By Emily Bell
Published in Feminist Modernist Studies, January 2025.
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Abstract

This article considers the persistent inattention to the activity of James Joyce’s female family members in supporting his creative and compositional process. Using the discovery of the source for an early letter by Nora Barnacle to James Joyce as the article’s central example, it shows how Joyce scholarship has inadvertently perpetuated misogynistic assumptions and overlooked the creative labour of Joyce’s female family members – especially Barnacle – in the composition of his works. Building on recent public engagement work by Clare Hutton which highlights important archival documents penned by women who supported Joyce, the present article instead returns to Joyce’s published archive to expose the overlooked labour of women in his letters and manuscript drafts. In illuminating the practical and emotional tasks undertaken by Joyce’s wife, mother, aunt, daughter and daughter-in-law, this article elucidates the personal network Joyce utilised variously to push publication opportunities, acquire source and reading materials, and promote his public image.