Jane or Jennie O'Toole was born into a staunchly nationalist
family in Baltinglass, County Wicklow in 1858 and grew up in
Dublin. She admired Charles Stewart Parnell, and in 1881 she
became active in the Ladies' Land League that was agitating
for the rights of Ireland's tenant farmers. In 1899 she
founded the Irish Farm Produce Company, which ran a dairy
products shop, and, on the same premises, a restaurant with
tea and lunch rooms specializing in vegetarian dishes.
Advanced nationalists—Arthur Griffith, John MacBride,
Constance Markievicz, Seán O'Kelly, Thomas MacDonagh, and
doubtless many others—met regularly at her house in Henry
Street, and it was under regular surveillance by government
undercover agents.
Jennie Power, as she was known after her marriage in 1883
(she winningly left out the Wyse, telling people she had no
wisdom), was also a passionate feminist and suffragist, and a
passionate advocate of buying Irish agricultural and
manufacturing products. In the early 1900s she took on central
roles in both Sinn Féin and Inghinidhe na hÉireann, or
Daughters of Ireland, a nationalist women's organization
founded by Maud Gonne. In
1914 she helped subsume the latter group into Cumann na mBan,
The Women's Council, and then led this republican paramilitary
adjunct to the Irish Volunteers, over 100 of whose members
were imprisoned after the Rising. After the establishment of
the Irish Free State, she was one of four women nominated to
the Senate, where she continued to serve until 1936. Like
Joyce, she died in January 1941. She is buried in Prospect Cemetery.
Jennie Power's political activities might seem to bear
little relevance to Bloom buying a jar of cream in the IFPC,
but her shop is nearly a mile from his home, and the context
in which his action is disclosed invites scrutiny of his
motives. Everything that the aptly named Nosey Flynn says
about Bloom comes with an air of suspicious distrust. Here, at
the beginning of his exchange with Davy Byrne, he has not yet
made any anti-Jewish or anti-Masonic insinuations; he only
defames Molly for being plump ("She's well nourished, I tell
you. Plovers on toast") and her husband for solicitously
seeing to her needs and somehow being able to afford expensive
groceries ("He doesn't buy cream on the ads he picks up. You
can make bacon of that"). But he mentions Bloom "coming out
of that Irish farm dairy" as if he perhaps caught him in
something illicit.
Given the climate of clandestine observation, paranoid
secrecy, and omnidirectional suspicion that attended militant
nationalism in 1904, Bloom's emergence from a well-known
fenian redoubt might well be remarked upon as possibly
surreptitious. And there the matter would rest, in the realm
of faint possibility, were it not for another report about
Bloom from another pub-dweller several chapters later. Cyclops
presents the seemingly outlandish revelation that Bloom may
have something to do with Sinn Féin, and the source,
amazingly, is none other than Jennie Nolan's husband: "John
Wyse saying it was Bloom gave the ideas for Sinn Fein to
Griffith to put in his paper all kinds of
jerrymandering, packed juries and swindling the taxes off of
the Government and appointing consuls all over the
world to walk about selling Irish industries."
This sentence raises questions of tone and substance. Does
John Wyse Nolan, whose voice is not heard directly, present
Bloom's initiative sympathetically or derisively? Does he list
the specific "ideas" that Bloom has suggested to Griffith, or
does the unnamed narrator of the chapter infer nefarious and
improbable things like gerrymandering, packed juries, and tax
evasion? In the militantly nationalistic atmosphere of Barney
Kiernan's pub it seems unlikely that an association with Sinn
Féin would be seen as reprehensible, and the goal of promoting
Irish industries abroad is entirely consistent with the
program of economic decolonialization advanced by Jennie
Power. Perhaps the best way of resolving the contradictions
here is to assume that Wyse Nolan has been favorably impressed
by Bloom's involvement in fenian politics—and that the
misanthropic narrator has found a way to turn even that into
an indictment.
However one may respond to this puzzling sentence, the basic
claim made by Wyse Nolan seems credible. Arthur Griffith was
frequently to be found at the IFPC. Jennie Power worked
closely with him, and became an important officer of Sinn
Féin. Bloom admires Griffith, and pays attention to what his
newspaper, the United Irishman, is saying. Bloom
knows newspapers and thinks throughout the day about how they
get messages across. And Sinn Féin, in 1904, was a
considerably less radical organization than it became by 1916.
It is by no means inconceivable that the cautious, prudent
Bloom could have advanced ideas for Irish independence to
Arthur Griffith in Henry Street.
Why, if so, reflections on these matters would never cross
Bloom's mind on June 16 is another mystery. Perhaps the Irish
habit of evading spies and informers has become so ingrained
in him that he does not even allow himself to spend much time
thinking dangerous thoughts. He thinks elsewhere in Lestrygonians,
"Never know who you're talking to. . . . Egging raw youths on
to get in the know all the time drawing secret service pay
from the castle. . . . James Stephens' idea was the
best. He knew them. Circles of ten so that a fellow couldn't
round on more than his own ring. Back out you get the knife.
Hidden hand." Whatever the reasons may be for Bloom not
thinking about his ideas for Sinn Féin on June 16, it would be
entirely in character for him to purchase some cream,
conspicuously displayed "in his hand," to cover his
visits to a known hotbed of republican activists.
Thanks to Vincent Altman O'Connor for getting me thinking
about the political affliliations of "John Wyse Nolan's wife"
and her shop on Henry Street.
