Interpreting the Lives of Working Children in James Joyce’s Ulysses

While a distinctive characteristic of James Joyce’s Ulysses is that children are subjected to concurrent and contrasting adult points of view—neither perspective reveals a great deal about the lives of children in the story. This chapter presents evidence that there is a continuum of childhoods in Ulysses, organised through social class, that excludes some types of children from market participation. However, when it is possible and necessary, children in Ulysses become self-invested actors that participate in market practices and, while often collaborating in order to survive, also often exchange emotional encouragement that is otherwise unavailable to them. Unlike in Joyce’s earlier literature, therefore, childhood in Ulysses is historicized, and children’s lives are treated as separate from adult concerns.