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As Ireland prepares to celebrate Bloomsday, we remember James Joyce as one of Ireland’s best-known writers and poets. Bloomsday is celebrated each year on 16th June and honours James Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses. The day is named after Leopold Bloom, the main character of the novel, following Bloom’s life and thoughts as well as those of others on June 16,1904 - from 8.00am through to the early hours of the following morning. Joyce’s novels are set in and around Dublin and feature his family, friends and fellow Dubliners. One of those featured characters is Eveline in The Dubliners reputed to be loosely based on Joyce’s sister Margaret Alice Joyce.
Margaret Alice Joyce, reportedly James Joyce’s favourite sister, became Sister Mary Gertrude Joyce, who served as a Sister of Mercy in New Zealand until her death, aged 80, in 1964.
Margaret Alice was 19 years old when her mother died in 1903, and being the eldest girl, it fell to her to take her mother’s place in rearing the younger members of the family. As her mother lay dying, Margaret Alice had promised that she would not desert the younger children, and despite her wish to leave the family home and join a convent, she kept her promise to her mother for the next six years.
In 1909, after five and a half years trying to maintain the Joyce household, she made up her mind to leave. She entered St Brigid’s Missionary School in Callan, Co. Kilkenny.
After her first term in the Missionary School, Margaret returned to Dublin, and met James, who was home in Dublin on a visit. It seems that at this point, James was very committed to the practice of his religion. Years later Margaret would recall*: Jim was the most religious of us all. As a matter of fact, he scared the rest of us with the intensity of his faith and some of his religious practices.*
Margaret recounts that when she told him of her plan to join a community in Germany, he said to her: Why not do something really heroic and witness at the uttermost parts of the earth? When asked where that might be, his reply was: The Antipodes - and New Zealand in particular. You can’t get much further than there. And Margaret added: And that is how I came to be here.
The oldest siblings of ten children, James and Mary Alice grew up in a poor household due to the instability of their father’s employment. James’ response to this poverty was to capture it in his work where the desperation of the Irish people and their physical, spiritual and emotional degradation is deeply embedded in each story. For Margaret Alice, her commitment to religious life as a Sister of Mercy enabled her to address poverty through her work as an educator and musician in Greymouth and Runanga in New Zealand.
When Mary Alice left for New Zealand, James Joyce saw her off and promised that he would pay her fare if she ever wanted to return. She didn’t return to Ireland and the brother and sister kept in contact through letters, which were unfortunately destroyed at her request when she was dying.
James Joyce also had a cousin, Sister Agnes Murray, who died in 2018, and was a member of the Sisters of Mercy, in Ballymahon, Co. Longford.
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So, as you celebrate Bloomsday this year, say a prayer for Mary Alice and Agnes Murray and the work of the Sisters of Mercy spread across the world.
ENDS
Caroline Thompson, Head of Heritage and Spirituality