What’s in a Mirror: James Joyce’s Phenomenology of Perception

The basic unit of Joyce’s fiction is, arguably, the encounter, a reminder of the Dubliners story of that name. This essay explores the many occasions of self-encounter, as when Joyce’s characters see themselves in mirrors, in the eyes of others, or in the guise of someone other than they are or appear to be: when Gerty MacDowell projects her “Lady Bountiful” self onto Bloom’s erotic gaze, for instance. The regulating idea here (as in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception) is that we perceive ourselves through our bodies, but this perception is not an empirical mirror-image; it is an image mediated (and thus transformed) by an array of intentions, memories, desires, and ongoing experiences of ourselves and others, including our experiences of how others see us (something to which Stephen is particularly subject). Joyce’s mirror-experiences range from ironic unmasking—“The Dead”—to phantasmagorias—the “Circe” episode of Ulysses, where no image is unreal, and every misnomer (like “Henry Flower”) has its moment of truth.