1n6xZiV

294 / A M E S [ 1909 1prisingly sweeping and persuasive. Then he tried her further: John Joycehad been anticlerical, James exceeded him by becoming irreligious.This change, which was not easy for him to undergo, presented anadded complication. For one thing, in the figure of the Virgin he hadfound a mother image which he cherished. He had gone to prostitutesand then prayed to the Virgin as later he would drum up old sins withwhich to demand Nora's forgiveness; the Virgin's love, like his mother'sand later his wife's, was of a sort especially suited to great sinners. Butthere was an aspect of Irish Catholicism which he was glad to abandon.It was not a mother church but a father church, harsh, repressive, masculine.To give it up was both consciously and unconsciously to offer hismother's love its supreme test, for his mother was deeply religious. Shewas disconcerted but did not abandon him. Yet her death not long afterone of his open defiances of her belief seemed a punishment; he felt asif he had killed her by trying her too far. This thought he confided toNora, who called him reproachfully, 'Woman-killer.' 2When Joyce met Nora Barnacle in 1904, it was not enough for her tobe his mistress; she must be his queen and even his goddess; he must beable to pray to her. But to gain all her love, and so increase her perfection,he must make sure she will accept even the worst in him. He musttest her by making her his wife without calling her that, by denying legalsanction to the bond between them, just as in dealing with his motherhe had wanted her to acknowledge him as her son even though in somany ways he was not filial. Nora Barnacle passed this test easily, nodoubt aware that their attachment was indispensable to him. Then hetried her further, not by floutingher religion, which she did not caredeeply about, but by doubting her fidelity.That the accusation might befalse did not deter him; in a way, it encouraged him, for if he was accusingher falsely he could be, when reassured of her innocence, morehumble and so more childlike than before. When this test too was surmounted,Joyce made a final trial of her: she must recognize all hisimpulses, even the strangest, and match his candor by confiding in himevery thought she has found in herself, especially the most embarrassing.She must allow him to know her inmost life, to learn with odd exactitudewhat it is to be a woman. This test, the last, Nora passed successfullylater in 1909. In so doing she accepted complicity, she indulged his reductionof her motherly purity just as she had indulged his insistenceupon that purity. Joyce's letters during his two subsequent absences fromher in Trieste were full of thoughts about 'adoration' and 'desecration' ofher image, extravagant terms that he himself applied.What was unusual about his attitude was not that he saw his wife ashis mother or that he demanded inordinate fulfillment of either role. Thenovelty lay in his declining to confuse the two images and instead holdingthem remorsefully apart, opposing them to each other so that theybecame the poles of his mind. He was thereby enabled to feel that with