Nora Barnacle (March 1884 – April 10 1951) was the lover, companion, inspiration, and eventual wife of author
James JoyceJames Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish expatriate author, playwright and poet of the 20th century. He is known for his landmark novel Ulysses and its controversial successor Finnegans Wake , as well as the short story collection Dubliners and the semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of...
.
Biography
Barnacle was born in the town of
GalwayGalway is the fastest growing and is the fifth largest city in Ireland and the only city in the province of Connacht. The city is located on the west coast of Ireland...
, Ireland, but the day of her birth is uncertain. Depending on the source, it varies between the 21st and the 24th of March 1884. Her father
Thomas BarnacleThomas Barnacle, father of Nora Barnacle, 1846 - July 1921.Barnacle was a native of Galway and active in the Trade Unions during the from the 1860s to the 1890s. Though illiterate, he had a trade as a well-skilled baker - the family line of work - and was much in demand till the end of his life...
, a baker in Connemara, was an illiterate man who was 38 years old when Nora was born. Her mother, Annie Honoria Healy, was 28 and worked as dressmaker.
Between 1886 and 1889, Nora was sent to live with her maternal grandmother, Catherine Mortimer Healy. During these years, she started her studies at a convent and, in 1891, graduated from a national school achieving a good schooling for the time. In 1896, Nora completed her schooling and began to work as a porteress and laundress. In the same year, her mother threw her father out for drinking and the couple separated. Nora went to live with her mother and her uncle, Tom Healy, at No.4 Bowling Green, Galway City.
In 1896, Nora fell in love with a teenager named
Michael FeeneyMichael Feeney , lover of Nora Barnacle, July/August 1889 - February 1897.Feeney was a native of William Street West, Galway, and a friend of Nora Barnacle since childhood. They began courting each other in 1896. However, Feeney became ill with Typhoid and Pneumonia in February 1897, and was...
, who died soon after of typhoid and
pneumoniaPneumonia is an inflammatory illness of the lung. Frequently, it is described as lung parenchyma/alveolar inflammation and abnormal alveolar filling with fluid ....
. In a dramatic but unrelated coincidence, another boy loved by Nora,
Michael BodkinMichael Bodkin was the inspiration for Michael Furey in James Joyce's short story "The Dead", c. 1888 - 11 February 1900.Michael 'Sonny' Bodkin was a descendant of The Tribes of Galway, and lived at No. 2 Prospect Hill, where his family ran a shop. He worked as a clerk in the local Gas Company, and...
, died in 1900, garnering her the name of "man-killer" from her friends. It was rumored that she sought solace from her friend, budding English theatre starlet, Laura London, who introduced her to a Protestant named
Willie MulvaghWillie Mulvagh, lover of Nora Barnacle, 1881 - 195?Mulvagh was Mary Street, Galway, and worked in the town's mineral company as an accountant. One day he accosted Nora on O'Brien's Bridge and asked her to go out with him. Initially unattracted, Nora accepted his offer as young women needed to be...
. In 1903, she was sent away after her uncle learned of the affair and dubious friendship. She went to Dublin where she worked as a chambermaid at Finn's Hotel.
While in Dublin, she met Joyce on June 10 1904, but it was not until June 16 1904 that they had their first romantic liaison. This date would later be chosen as the setting for Joyce's novel
UlyssesUlysses is a novel by James Joyce, first serialized in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on February 2, 1922, in Paris...
, and has come to be known and celebrated around the world as
BloomsdayBloomsday is a commemoration observed annually on 16 June in Dublin and elsewhere to celebrate the life of Irish writer James Joyce and relive the events in his novel Ulysses, all of which took place on the same day in Dublin in 1904. The name derives from Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of Ulysses...
.
The nature of the initial meeting between Nora Barnacle and James Joyce remains controversial, as some claim that Nora instigated physical
stimulationA handjob is the manual stimulation of the penis. The manual stimulation of a female's sex organs is usually called fingering, although sometimes "handjob" is used to refer to this act as well.- Overview :...
, whereas others maintain that this first meeting was chaste. It is unlikely that any one camp will ever have the final say in this debate, and Joyce's erotic correspondence to Nora has muddled the story somewhat.
In any event, the 1904 rendezvous began a long relationship that eventually led to marriage in 1931 (some say to appease Joyce's dying father) and continued until Joyce's death. Joyce's father remarked, on learning Nora's surname, "She'll stick with him."
Nora and James' relationship was very complex. They had different personalities, tastes and cultural interests. At the beginning they loved each other passionately and deeply, as witnessed by the sensual epistolary correspondence between them. James seems to have admired and trusted her totally. Nora was well-disposed towards James, and seems to have tried to accommodate him. In anticipation of his move to Paris, Nora began studying French. Nora used to cook English puddings at Joyce's request and acquiesced in following him during his travels.
In 1904, Nora and James left Ireland for continental Europe, and in the following year they set up house in
TriesteTrieste is a city and seaport in north eastern Italy. It is situated towards the end of a narrow strip of land lying between the Adriatic Sea and Italy's border with Slovenia, which lies almost immediately south, east and north of the city...
(at that time in
Austria-HungaryAustria–Hungary, also known as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy or the k.u.k. Monarchy, or Dual State, was a monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in Central Europe...
). On June 27 1905, Nora Barnacle gave birth to a son, Giorgio, and later to a daughter,
LuciaLucia Anna Joyce , daughter of Irish writer James Joyce and Nora Barnacle, was born in Trieste. Italian was her first language and the language in which she corresponded with her father. She studied ballet while she was a teenager, becoming good enough to train with Isadora Duncan...
, in July 26 1907. A miscarriage in 1908 coincided with the beginning of a series of difficulties for Nora, which placed strain on her relationship with Joyce and made it increasingly conflicted. Although she remained by his side, she complained to her sister both about his personal qualities and his writings.
In these letters to her sister, she depicts her husband as a weak man and a neurotic artist. She accuses Joyce of ruining her life and that of their children. She says he drinks too much and wastes too much money. As for his literary activity, she laments the fact that his writings are obscure and lacking in sense. She hates attending his meetings with other artists and admits she would have preferred him had he been a musician — in his youth, he was a talented singer — rather than a writer.
Another challenge to the couple's relationship was posed by Lucia's mental disease. Nora believed hospitalization was required, but James was against it. Lucia's parents brought in many specialists and only in 1936 was she interned in a clinic. There, she was often visited by her father, but not her mother; Nora would refuse to see her daughter ever again.
Notwithstanding all the accusations and criticisms she levelled against Joyce, Nora married him in 1931. After living through Joyce's death in
ZurichZürich or Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zürich. The city is Switzerland's main commercial and cultural centre and sometimes called the Cultural Capital of Switzerland, the political capital of Switzerland being Berne...
in 1941, Nora decided to remain there. She died in Zurich of
acute renal failureAcute renal failure , also known as acute kidney failure or acute kidney injury, is a rapid loss of renal function due to damage to the kidneys, resulting in retention of nitrogenous and non-nitrogenous waste products that are normally excreted by the kidney...
in 1951, aged 67.
Brenda Maddox's biography of Nora
In 1988, Nora Barnacle was the subject of a feminist biography by
Brenda MaddoxBrenda Maddox is an American author, journalist, and biographer, who has lived in the UK since 1960.Born in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, she graduated from Harvard University with a degree in English literature and also studied at the London School of Economics...
,
Nora: The Real Life of Molly Bloom.
This in turn was made into a film in
1999The year 1999 in film involved some significant events and was arguably the most successful year for films released in the 1990s. Several new feature films, including Star Wars Episode I, The Sixth Sense, The Green Mile, new sequel Toy Story 2, first of The Matrix, Disney's animated Tarzan,...
, directed by Pat Murphy and starring
Susan LynchSusan Lynch is an Irish actress.Lynch was born in Corrinshego, Newry, County Down, Northern Ireland to an Italian mother and Irish father....
and
Ewan McGregorEwan Gordon McGregor is a Scottish actor, singer, and adventurer who has had success in mainstream, indie and art house films...
.
Nora's letter auction
In 2004, an erotic letter from Joyce to Barnacle sold at
Sotheby'sSotheby's is the world's third oldest auction house in continuous operation.-History:The oldest auction house in operation is the Stockholms Auktionsverk founded in 1674 and the second oldest is Uppsala Auktionskammare founded in 1731, both Swedish...
for stg£240,800 (US$445,000); a record amount for a modern-day letter at auction.
An episode from Nora's life in "The Dead"
It seems likely, according to Joyce scholar
Justin Beck's- History :Rutgers University in Newark is one of three campuses of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, the eighth oldest college in the United States and a member of the Association of American Universities...
reading of
Edna O'Brien'sEdna O'Brien is an Irish novelist and short story writer whose works often revolve around the inner feelings of women, and their problems in relating to men and to society as a whole.-Life and career:...
biography, that Joyce may have utilized the story of Michael Feeney's relationship with Nora Barnacle in creating the epiphanic moment of "The Dead." Not the least of the similarities being the closeness of the names - the young man courting Gretta who dies is named Michael Furey. Additionally, Gretta is, like Nora, from Galway, lives with her grandmother (a relative not a parent), and enters a convent, while Furey "get[s] his death in the rain."
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