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Related topics:

Bodies
Irish History Transformed
Judaism
Money
Native and Foreign
Rich and Poor
Union and Division

Link to citation page: https://www.worldcat.org/title/soap-advertisements-and-ulysses-the-brookes-monkey-brand-ad-and-the-capital-couple/oclc/753786191&referer=brief_results

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Kil first discusses the role of soap in the expansion of the British empire and the process of racial othering, before drawing attention to the Brooke's soap ad parody in "Circe" (U 15) to expose subtleties of Bloom's character that are not otherwise apparent. The British soap market, particularly the Pear's brand, marketed cleanliness across the empire, drawing from the rhetoric of racial hygiene to consolidate power and isolate the other. In soap advertising, the clean were anglo-saxons—"decent, civilized people"—while the unclean were "indecent savages...requiring cleansing and discipline" (86). However, soap advertising soon became a double-edged sword: cleanliness became a commodity that anyone could attain with enough money, undermining the legitimacy of the English civilizing campaign and patriarchal exploitation.

In "Circe," Joyce mocks a Brooke's soap ad in which a monkey and a bar of soap, and then Bloom and the bar of soap, are described as a "capital couple" (U 15.338). Unlike the British Pear's ad, the American Brooke's ad depicts a monkey civilized by a bar of soap, threatening the continued necessity of imperial rule. However, the humorous soap ad is from the United States, who themselves overthrew British imperial rule, and is thus not marketed with the same civilizing mission as the British brand. By replacing the monkey with Bloom, Joyce draws attention to Bloom's otherness, but at the same time, his possession of an Irish-made bar of soap leaves him in a contradictory position of simianized and civilized—Jewish-Irish and clean. According to Kil, when coupled together, Bloom and the Brooke's soap-ad challenge the imperial commodity culture of the day.

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