Of course Norah was the model for Molly, but as I said in my last video on episode seven, probably the model as well for the younger Cissy Caffrey. I’ve a long way to go before I get to Molly’s final chapter riverrun but I do put her up there and probably beyond our two other heroes, Bloom and Stephen.

“…God in heaven theres nothing like nature the wild mountains then the seas and the waves rushing then the beautiful country with fields of oats and wheat and all kinds of things and the fine cattle about that would do your heart good to see….” –Molly Bloom.

Way beyond good and evil…. to Life!

Read and then reread Stephen Hero recently, the unpublishable forerunner to A Portrait. Much more in depth picture of Stephen (and Joyce) in the fateful months leading up to his departure for Europe. But also illuminating in his relationship with the buxom young Irish gal Emma, constrained as she was by ideas of nationalism and the ingrained straightjacket of Catholicism.

What it must have meant for the young isolated Joyce to meet the free and nobly uneducated Norah!

(A reply to a comment on a video I posted on YouTube)