We’ve talked some over the last few pages about why Joyce’s milkwoman doesn’t speak Irish–click back to see (and maybe even to participate in!) this discussion.

In reading this page, I was struck by the oddness of Haines telling Mulligan to pay the milkwoman.  If we read between the lines, we might infer that Haines has been there for three days, because they’ve had more milk for the last three days. Perhaps Haines is scandalized that they keep getting this milk and not paying for it.  It’s been a while since she’s last been paid.

We’ve made up a quiz about money that we’ll post in the next day or so.  Ulysses has a lot of money in it, as it should, given that it’s a record of a day in the life in the twentieth century.  Joyce tells us how much meals and tram fares are, not to mention daily milk delivery.  The milkwoman’s tally of what the men owe is conspicuously long and complicated.  I’ve made a bookmark for my copy of Ulysses that has the old British money system on it: 12 pence to the shilling, 20 shillings to the pound, etc.  It gives you a very important dimension to the book.  Here’s an important benchmark (and an answer on the quiz)–a pint of beer costs 2 pence. This is the same amount the milkwoman was charging for a pint of milk. The accumulated cost of cost of the milk is 2 shillings, 2 pence, or enough money for a good drunk for two.  Mulligan is clearly not happy about having to pay up.

But what difference does it make to Haines?  In the next chapter we’ll hear that an Englishman’s proudest boast is “I paid my way,” a completely alien thought to Stephen and Mulligan.  Keep an eye on debts and payments in Ulysses, financial and otherwise, and you’ll learn a great deal.

<< previous | next >>

Reader’s Guide for I: Telemachus

Dramatis Personae for I: Telemachus

Haines tries out his Irish on the old milkwoman, but she has no idea what he’s saying.  She asks if he’s from the west of Ireland (where Irish is more commonly spoken), but as we know, he’s English.  Stephen thinks about how impressed the woman is with the Englishman and the Doctor, while he goes unnoticed.

The irony of the  Englishman being the only one who knows Irish is pretty straightforward.  Historically, there’s a basis for it–the use of Irish dropped during the 19th century thanks to the Great Famine and the ban on teaching Irish in the National Schools.  It survived in the West and in more remote parts of the island, but in “The Pale,” the area around Dublin that had the strongest British influence, Irish was largely unknown at this time.  It was revived by the writers and scholars of the Celtic Revival, which was just gaining momentum in 1904.  Because language nearly became extinct, the new Irish republic made it a required subject in schools–for a while it was a requirement to pass an Irish exam in order to get a government job.  Every Irish student now learns it, but they don’t tend to use it, and the language is again gravely threatened.  Joyce famously tried to learn Irish, but gave up after a few lessons.

Perhaps for this reason, whatever it is that Haines says in Irish is not in the text of Ulysses.  Rob has come up with a clever solution–if you roll over the Irish text, you’ll get a translation.  (This is true wherever you see foreign words in Ulysses Seen.)

You might be confused by the milkwoman’s question to Haines, “Are you from West, sir?”  This is how the question appears in the first edition, the 1922 edition, of Ulysses, so that’s what we’re using.  In later editions it would be corrected to “Are you from *the* West, Sir?,” but you get the idea either way.

Extra Credit: Whom do you think Rob has Haines is modeled after? Who does he look like?

<< previous | next >>

Reader’s Guide for I: Telemachus

Dramatis Personae for I: Telemachus

I love how Rob has Mulligan sample the milk as if it were a bottle of wine at a fancy restaurant. Exactly Mulligan’s form of jackassery, even if it may be anachronistic.

I’ve never been sure what to make, exactly, of Mulligan’s speech on healthy food. It’s a class marker, to be sure, and perhaps we are to take it as more or less sincere, but misguided. People are starving in Dublin–there’s enormous poverty in the city at this time. The Great Famine is a living memory. More to the point, who is meant to benefit from this pontification? He’s showing off his knowledge and Doctor-power to the milkwoman… but what does this tell us about him?

Neither Joyce nor his alter-ego Stephen Dedalus had a Ph.D. in literature, but Stephen’s feelings here are very familiar to anyone who does. The real doctor gets all the attention. But they guy who’s going to forge in the smithy of his soul the uncreated conscience of her race? He gets nothing.

Reader’s Guide for I: Telemachus

Dramatis Personae for I: Telemachus