Ashplant
Reading, Smashing, and Playing Ulysses
Shelton, Jen. Joyce and the Narrative Structure of Incest. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006.
Related topics:
Narration
Obedience and Rebellion
Paternity
Sexuality
Translation
Union and Division
The Unspoken
Yes and No
Link to citation page: https://www.worldcat.org/title/joyce-and-the-narrative-structure-of-incest/oclc/64771058&referer=brief_results
Shelton argues that, throughout the modernist period, incest was a dominant literary trope. In particular, Joyce, says Shelton, "harnessed for his creative works the energy of narrative constraint and resistance that constitutes the incest power relation" (2). Beginning with Freud's conception of incestuous relationships, but focusing on the paternal violation of sexual boundaries, Shelton expands the definition of incest beyond a physical relationship. Incest, then, "exemplifies a specific, gendered power relation in which the father makes use of his greater physical, social, and narrative powers in order to coerce the girl to accede to his will" (3). Although incest operates through paternal coercion, the young female voice cannot be fully suppressed, and thus the competing narratives are mutually dependent. Neither the father's nor the daughter's narrative entirely outshines the other, and, according to Shelton, this struggle for narrative control pervades all of Joyce's texts. In the dynamic between Ulysses's Leopold and Milly Bloom, for example, the information given about Milly is mediated almost entirely through Leopold, but Milly's letter to Leopold in "Calypso" provides resistance to the narrative restrictions imposed by Bloom's perspective (U 4.397-414). Similarly, the girls in the "Nausicaa" episode (U 13) "undermine masculine narratives" (Shelton 12). Although the reader may presume that Bloom's narrative is the most reliable because it does not mimic the style of a pulp fiction novel like Gerty's does, her narrative, through its heavily euphemistic speech, tempts the reader to actively uncover the true state of Gerty's life, and as such, it is equally compelling as Bloom's. Shelton's reading of incest narrative in Joyce's writing finds that this type of contest, between unequally empowered voices, often creates a means for the repressed voice to emerge.
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