborhood in Detroit, Michigan. It was not uncommon for her to behold mistreatment, abuse, and gang violence; especially towards women. Detroit was a major political city were women’s rights were being fought. (2) Physical brawls broke out all over the city due to the uprising of women who wanted the same rights as men. (2) This uprising was called the Feminist Rights Movement. Women were mistreated and held unequal to men, they were not even allowed to be apart of any work force or vote. (7) organizations for women started to emerge all of the united States. (4) Joyce took experiences that she undertook and witnessed first hand and used them cleverly in her novels. (3) She accumulated her experiences in one of her most famous novels We Were the Mulvaney’s. (5) This novel refers to both physical and psychological pain among all the characters. Rape, death, abuse and how women were treated were all presented in this book. (5) Mrs. Mulvaney, the mother, always tended to her husbands needs, even if she disagreed with them. Mrs. Mulvaney had no say in any of the matters that arose. She even sent away her own daughter for the better of her husband.
National Library of Medicine, National Institute of Health. Schizophrenia. 31 Jan 2013. Web. 15 May 2014
The deaf community does not see their hearing impairment as a disability but as a culture which includes a history of discrimination, racial prejudice, and segregation. According to an online transcript,“Through Deaf Eyes” (Weta and Florentine films/Hott productions Inc., 2007) there are thirty-five million Americans that are hard of hearing. Out of the thirty-five million an estimated 300,000 people are completely deaf. There are ninety percent of deaf people who have hearing parents (Halpern, C., 1996). Also, most deaf parents have hearing children. With this being the exemplification, deaf people communicate on a more intimate and significant level with hearing people all their lives. “Deaf people can be found in every ethnic group, every region, and every economic class” (Weta and Florentine films/Hott productions Inc., 2007). The deaf culture and hard of hearing have plenty of arguments and divisions with living in a hearing world without sound however, that absence will be a starting point of an identity within their culture as well as the hearing culture (Weta and Florentine films/Hott productions Inc., 2007).
A collection of short stories published in 1907, Dubliners, by James Joyce, revolves around the everyday lives of ordinary citizens in Dublin, Ireland (Freidrich 166). According to Joyce himself, his intention was to "write a chapter of the moral history of [his] country and [he] chose Dublin for the scene because the city seemed to [b]e the centre of paralysis" (Friedrich 166). True to his goal, each of the fifteen stories are tales of disappointment, darkness, captivity, frustration, and flaw. The book is divided into four sections: childhood, adolescence, maturity, and public life (Levin 159). The structure of the book shows that gradually, citizens become trapped in Dublin society (Stone 140). The stories portray Joyce's feeling that Dublin is the epitome of paralysis and all of the citizens are victims (Levin 159). Although each story from Dubliners is a unique and separate depiction, they all have similarities with each other. In addition, because the first three stories -- The Sisters, An Encounter, and Araby parallel each other in many ways, they can be seen as a set in and of themselves. The purpose of this essay is to explore one particular similarity in order to prove that the childhood stories can be seen as specific section of Dubliners. By examining the characters of Father Flynn in The Sisters, Father Butler in An Encounter, and Mangan's sister in Araby, I will demonstrate that the idea of being held captive by religion is felt by the protagonist of each story. In this paper, I argue that because religion played such a significant role in the lives of the middle class, it was something that many citizens felt was suffocating and from which it was impossible to get away. Each of the three childhood stories uses religion to keep the protagonist captive. In The Sisters, Father Flynn plays an important role in making the narrator feel like a prisoner. Mr. Cotter's comment that "… a young lad [should] run about and play with young lads of his own age…" suggests that the narrator has spent a great deal of time with the priest. Even in death, the boy can not free himself from the presence of Father Flynn (Stone 169) as is illustrated in the following passage: "But the grey face still followed me. It murmured; and I understood that it desired to confess something.
In the novel's opening story, "The Sisters," Joyce elevates this concern with writing "reality" from sub-theme to theme: the story is an extended meditation on textuality just as much as it is the story of a boy and a priest. By beginning with a metatext Joyce brilliantly opens up the entire collection for a different kind of reading, one based on noticing rather than overlooking literature's limitations. With...
Kumar, Udaya. The Joycean Labyrinth: Repetition, Time, and Tradition in Ulysses. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1991.
Levin, Harry. "The Artist." James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: Text, Criticism, and Notes. Ed. Chester G. Anderson. New York: Penguin, 1968. 399-415.
Joyce is a master of style, and readers can find a different one for each of his major works (Magill’s 1342). This excerpt from Magill’s is an excellent way to describe James Joyce’s writing because it is a true statement.Throughout many of his works he use many different themes to make his stories more interesting to the reader, and one of those is his use of institutions. Throughout Dubliners Joyce make many hints about views on religion, what he thinks about the world, and views about politics. These thoughts and views are found in three short stories found in Dubliners. The first story is “A Mother” which gives the reader a view of the musical world seen in Dublin (Magill’s 1343). I “A Mother” it talks about a man further named Mr. Holohan who is trying to organize a concert in Dublin which would feature a young well-...
To me, Ulysses was a necessary evil, in that I thought that I would not be able to call myself a literature student unless I had read the entire novel. While my journey through Ulysses was laden with moments of bewilderment, exasperation, and self-pity, I was able to power my way through the novel with a deeper appreciation for the way James Joyce was able to create a linear story told through a series of non-linear writing styles. In retrospect, the grueling challenge of reading Ulysses made me a better student, in that I was able to grow as a reader by adjusting myself to Joyce’s train-of-thought writing style, and that I could add Ulysses to my personal canon of academic literature.
James Joyce's fragment of a novel, Stephen Hero, leaves the reader little room to interpret the text for themselves. The work lacks the narrative distance that Joyce achieves in his later works. Dubliners, a work Joyce was writing concurrently, seemingly employs a drastically different voice. A voice which leaves the reader room to make judgments of their own. Yet it is curious that Joyce could produce these two works at the same time, one that controls the reader so directly, telling not showing , while the other, Dubliners, seems to give the reader the power of final interpretation over the characters it portrays.
James Joyce often portrays women as insignificant background characters because of the role of women during the period he wrote, but there are a few instances when a woman is essential to the story. “Araby”, “Eveline,” and “The Death” all are those cases where a woman is indispensable to the story.