Joycean Rebirth in the “Abject” Womb

The land/woman metaphor has always been an effective tool to define Ireland and Irish nationalists aligned their feminized land with patriarchal discourse and created the iconic Mother Ireland in the image of the Virgin Mary. Known for his anti-Revivalist arguments, James Joyce reveals that the cult of Mother Ireland must be demolished to reach the essence of Irish identity hidden in the “abject” maternal body. Therefore, in his struggle against colonialism, Joyce turns his attention to women, believing that Irishness starts with the exploration of a woman’s body. Using Kristeva’s abjection theory to re-interpret Joyce’s position as the “abject” child of Irish literature, this paper aims to analyze the writer’s prominent women characters in Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and in Ulysses in parallel to his search for an identity as an Irish writer and his anti-colonial struggle against patriarchy