Ashplant

Hawthorne, Jeremy. "Ulysses, Modernism, and Marxist Criticism." In James Joyce and Modern Literature, edited by McCormack, W.J. and Stead, Alistair. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982.

Related topics:

Judaism
Language and Linguistics
Narration
Realism
Rich and Poor

Link to citation page: https://www.worldcat.org/title/james-joyce-and-modern-literature/oclc/8114716&referer=brief_results

Link to full text:

Hawthorne's concise survey of the reactions of Marxist critics to Joyce's Ulysses in the 1930's begins with the notion, expressed by certain critics, that Joyce's emphasis on the subjective experience of everyday events isolates his characters from the historical and social realities that a modern Marxist text would reveal. After establishing the accusation of anti-Marxist anti-realism, the rest of Hawthorne's analysis argues against such an interpretation. Hawthorne begins with the language of thought. The subjective nature of Joyce's narrative in Ulysses, particularly Bloom's inner monologue, indicates a divorce of certain characters from the external world; this exclusion is often motivated by social pressures. For example, Hawthorne claims that the association with internality in Bloom's introduction (U 4.1-5) is prompted by the anti-semitism expressed by Haines (U 1.666-668) and Deasy (U 2.45-50) in the preceding chapters, and that will continue to define his experiences as a Dubliner throughout the day. Bloom's reaction to this social violence does not reveal itself in his public persona, wherein he seems to despise violence and does not pretend to dominance, but his deeper desires—revealed in "Circe" (U 15)—betray the inner aggression of an oppressed minority who simultaneously wishes to rise up and to be subdued. Hawthorne explains this pattern as a cultural phenomenon, apart from Joyce: "One finds inner complexity [in the Jewish subject], as conflicts which cannot be resolved publicly by a persecuted people are forced inwards to create complex and divided inner states" (121). Stephen, though less explicitly persecuted, voices a more explicit resistance to the pressures of modern culture and finds himself shattered not by his lack of belonging in Dublin, but by his belonging in a suffocating Dublin where he must aggressively forge his own space in order to generate a viable modern art amidst the strictures of church and state.

Despite stylistic departures from a straight-forward sort of realism, Hawthorne claims that Joyce never abandons the notion of realism in Ulysses; Joyce's plot is simple and the attentive reader can discern, to an extent, what is going in the world of Ulysses independent of the characters' interpretations through a process of parallax, by comparing the apparent facts of the narrative with the multiple subjective experiences coloring that narrative. Hawthorne claims the tension between these two forms of content are central to the comedy of Ulysses, and that it is through comedy that Joyce most clearly reveals the "value-centre" (123) of the novel and the humorist who penned it. According to Hawthorne, neither of these value systems are anti-Marxist. On the contrary, Hawthorne offers the example of Gerty's perception of Bloom as romantic hero, versus his actual status as a perverted old man exposing himself in public, as evidence of semi-Marxist attitudes in the text. That Gerty's obsession with magazines and consumer culture blinds her to the truth of Bloom's identity (U 13.692-4) demonstrates Joyce's concern about the distorting effect of capitalism. But, Hawthone concludes, that Bloom and Gerty (and perhaps the reader, provided the joke is not lost) enjoy the encounter as a moment of internal yet shared intimacy reveals the hope that humanist values still pervade the social interactions which are irrevocably mediated by the capitalism of the external world.

Citations and Related Sources