bait maids a milken

[David Morris]

>From: public domain <publicdomainboquita at yahoo.com>
>
>Selling but not producing milk? Sounds like James Joyce's Ireland to me. 
>Anyway, young  milkmaids are quite prevalent in the popular 18th century 
>literature and art. But in Pynchon, they are young, very young. Perhaps 
>they are old enough to sit at the breakfast table, pour the milk, even 
>produce it and sell it, but are they old enough to eat? That's the Pynchon 
>twist on Joyce/Eliot (both TS and George)/& Co…..

Not an expert on Joyce myself, but have been hanging out on the Joyce list 
for a while (as I make my way through Ulysses for the first time), and the 
subject of Brigid and milkmaids was recently addressed by the leading 
scholar on that list.  The following is just a fragment of his comments on 
the subject:

"Now Brigid and Beatrice, the names of these two nice young ladies who open 
for us as the curtains rise in Exiles . . . don't they seem kinda familiar?  
The early pages of Portrait of the Artist . . . Brigid, the maid, is also 
present, as well as a lady named, of all things, Dante . . . and wasn't 
Dante's patrona the lady Beatrice? Hmmmm . . . spects I better knock some 
ash out of my pipe here . . . and that milktruck allusion on the opening 
page of Exiles . . . doesn't Portrait start off with a moocow . . . doesn't 
Ulysses have an old milkwoman in the first chapter . . . isn't Brighid the 
patron saint of dairymaids, and often portrayed with a cow at her side . . . 
  didn't Brighid provide her parish with free milk and butter throughout her 
reign as its abbess . . . "

BTW, the bar matron on Valleta with the tit-shaped beer spouts (remember 
"suck-hour?") was named Beatrice.  You connect the dots....

David Morris


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