Irish Divorce / Joyce's Ulysses

312 Pages·2017·2.32 MB·English

by  Peter Kuch (auth.)

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Irish Divorce/Joyce s Ulysses
Irish Divorce/
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Joyce s Ulysses
Peter Kuch
PeterKuch
UniversityofOtago
Dunedin,NewZealand
ISBN978-1-349-95187-1 ISBN978-1-137-57186-1(eBook)
DOI10.1057/978-1-137-57186-1
LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2017939123
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“Ignorantiajurisnon excusat.”
“Every manispresumed toknow the law.”
For Declan
P
REFACE
ThisbookoffersarevisionistreadingofJoyce’sUlyssesbyexaminingIrish
attitudes to marriage and the wide-ranging English, Irish, American, and
French debates about divorce that were conducted between 1904, when
Joyce’snovelofadulteryisset,and1922,whenitwaspublished.Itdraws
attentiontoanIrishpracticethat,eventhoughitwasknownatthe time,
hassincedisappearedfromthecritical,historical,andlegalliteratureabout
Ulyssesandabout Irishdivorce.
ItiswellknownthatJoycewasanavidreaderofnewspapers,themost
commonandpopular sourceof information about divorce.1
1Garry Leonard, Advertising and Commodity Culture in Joyce (Gainesville:
University Press of Florida, 1998); Barbara Leckie, Culture and Adultery: The
Novel, the Newspaper and the Law 1857–1914 (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1999); Declan Kiberd, “Ulysses, Newspapers and
Modernism,” in Irish Classics (London: Granta Books, 2000), 463–81; Barbara
Leckie, “The Simple Case of Adultery,” JamesJoyce Quarterly 40, no. 4 (2003):
729–52; Katherine Mullin, James Joyce, Sexuality and Social Purity (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003); James A. Reppke, “Journalist Joyce: A
Portrait,” James Joyce Quarterly 45, nos. 3–4 (2008): 459–68; R. Brandon
Kershner, The Culture of Joyce’s “Ulysses” (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2010); Jennifer Wicke, “Modernity Must Advertise: Aura, Desire, and
Decolonization in Joyce,” James Joyce Quarterly 50, nos. 1–2 (2012–2013):
203–21; Margot Backus, Scandal Work: James Joyce, the New Journalism, and
the Home Rule Newspaper Wars (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame
Press,2013).
ix
x PREFACE
It is also well known that Joyce was fascinated by accounts of divorce
hearingsthatappearedalmostdailyintheIrishpressfromDilke(1886)to
Parnell(1890),totheestablishmentoftheFreeStatein1922,2andwith
increasingfrequencyintheEnglishpressbetweenthe1857ActtoAmend
theLawRelatingtoDivorceandMatrimonialCausesinEnglandandthe
1926JudicialProceedings(RegulationofReports)Act,whichenforceda
measure ofrestraint.3
Whathasnotbeenrealizedisthatthedualtime-schemeofUlysses,setin
1904butwrittenwhileIrelandwasviolentlyrenegotiatingitsrelationship
toEmpire,providedJoycewithastancefromwhichtointerrogatewaysin
whichsometimesrivalandsometimescollusiveImperialandEcclesiastical
hegemonies forged the Edwardian Irish social imaginary. What unwit-
tingly resulted from this complex, shifting contestation for control of the
IrishmindwastheprovisionofaspacethatgaveIrishlitigants,from1858
to1922,limitedaccesstotheProbate,DivorceandAdmiraltyDivisionof
the King’s Bench,whichsat only in London.
Consequently, no one has investigated the extent to which Bloom’s
“Divorce, not now” and Molly’s “suppose I divorced him” are realistic
possibilities rather than passing fantasies (17.2202; 18.846), and no one
hasinvestigatedtheextenttowhichBloom’sandMolly’sthoughtsabout
divorce,thoughtsthatfindexpressionintheearlyhoursof17June1904,
arise fromandcolorall eighteen episodesof Ulysses.
IrishDivorce/Joyce’s“Ulysses”demonstratesthatdivorcewasarealis-
ticoptionfortheBlooms—whetherwhim,fantasy,wish,orconviction—
following Molly’s affair with Hugh Boylan. It does so, in an attempt
to avoid presentism,4 by cross-referencing the fifty-fourth edition
of Every Man’s Own Lawyer (1919) Joyce is known to have possessed
with contemporary Ecclesiastical and Parliamentary debates, public
2DiarmaidFerriter,OccasionsofSin:SexandSocietyinModernIreland(London:
ProfileBooks,2009),105–6;PeterMartin,CensorshipintheTwoIrelands,1922–
1939(Dublin:IrishAcademicPress,2006),32.
3See Gail Savage, “Erotic Stories and Public Decency: Newspaper Reporting of
DivorceProceedingsinEngland,”TheHistoricalJournal41,no.2(1998):511–
28. The Judicial Proceedings Act can be accessed at http://bailii.austlii.edu.au/
uk/legis/num_act/1926/ukpga_19260061_en.html.
4MartinJay,“HistoricalExplanationandtheEvent:ReflectionsontheLimitsof
Contextualization,”NewLiteraryHistory42(2011):557–71.
PREFACE xi
enquiries, relevant legal texts, and the 1912 Royal Commission on
divorce. It also cross-references 1,500 divorce cases reported in various
detail in the Irish and English newspapers that Joyce read whenever he
couldgetaccesstocopieswithsome850DivorceCourtMinutesdepos-
itedintheNationalArchivesinLondon,particularlythosethatrelateto
Irish pleas of the period.
ThebookfurtherengageswitharichveinofJoycescholarshiprevealed
by Richard Brown’s James Joyce and Sexuality (1985), Joseph Valente’s
James Joyce and the Problem of Justice: Negotiating Sexual and Colonial
Difference (1988), Vicki Mahaffey’s Reauthorizing Joyce (1988), Marian
Eide’s Ethical Joyce (2002), Andrew Gibson’s Joyce’s Revenge (2002),
Katherine Mullin’s James Joyce, Sexuality and Social Purity (2003), and
LucaCrispi’sJoyce’sCreativeProcessandtheConstructionofCharactersin
“Ulysses”:Becoming theBlooms (2015).
It concludes that the Blooms’ commitment to one another is more
provisional than has previously been realized and that the engorged full
stop at the end of “Ithaca” and Molly’s final “Yes.” represent temporary
accommodationsratherthanforgiveness,qualifiedcommitment,orsepara-
tion. And itmaps several ofthe pathsbywhich Bloomand Mollybecome
interpellatedbytheheuristicandlegaldiscoursesassociatedwithdivorce.
Irish Divorce / Joyce’s “Ulysses” is not a book about Joyce’s attitude or
attitudestodivorceoraboutdivorceinJoyce’scorpus,asrelevantassome
critics believe Exiles and Giacomo Joyce are to understanding Bloom’s
situation. Nor is it a book about divorce in Finnegans Wake, or what
might happen tothe Blooms after16June1904.
Instead,itproposesthatknownIrishaccesstotheProbate,Divorceand
AdmiraltyDivisionoftheKing’sBench,theprominencegiventodivorce
in Edwardian print culture, and the extent to which divorce was being
expunged from the Irish social imaginary even while Ulysses was being
writtenchallengedJoycetoreconfigurehisdomesticodysseyasanovelof
adultery by interrogating ways in which competing narratives, multiple
voices, and self-reflexivity were played off against one another within a
patriarchal legal discourse about divorce that had been and was being
widely discussed in England, Ireland, and France (though not Italy5)
throughoutthe first two decadesof the twentiethcentury.
5MarkSeymour,DebatingDivorceinItaly:MarriageandtheMakingofModern
Italians(London:PalgraveMacmillan,2006).
xii PREFACE
As he was writing Ulysses, Joyce came to realize that Irish recourse to
theEnglishjurisdictionfordecreesabsoluteprovidedhimwithaspaceto
dramatizeonewayofsubvertingthepowerof“theimperialBritishstate”
(utilizing the state’s definition of “domicile” against itself) and the “holy
Roman catholic and apostolic church” (obtaining a decree absolute) even
while it drew attention to what was actually happening in Edwardian
Ireland(the “Ireland” of“oddjobs”) (1.641–44).
Finally, Irish Divorce / Joyce’s “Ulysses” raises the provocative and timely
questions:whywasIrishrecoursetotheEnglishdivorcecourtexpungedfrom
Joycecriticism,fromIrishhistory,andfromtheIrishsocialimaginarybetween
1922and1986,andwhatdoesthistellusaboutthestateandthenation?