By Grant Wei
(Bloom assumes a mantle of cloth of gold and puts on a ruby ring. He ascends and stands on the stone of destiny. The representative peers put on at the same time their twenty eight crowns. Joybells ring in Christ church, Saint Patrick’s, George’s and gay Malahide. Mirus bazaar fireworks go up from all sides with symbolic phallus pyrotechnic designs. The peers do homage, one by one, approaching and genuflecting.)
The mantle of cloth of gold, representative of the bourgeoisie class who can afford luxuries, separates Bloom from the individuals in Ireland’s lower classes. Frequently criticism both the British Empire and the Catholic church for their role in creating an oppressive climate in Dublin, Joyce “is strong on his criticism of the existing order, weak on his suggestion of possible alternatives” (Booker 143). Joyce, although frequently incorporating Marxist themes when discussing the relationship between Irish identity and the British Empire, does not address the plight of working class Irishmen, as his efforts towards advancing the cause of the working class could be considered meager if not non-existent, as critics have claimed that “Joyce had little real sympathy with Dublin’s lower classes. This lack of sympathy (which includes not only Joyce’s failure adequately to represent the Irish lower classes in his fiction but also the notorious inaccessibility of his arcane texts to all but an initiated few) is probably the greatest obstacle that must be overcome in any attempt to read Joyce as a genuinely anti colonial writer” (Booker 4). Portraying Bloom in a mantle of cloth and gold, Joyce clearly sorts Bloom into the bourgeoisie class.
Joyce’s depiction of Dublin serves “as a prime example of the divorce between historical reality and modernist fiction” (Booker 105). His literature include revolves around characters that have defining character traits that fall within the bourgeoisie, which can be seen through Bloom’s “preoccupation with business and finance… probably the most obvious sign in Ulysses that he is meant to be thought of as thoroughly inscribed within the values of bourgeois Britain” (Booker 126). As a result, Joyce marks a “departure from the great tradition of European realism, focusing in particular on their fascination with unusual and even pathological aspects of human existence and on their tendency towards an abstract symbolism that renders their works incapable of depicting the grand flow of history or the intricate interrelationships that inform the social totality within which these works arise” (Booker 105). Although ideas surrounding Irish identity is frequently brought up among interactions with Stephen and Bloom, the concept of class within Ireland is never specifically addressed through a class lens.
Although Joyce wrote extensively regarding Irish nationalism and the British Empire, his version of Dublin can be read as “an effective critique of the attempts of the Irish bourgeoisie to mimic, rather than oppose, their English masters” (Booker 16). Although Joyce emphasizes the concept of Irish identity throughout Ulysses, the fact that “[Joyce] chose, beyond vague remarks made when he was in his twenties, not to [further elaborate], poses an extreme difficult problem for critics who would see Joyce as an anti-authoritarian defender of the oppressed (Booker 6). When working class individuals do appear, “they are typically objects of mockery and derision, as with the old milkwoman in the first chapter of Ulysses” (Booker 143). Within the context of Bloom’s hallucination, and investigation into the reforms that he advocates would reveal that “his interest in science and business (and like Bloom himself) is hopelessly bourgeois” (Booker 133). Although the scene is one of satire, Bloom’s disconnect with the Irish working class echoes throughout Ulysses as one where Marxism is references but outside the scope of labor exploitation but in the context of nationalism. Through cloaking Bloom in a mantle of gold, Joyce affirms Bloom’s disconnect with the Irish working class.
Works Cited
Booker, Marvin Keith. Ulysses, Capitalism, and Colonialism: Reading Joyce after the Cold War. Greenwood Press, 2000.
Joyce, James. Ulysses. Edited by Hans Walter. Gabler, Garland, 1986.
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