Nora Barnacle (1884 – 1951). Muse and wife of Irish author James Joyce.
She was born in a Galway workhouse. Her father, Thomas Barnacle, a baker in Connemara, was an illiterate man who was 38 years old when she was born. Her mother, Annie Honoria Healy, was 28 and worked as a dressmaker. The unusual surname Barnacle is derived from the Irish Ó Cadhain: since in Irish cadhan meant “wild goose”, some families made the translation to Barnacle, after the barnacle goose.
Between 1886 and 1889, Barnacle's parents sent her to live with her maternal grandmother, Catherine Mortimer Healy. During these years, she began studies at a convent, eventually graduating from a national school in 1891. In 1896, Barnacle completed her schooling and began to work as a porteress and laundress.
Barnacle met Joyce in June 1904 while in Dublin. On the same year they left Ireland for continental Europe and the following year set up house in Trieste (at that time in Austria-Hungary). In 1905, Nora Barnacle gave birth to a son, Giorgio and later to a daughter, Lucia. A miscarriage in 1908 coincided with the beginning of a difficult time for both. Though she remained by his side, and the couple were legally married in London in 1931, she complained to her sister both about his personal qualities and his writings.
Lucia's mental illness, which became acute in the early 1930s, posed another challenge to the couple's relationship. Nora believed the condition required hospitalisation, which Joyce opposed. They brought in many specialists, and Lucia was for a time the patient of Carl Jung. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia and admitted to a clinic in 1936.
After Joyce's death in Zurich in 1941, Nora decided to remain there for the rest of her days.
- "For herself, Nora had an erect, fearless saunter, masses of auburn hair and dark blue eyes, and her lovely name surely pleased Joyce, a committed fan of Ibsen and his Nora." https://lithub.com/on-writing-nora-joyce-into-biographical-fiction/
- "Nora, who used to hang about Galway with her wild red hair lost in the wind." https://books.google.it/books…
- "... I already learned about Joyce's "great love" (though he
apparently fell in love with someone else later), Nora Barnacle, the
beautiful redhead he saw one day on the streets of Dublin." http://bluestalking.typepad.com/the_bluestalki…/lucia-joyce/
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