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Literary Paritantra (Systems) Vol 1 Nos 1 & 2 Basant (Spring) 2009, 104 - 109

Joyce and Feminism

Mohammad H. Al-Hamdani
ESL Instructor
Yemen-America Language Institute, Yemen

Abstract
The paper Joyce and Feminism is a study of the themes of the feminist reality that Joyce reflects in
Dubliners in general and in "Eveline" and "The Boarding House" in particular. The paper explores the
use of feminist images in these stories. It provides an interesting view and understanding of Joyces use
of feminism in his texts. The theory has been explained and a case study of the two stories has been
made in the paper. Is his text antifeminist? Or is his text pro-feminist? The paper makes an effort to
present a definite and well-supported answer.

James Joyce produces texts that are interestingly filled with feminine images. Dubliners contains stories that
are highly loaded with feminine images. Examples of such images can be found in "Eveline" and "The Boarding
House". The way Joyce depicts females in his stories may be deceptive for those who are reading Joyce for the
first time. His depiction may seem anti-feminist because of the sufferings and hardships women in Ireland and
women in general go through in his texts. This way of depiction is actually an exposure of the anti-feminist
reality that was prevalent before and in as well as after his time.
Joyce's texts are universal. The feminist reality highlighted and dealt with in his stories is actually the same
reality that most women live all over the world. The hardships Eveline endures can be similar to the ones a
German, Italian or any woman in the rest of the world may go through and that is how Joyce's text gains its
universality. Thus, his exposure of the feminine reality in Ireland becomes the exposure of the reality of
Women all over the world.
This paper will be a study of the themes of the feminist reality that Joyce reflects in Dubliners in general and in
"Eveline" and "The Boarding House" in particular. This paper argues that James Joyce is a feminist writer. His
reflection of this reality does not really mean that he agrees on this reality. His portrayal of the feminist reality
is actually his way of treating and curing this social and moral disease that paralyzes the female society. Joyce's
way of representing females is honest and it is very informative as well as educating. His audience gets to see
the whole image with no impurities. They get to live the cruel reality that women endure which is definitely
the way Joyce treats and cures this reality. This paper will highlight the images and aspects of the feminist
reality represented in the stories mentioned above.
Feminist criticism has come into sight as an outcome of what women suffered through ages especially in
patriarchal societies. There are several versions and schools of feminism that are tangled together. As Dobie
points out in her Theory into Practice, feminist criticism differs in shape and direction from person to person
and from a country to another (Dobie 97). Although feminist criticism may take different forms, it all comes
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down to "the assumption that Western culture is fundamentally patriarchal, creating an imbalance of power
that marginalizes women and their work" (Dobie 97). That is actually what Joyce does; he fights such
patriarchal concepts that imprison and mistreat women.
There are three important categories of feminist criticism. The first category is concerned with Studies of
Difference. The second category deals with Studies of Power. The third and last category focuses on Studies of
Female Experience. It is crucially important to note that Joyce's texts are very fertile soil for the second
category. His text cannot be approached from the stand point of Studies of Difference and Studies of Female
Experience because these two categories require the text examined to be written by female writers.
The Studies of Power category studies the relationship between men and women. This relationship can be
easily understood when we look at Dobie's description of what this category does. She says, "they attack the
economic and the social exploitation of women" (105). This is exactly what happens in James Joyce's "Eveline"
and "The Boarding House". Joyce's reflection of "the economic and the social exploitation of women" is a
condemnation of such exploitive and unjust circumstances surrounding women. An interesting thing is that
this group looks at other writers' works from minorities like Jews, African American and etc. We can see why
such a thing is done. It is simply because of the imbalance of power between such minorities and dominant
majorities. " the common thread uniting these disparate groups is the belief that the social organization has
denied equal treatment to all its segments and that literature is a means of revealing and resisting the social
order" (Dobie 106). This quotation supports what has been stated earlier. Joyce does the same thing. He
focuses on females because of their imbalanced relationship with males and the consequences of such a
relationship. An interesting point revealed here is the fact that this category of feminist criticism does not
focus much on the quality of the text and pays little attention to the aesthetics of the text.
Elaine Showalter, the noted feminist critic uses interesting feminist terms. Her gynocriticism is concerned with
developing a specific female framework for dealing with works written by females (Abrams 90-1). A gynocritic
identifies "feminine subject matters" in literature produced by females (Dobie, 106). It is crucial to be a text
produced by a female writer that is being examined because most of the male writers have produced texts
that help and are in favour of the exploitive reality that females live in. However, a point that proves Joyce is a
feminist writer is the fact that he can be seen as a gynocritic because he highlights feminist subject matters in
a very different way than most male writers do. Moreover, Showalter uses the other French critic Jacques
Lacan's Symbolic Order which is the acceptance of the fathers language by females. The same term can be
applied to women who listen and obey blindly their husbands. Another important term that is used by all
feminist critics is misogyny which is the negative ideas and images some men have about women. It is also an
issue that is highlighted by Joyce as will be explained later.
James Joyce presents certain female stereotypes in "Eveline" and "The Boarding House". In "Eveline" the
narrator talks about the deprived female. It talks about Eveline exclusively. This female character is deprived
from basic things that are mostly granted for humans in vast areas of the world. She is deprived from the
joyous childhood which a lot of children enjoy. This is seen when the narrator speaks at the beginning of the
story of a man from Belfast who buys the field Eveline and her friends used to play on as kids and he builds
houses on it (Joyce, 36). Another aspect of the theme of deprivation is seen in her childhood. When she used
to play in the field as a little girl, her dad would come and hunt her out of the field with a "blackthorn stick"
(Joyce, 36). In this situation the male-female relationship is seen very clearly. The father who is a dominant
male chases the little girl and deprives her of the simplest right she has, which is the right to play. Joyce's use
of the "blackthorn stick" is definitely a phallic image according to psychoanalytical criticism and it is used to

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Mohammad H. Al-Hamdani

hunt a female who does not possess it. This is the psycho-feminist explanation of the use of the "blackthorn
stick". Yet another aspect of the deprivation theme is the death of Eveline's mother. Joyce says, "her father
was not so bad then" (37).The death of her mother made her father worse. He treats her worse than he used
to when her mother was still alive. Thus, she is deprived of her mother and it is a common sense that there can
be no substitute for a mother's compassion and love. In addition to that, Joyce shows his reader the unfolding
result of any kind of imbalance that occurs in the male-female relationship. The last aspect of deprivation in
"Eveline" is the deprivation of a true loving husband. In the story the reader is told that Eveline knows a man
named Frank who is totally the opposite of her father. The story is full of details of how Frank and Eveline like
each other and how he takes her to The Bohemian Girl which makes her happy (Joyce, 39). She thinks of him as
her way out of the misery and hardships she undergoes in Dublin. She believes she has the right to have and
enjoy happiness. She, also, sees Frank as her savior. However, at the end of the story she does not get on the
boat with him and sail to Buenos Aires, Argentina which is geographically opposite of Dublin. It is in the
southern half of the globe, whereas Dublin is in the northern half of it. This can be perceived as Joyce's refusal
of the anti-feminist society that Dublin had at that time and he wanted the total opposite of that. She stays in
Dublin where she suffers. She stays there to take care of her old father who was not nice to her and also she
takes care of her brothers and sisters. Hence, she sees her dream of establishing a new home with Frank
.
Joyce's depiction of the character of Eveline is extremely moral. She suffers a lot of hardships and deprivation
as mentioned above but she never goes astray. She never becomes a bad woman. She does not try to find any
indecent job that would make her much easier money. Some other male writers could have easily directed
such a character as Eveline to prostitution and all kinds of stealing like pocket picking, shoplifting and many
more. Moreover, she does not desert her family but she remains true to them. She stays to take care of her
family and so she keeps the promise she made to her mother. She promised her mother to keep the family
together as long she breathes. Thus Joyce ameliorates the image of females and even proves that they can be
better than men. She sacrifices her own happiness for the good of her family and this is a very noble depiction
of females on James Joyce's part. Not a lot of writers do the same thing Joyce does with his female characters
especially in the timeframe he lived in.
Similarly the theme of deprivation continues to exist in "The Boarding House". Mrs Mooney is known to the
audience to be the daughter of a butcher. Also, she marries her father's "foreman" (Joyce, 61). Although Joyce
uses the phrase "she marries", there is a very strong hint of her marriage being an arranged one. This hint is
materialized through her marriage to her father's foreman which implies her father's interference in her
marriage. Thus her freewill of choosing her life partner is taken away from her and that is her deprivation from
freewill. Another aspect of the deprivation theme in "The Boarding House" is the respect she is deprived of. Mr
Mooney treats her badly and insults her in front of the costumers in the butcher's shop, which is close to
"Spring Gardens" (Joyce, 61). This is also another example of the male-female relationship and the dominance
males practice over females. Joyce sets Mrs Mooney free from her bad husband when she goes to a priest and
gets divorce.
A different feminist theme that Joyce raises is of the working women and their suffering. In "Eveline" Joyce lets
the audience know that Eveline works in stores and also at home. He suggests that Eveline does not like her
job which is reflected in her dilemma to leave or not to leave home. She further says ,"she would not cry many
tears at leaving the stores" (37). She works in the stores though she does not like it. This simply can be
understood as her dire need for money or it could be seen as her father pushing to work against her will. The
narrator of the story says, "it was hard worka hard life"(Joyce, 38). In addition to that she works at home,
too. She takes care of her father, brothers and sisters. This is too much work and responsibility as well as

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pressure for any human being to handle but still Joyce portrays Eveline as a character that is up for such
challenges. This is what makes him a feminist writer.
Mrs Mooney and her daughter Polly serve as other examples of working women that are highlighted by Joyce.
The first example of Mrs Mooney working with her husband in their butcher's shop has already been
established earlier. Her cause and source of her misery in her work is none other but her husband, Mr
Mooney. The shouting and disrespect she receives from her husband in the shop in the presence of costumers
are the reasons that make her quit working. Mr Mooney's public actions in the shop are impolite and
disrespectful. Joyce shows the reader the tip of the iceberg and the reader would know for sure that the mass
of the iceberg that is underwater is a lot bigger. In this certain situation the iceberg that is visible is Mr
Mooney's shouting at his wife in public at the shop. The invisible mass of the iceberg is what Mr Mooney does
to his wife at home where no one sees them. This is a very strong and effective yet hard to see the way Joyce
portrays. It reveals a part of his unrivaled genius.
Once more Joyce proves that he is not an anti-feminist by depicting Mrs Mooney as character that is very
capable of dealing and handling her responsibilities and problems. She makes it out of her job in the butcher
shop and she escapes the miserable marriage as well. She gets divorce against her husband's will and frees
herself. She does not shelter nor feed him after she becomes in a better position than he is (Joyce, 61). This
means that she finds success in her new lifestyle. She opens herself a new business which is the boarding
house. The house makes her good money. Most of the guests are tourists and artistes. Unlike her ex-husband
who works for the sheriff and just sits on his butt most of the day waiting to be placed in a job (Joyce, 62). This
is Joyce's own way of being fair to women and what they have been through. He makes the women successful
and their enemies miserable. He does not make all men miserable but those who are anti-feminist. It is as if
Joyce is the judge and his text is the court house. The female character is the plaintiff and the anti-feminist
male is the defendant. The reading process becomes watching the trial and actually being a part of it. That's
how Joyce does females just.
Polly serves as an integrated part of the working woman issue. She is another instance of the disturbance
females endure in their working places in "The Boarding House". Joyce tells his readers about Polly's work and
how her father's abuse chased her out of the typist office in a corn-factory. Joyce talks in that story about the
"disreputable sheriff's man" who comes and tries to speak to his daughter in the office (Joyce, 63). This is a
clear indication that her father who is a drunken head is simply trying to get some money out of his daughter.
This conclusion is endorsed by Joyce's use of the word "disreputable". This results in Mrs Mooney pulling her
daughter out of the office for she does not wish her daughter to face the same difficulties she suffered with
her husband. Polly gets to work in the boarding house where she is surrounded by young men. Polly who is
nineteen years old only gets involved in a relationship with Mr Doran who is far older than she is. He is thirty
four or five which means he takes advantage of the girl. Many may argue that the girl is the one who traps him
into marriage if so then wouldn't still be shameful and immoral for a man in Mr Doran's age to play around
with a girl that is half his age and maturity. In addition to that it would be really hard for a nineteen year old
girl to trap guy into marriage. She does not have enough experience to do it. Moreover, the question of the
reasons that make her do such a thing will come up. This will lead the reader to realize the difficulty women
have in finding security, food and happiness. It would be extremely hard for a woman to find a job that is good
enough to grant her a decent life and that is why they search for marriage. Marriage is the easiest way to get a
secured life and it is not necessarily a bad thing like prostitution as already discussed earlier.

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Contrastingly, if Mr Doran is the one who tries to exploit her then that is the reflection of how women are
treated and looked at by some males. This is exactly what Joyce does; he exposes this harsh reality in which
females are not treated fairly and are exploited sexually and economically as well as socially. This actually
could be a good point to talk about the oedipal attachment which is referred to by Nancy Chodorow. She
argues that boys and girls have different concepts of the self. She goes on saying that girls have a constant
identification role with their mother, whereas boys leave this role at a certain point in their age. This leads
men to deny their relations but women stay relational (Dobie, 101). This is simply what the oedipal attachment
is all about. This notion of such an attachment could explain why Mr. Doran is afraid of marriage. He tries to
find a way out of marrying Polly. He wants to stay free and selective. He says to himself that once he is married
he is done for (Joyce, 66). However, Polly is much attached to her mother. She works with her mother. She
accepts the marriage and does not deny the relationship she had with Mr Doran. At the end of the story there
is a role reversal. Mr Doran is led to marriage against his will. He has to fix what he has messed up. He has to
marry Polly not because he loves her but because he has an affair with her. Mrs. Mooney makes him marry her
daughter to keep her honor which he has defiled. At this point Joyce reveals parts of the ugly reality in Dublin.
He says that in some cases of male-female sexual relationship the male can simply leave and go on with his
life. In some other cases the man would have to pay money for the girl and her mother and get rid of the
whole thing (Joyce, 65). This is an actual representation of how women are considered and treated like sexual
products that are to be used once or more and then thrown away. This is all a part of Joyces reflections of
misogyny.
Joyce's "Eveline" and "The Boarding House" set universal feminist examples. All the things that happen to
Eveline, Mrs Mooney and Polly can happen to any woman in any place not just in Dublin and not just in Joyce's
time. Women have suffered such issues prior to Joyce's time and after his time. The working woman theme,
the deprivation theme and the male-female imbalance relationship are still common issues dealt with up to
this day in several parts of the world. This is supported by the fact that readers who come from a different
cultural, social and religious background feel that Joyce perfectly has talked to them and conveyed to them
what was going on in his time.
James Joyces works and style are extremely unconventional. The narrative, the structure, the hints and
implications buried in his works are all unique. His works are not far from his life. All the stories in his
collection Dubliners are reflections of his life. Through them he expressed his dissatisfaction of what was going
on around. And once again description and the views of the feminist images expressed in "Eveline" and "The
Boarding House" can be strongly Joyce's personal beliefs of his topic. It is through those works that Joyce
communicates eternally with his readers.
Joyce is not just another great writer. A lot of the deformed descriptions of females by great male writers and
philosophers have been mentioned in numerous readings like Aristotle, Darwin and many others. Many
examples can be drawn from great writers' texts like Shakespeare's, Christopher Marlowe's and even more
recent writers like Theodor Dreiser, Frank Norris and many others. However, Joyce is not just another great
writer. He does not fall in the same anti-feminist holes like other great writers do. He may seem to have fallen
in some of these holes but he actually does it in a total self-awareness. This means that he demonstrates the
anti-feminist reality he sees but he does not agree with. He makes his audience gain the awareness of the antifeminist reality and that is specifically what makes him a pro-feminist writer. Based on all what is stated
above, it is as clear as the sun is in the midst of the clear sky that James Joyce is a feminist writer.

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Work Cited
Abrams, M. H. Glossary of Literary Terms. 6th edition. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Pub., 1993
Dobie, Ann B. Theory Into Practice. NY: Thomson Wardsworth, 2001.
Joyce, James. The Boarding House. Dubliners. Ed. Robert Scholes and A. Walton Litz. NY: Penguin, 1996. 61-69.
---. Eveline. Dubliners. Ed. Robert Scholes and A. Walton Litz. NY: Penguin, 1996.61-69.

Notes on the contributor

Mohammad Heffdhallah Al-Hamdani is an an ESL instructor in Yemens Premier Language Institute, YALI
(Yemen-America Language Institute) which is sponsored by the U.S Embassy in Yemen. He has been a Fulbright
Scholarship holder. He did his Masters in Ethnic Specific American Literature and Literary Theories in Dec., 06
from Radford University. He was featured twice in the Amideast Newsletter for the cultural work which he was
doing in U.S. He also wrote articles for Yemen Times. He was also featured in the Graduate College and College of
Extended Educations point of pride at Radford University.

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