“Go for Soap”―the Lemon Soap for the Irish Conscience or Pears’ for the British Conquest in Ulysses

Just as Dubliners serves as a looking-glass to show the corruption of the long-colonized Irish, Ulysses suggests a soap with which to wash the perverted mentality. Leopold Bloom, the oppressed-yet-loving Jewish-Irish, buys and carries a lemony soap with him all day around Dublin. The lemon soap that may work for the spiritual liberation of Ireland represents the Irish self-consciousness or love that will eventually remove the moral dirt of racial and religious prejudices generated by a lengthy history of foreign domination. The Irish-manufactured lemon soap is compared to the American Brooke’s Soap—the famous Monkey Brand Soap—which is featured in the 1891 ad slogan, “We’re a capital couple the Moon and I.” In Joyce’s parody of the slogan in the text, the lemon soap parallels the moon that “brightens” the Irish sky, which reflects the dark oppression of the Irish land by both the British and the Roman Church, while the loving Bloom, like the Brooke’s Soap, “polishes” the Irish earth that is paralyzed by the colonial abuse and violence. Thus, the capital couple Bloom and the lemon soap work for love to create a conscience and spiritual freedom for the Irish. The British Pears’ Soap ad, however, posits a strong threat to the Irish lemon soap. The Pears’ ad, “Good morning, have you used Pears’ soap?”—echoing in Bloom’s mind—is prevalent in British Ireland, constructing the Irish perception of reality as unclean or uncivilized. The feeling of cleanliness connected to Pears’ Soap, created by inventing the feeling of relative-uncleanliness about Irish reality, confirms British rule of unclean Ireland. The soap that is needed to create the Irish conscience, however, is the one that makes the Irish feel love for one another, by recognizing and embracing the truth of colonial reality, rather than the one that makes the Irish feel clean like the dominating English.