6. The Aunt Josephine Paradox

‘The Aunt Josephine Paradox’ begins by highlighting the legacy and impact of James Joyce’s works on the legalization of same-sex marriages in Ireland, the rejection of the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, and nationalism. It then considers the Aunt Josephine paradox. The Aunt Josephine paradox refers to when Joyce sent a copy of Ulysses to his aunt, Josephine Murray, and she found the book incomprehensible. This provides perhaps the most telling example of the fact that Joyce hoped for a very general readership and underestimated wildly the difficulties that Ulysses posed to the reader. However, these difficulties are not specific to Joyce; they are common to all modernist texts.