Cloacal obsession

Professor MacHugh's reference in Aeolus to the "cloacal obsession" of the Romans and the English represents Joyce's sharp backhanded smash of a charge lobbed at him by H. G. Wells in 1917. Wells coined this phrase in a review essay that, while mostly quite generous to Joyce, also frankly expressed English prejudices against Irish Catholics and chided Joyce for indelicacy. Joyce's adoption of the phrase responds to these prejudices by reversing their values. Taking excessive interest in coarse bodily functions, he suggests, is far less contemptible than repressing them out of consciousness altogether.

John Hunt 2020

1920 photographic portrait of H. G. Wells by George Charles Beresford, held in the National Portrait Gallery, London. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

The Cloaca Maxima, a large sewer system dating to Etruscan times in ancient Rome. Source: www.sweetromemyhome.com.

A Roman watercloset of the 2nd century AD, its toilets facing water-filled troughs where patrons could dip the cloth-covered sticks that did the work of toilet paper. Source: www.sciencemag.org.