Patrice Egan told Stephen something "About the nature of
women he read in Michelet." Jules Michelet was a 19th century
Republican historian—anti-monarchist, anti-clerical,
free-thinking—whose History of the French Revolution
and History of France established him as an
important writer and endeared him to the French left. It is
easy to see why the socialist and
atheist Patrice would be reading him. On "the nature of
women," however, Michelet was anything but a revolutionary
thinker.
Gifford observes that he was a "historian 'of the romantic
school.' Michelet is noted not for his objectivity but for
picturesque, impressionistic, and emotional history. In La
Femme (Woman) [Paris, 1860: trans. J. M. Palmer (New
York, 1890)]—presumably the book Patrice has been
reading—Michelet traces woman's growth and 'education' toward
her ideal and eventual role: 'Woman is a religion' and her
function is 'to harmonize religion' (p. 78), just
as 'her evident vocation is love' (p. 81) and her
indispensable gracefulness is 'a reflection of love on a
groundwork of purity' (p. 83). Properly 'cultivated by man' in
the light of this ideal, woman will become 'superior to him'
to the point where he is 'strong; [but] she is divine...
practical and...spiritual...a lyre of ampler range' than
man—and yet not 'strong' (pp. 200-201)." Such effusions typify
Victorian-era expressions of the angel in the house doctrine.
If Joyce has any darker purpose in including this snippet of
cafe conversation, it may be to suggest that the apple has not
fallen far from the tree: Patrice is still deeply infected
with the Irish Catholic
notions of gender and sexuality that have made his
father puritanical and
unmarried.
