The new ‘womanly’ man, as represented by Leopold Bloom in Ulysses, Richard Rowan in Exiles, and Joyce himself was far more sensitive to womanly issues (menstruation, pregnancy, etceteras) than the traditional male and (supposedly) less inclined to indulge primitive "masculine" traits such as jealousy, possessiveness, and control. As Declan Kiberd writes in his Introduction to the 1992 Penguin edition of Ulysses, Joyce "was left to conclude that at the root of many men’s inability to live in serenity with a woman was a prior inability to harmonise male and female elements in themselves. In Ulysses, the mature artist set forth Leopold Bloom as the androgynous man of the future" (Kiberd, 1992, p. l). Joyce’s male protagonists, like Joyce himself, are consumed with interest in "what it means to be born a woman" (Kiberd, 1992, p. lii). In Ulysses, for example, Joyce devotes much space to Bloom’s sympathetic musings on female negotiation of an androcentric society. As Kiberd details about Bloom:
Gravely, he ponders a life spent fitting pins into hair and clothing, or making adjustments to disorderly skirts under the protective coverage of a friend in the street. His fellow-feeling for woman in the momentous labour of childbirth is accompanied by a similar empathy with the woman suddenly being taken short in a city whose lavatories, like its pubs, were notoriously built for men only...This empathy is nowhere more clear than in Bloom’s attitude to women who are caught in moments of disadvantage (Kiberd, 1992, pp. liii-liv).
This ‘fellow-feeling’, as Kiberd nicely puts it, for women was not a transsexual desire to be a woman but rather indicative of the balance of feminine and masculine characteristics within Bloom, "a mixture of both genders, an exponent of the androgyny which Joyce saw as the sexuality of the future, a man who can share uniquely in the wonder and woe of woman’s labour" (Kiberd, 1992, p. lix). In ‘Ulysses and the End of Gender’, Vicky Mahaffey also points out how "Bloom is quick to adopt the woman’s perspective in a variety of situations" (Mahaffey, 1998, p. 158).
The new ‘manly’ woman, as represented by Molly in Ulysses, Bertha in Exiles, and Joyce’s significant other Nora Barnacle in real life, was masculine in the sense that she was able to appropriate such traditionally male prerogatives as assertiveness, independence, and frankness about her own sexuality. As Brown explains about Molly, she "surely does represent a new kind of fictional woman: massive, potent and self possessed. Though few modern feminists have wished to avail themselves of that image of femininity, it was evidently one which Joyce constructed out of his own version of feminist literary tradition [,] and its obtrusive sexual dimorphism is conceived as a vindication of, rather than an attack on, femininity" (Brown, 1985, p. 101). Joyce’s women, both fictional and real-life, are particularly modern and non-traditional in their approach to sexuality, being able to initiate, consummate, and enjoy sexual congress with males. Nora, Molly, and Bertha all sexually consummated their love relationship without/prior to marriage, and all at least may have had adulterous relationships after their conjugal relations with James, Leopold, and Richard, despite strong religious and social strictures against such behaviour, especially by women. These women are modern and not inclined to bow down before convention. In fact, as Maddox relates, Nora, on her very first date with Joyce, was the sexual aggressor; she "unbuttoned his trousers, slipped in her hand, pushed his shirt aside and, acting with some skill (according to his later account), made him a man" (Maddox, 1989, p. 42). Joyce used Nora’s frank sexuality as a model for his fictional heroines. As Brown states, "That women should be in some part active in their sexual desire was...deeply important to Joyce" (Brown, 1985, p. 109). Even during their newlywed phase, Joyce was amazed at Nora’s experimental enthusiasm for sex and, as Maddox explains, the fact "that Nora could release such fervour only three weeks after initiation left him with a lasting sense of awe at the banked fires of female desire" (Maddox, 1988, p. 79).
Joyce took a dim view of traditional marriage, seeing it as a form of prostitution and hypocritical conventionality, and presents for public consideration in the Bloom marriage, in the union between Richard and Bertha, and in his own lifelong relationship with Nora prototypes for a more honest and equal and realistic commitment. Brown discusses how in Joyce’s work "the conflict between love and commerciality occurs" (Brown, 1985, p. 30). In characters such as Mrs. Mooney’s daughter, Polly, in the Dubliners story ‘The Boarding House’ and Gerty McDowell in Ulysses, Joyce reveals how females are "misled by vain, romantic longings and forced to sell themselves to the highest matrimonial bidder...victims of the social expectations demanded of them because of their sex" (Brown, 1985, p. 94). Brown also expounds how Joyce viewed marriage in extremely materialistic terms that blurred "the distinction between respectable marriage and prostitution" because both are "forms of sexual contract that are analogous or interdependent" (Brown, 1985, p. 118). In Exiles, Richard and Bertha are not married. Bertha, like Nora, voluntarily went into exile with her lover though he told her from the start before they left Ireland that he would not marry her. As Richard describes his commitment to Bertha, "To hold you by no bonds, even of love, to be united with you body and soul in utter nakedness - for this I longed" (Joyce, 1992b, pp. 265-6). In this very thinly veiled account of his elopement with Nora, Joyce is eager to get across the point that Bertha/Nora is free to go and to do as she pleases, ostensibly free even to know other men sexually because Joyce does not, in theory, believe in women being sexual property belonging to one man or another. It is not clear whether Bertha sleeps with Robert or not; the point is that it is her choice with whom she sleeps. Joyce pushes this open arrangement one step further in Ulysses where Molly Bloom definitely does engage in at least one adulterous affair. She is in total control of her body, and shares it with or withholds it from men, including her legal husband, as she pleases. Leopold allows her her freedom and accepts her sexual dalliances with other men and her refusal to have sexual intercourse with him as part and parcel of who she is. Leopold does not view Molly as property belonging to him. At the end of the day, he still loves her and he stays with her. Joyce seems to be very determined to present in his writing open relationships based on respect and freely made commitment as superior to traditional, confining, chattel-based marriages, perhaps as an explanation/justification for his having lived with Nora for twenty-seven years before marrying her.
But how convincing are his arguments for these new, more androgynous gender roles and egalitarian commitments? Methinks he doth protest too much. What Kiberd says of Bloom in relation to ‘Circe’ also applies, in my opinion, to Joyce himself: "it is easier to preach a new doctrine than practice it" (Kiberd, 1992, p. lxi). Despite all his progressive thinking, writing, and acting, biographical research into Joyce’s personal life explicitly supports the idea that Joyce was far more traditionally masculine in terms of sexual jealousy, possessiveness, and stereotyping of his ‘love object’ than typically recognised. Joyce was extremely jealous of Nora’s fondness for anyone but himself, including her own father and children. As Maddox puts it, Joyce "could tolerate no thought of a rival for Nora’s affections" (Maddox, 1988, p. 23), and he felt irrationally betrayed that her filial and maternal bonds could co-exist with her love for him. When courting Nora the summer of 1904, Joyce began to become possessive, and his jealousy revealed his insecurity. According to Maddox, "As the summer wore on, and he became more and more attached to Nora, Joyce showed the first signs of suspiciousness. She had three free evenings in a row that he could not account for" (Maddox, 1988, p. 47). Sexually, Joyce held Nora to a double standard; though he had consorted with prostitutes and had at least one "bout of venereal disease" (Maddox, 1988, p. 48) prior to meeting Nora, "Doubt continued to torment Joyce" (Maddox, 1988, p. 70) about whether Nora had been a virgin or not before having sexual intercourse with him. He could not stand the thought of her having been with another man, even before she met him. As Maddox states, "Joyce never conquered his fear of Nora’s old loves" (Maddox, 1988, p. 131), which is why her old Galway beaux, such as Willie Mulvagh, had their names and/or actions immortalised in the obsessive Joyce’s writing. Mays relates how while visiting Dublin without Nora in 1909, Joyce "became obsessed with the thought that Nora might have been unfaithful to him" (Mays, 1992, p. xxxvi) with Vincent Cosgrave. This obsession made its way into Joyce’s poetry, his play Exiles, and Ulysses, not to mention some raving and accusatorial letters to Nora. Joyce was quick to believe Cosgrave’s words about his sexual relations with Nora before even hearing Nora’s version of events, and it took the word of two males, Joyce’s friend J. F. Byrne (the model for Cranly in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) and his brother Stanislaus, to convince Joyce that Cosgrave had lied to him about Nora (Maddox, 1988, p. 125). Even so, he remained so suspicious and bitterly jealous of Cosgrave, his former friend and possible precursor in Nora’s affections, that he lampooned and abused him as Lynch in Ulysses and enjoyed hearing about his early demise and unsuccessful career (Maddox, 1988, pp. 320-1). None of this is the behaviour of a man who really believes in free love and open relationships.
Joyce also held sexist, stereotypical views of women,
which he sometimes explicitly committed to writing in letters and notebooks. For
example, in one of his notebooks used for planning the character of Richard Rowan,
Joyce wrote, "Richard must not appear as a champion of women’s rights. His language
at times must be nearer to that of Schopenhauer against women and he must show at
times a deep contempt for the long-haired, short-legged sex" (Joyce, 1992b,
p. 348). This is extremely revealing of Joyce’s personal beliefs since Richard Rowan
is meant to be a very thinly veiled portrayal of Joyce himself. In the same notebook
when discussing the female characters for Exiles, Joyce wrote, "Bertha
has the advantage of her beauty — a fact behind which even an evil woman’s character
can safely hide much less a character not morally evil" (Joyce, 1992b, p. 350).
Joyce is evidently paranoid about women and suspicious of them on a very basic level.
As Maddox recounts, "In his personal social prejudices, Joyce was as misogynistic
as any man of his time. And his remark to Mary Colum, that he hated women who knew
anything, showed that he preferred them in traditional roles" (Maddox, 1988,
p. 266). Joyce discouraged his daughter Lucia’s dance career when he "impressed
upon her that it was unseemly for women to get on the stage and wave their arms about"
(Maddox, 1988, p. 332). Hence the pro-female if not outright feminist reputation
that some critics have given to Joyce is clearly not appropriate or accurate. While
in some of his literary portrayals Joyce may seem sympathetic to females, in actuality
he obviously saw male-female relations as somewhat adversarial and dangerous. His
obsession with Nora, to "whose company Joyce was mysteriously addicted"
(Maddox, 1988, p. 506), was to some extent coloured, after all, by her ominous reputation
as ‘The Mankiller’ back home in Galway; two admirers of hers from her teenage years
in Galway died at tragically young ages. Joyce thus had in his mind a strong link
between Nora’s sexual allure and death, and he focused on this morbid love theme
in poems such as ‘She Weeps over Rahoon’ and his best-known short story from Dubliners,
‘The Dead’.