In Anne McLintock's Imperial Leather, she states that women are the land that must be discovered, penetrated, named, and, above all, possessed. In James Joyce's work, particularly in Ulysses and Dubliners, he explores women who fit McLintock's description: women as commodities. It is not just individual women who are commodified, often sexually, but also Ireland. The land itself, and the homeland of Joyce's characters, is also subject to ownership and export. Possessing a distinct place in the colonial sphere, Ireland is described by Joyce as the national woman who is sold through her people and material goods, while simultaneously participating in the business of purchasing other nations. The very depth with which people, objects and nations are embedded in commodity culture raises questions of whether anything is truly untouched by consumerism in modern times and, ultimately, questions of authenticity. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Joyce places women in the Marxist commodity class by describing them in her novels as manifestations of popular culture that can be advertised, commodified, bought, or sold. In Ulysses, the episode "Calypso" subtly presents advertising with its increasing shades of marketable sexuality, turning Leopold Bloom's daughter Milly into an object of popular culture. In the letter she writes home, she thanks them for her new swimsuit: "everyone says I look really beautiful in my new swimsuit... Now I'm starting to swim in the world of photography." There is an implicit link between its improved aesthetics and its commercial success, particularly in an industry that resonates with an emphasis on women's sexuality, pin-up girls and even pornography. Milly is now aware of her body's ability to enhance the "biz" (p. 63), as she is now "vain: a lot" (p. 64). In contrast to the prostitutes scattered throughout Ulysses, the more brazen embodiments of sexual commodities, Milly is a young girl, only "fifteen yesterday" (p. 64). It is therefore insinuated that commodification occurs from a young age, and this notion is perpetuated through Gerty in the episode "Nausicaa". Gerty is quantified in monetary terms as an “extraordinarily good daughter…with a little heart worth its weight in gold” (p. 339). It is built of the same commodity that plays such an important role in global trade, “gold.” He also asks why "one couldn't eat something poetic like violets or roses" (p. 337), revealing a desire to ingest a diet of romantic clichés that presents itself only as a product of consumerism. Gerty becomes, after all, a sexual object for Bloom and the focus of his voyeuristic public masturbation. She is aware of his gaze and appears to embrace him, "lifting her skirt but just enough... to draw attention to the gentleman looking opposite" (p. 340). The act is made even more perverse by the fact that Gerty is around the same age as Milly, indicating the blurred boundaries of acceptable female objectification. If Irish women and girls can be commodified, it is therefore not surprising that Ireland as a nation, especially considering its struggle against the British Empire, could be seen by Joyce as the extreme case of a woman bought and sold. In the Dubliners story "Two Gallants", the feminized harp that Lenehan and Corley pass is a representation of Ireland. The harp, in the hands of her male harpist, was "heedless of the fact that her blankets had fallen to her lap, she looked wearily similar to strangers' eyes and her master's hands." Ireland does notashamed, "careless" that she is naked, yet looks 'wearily' at and those who listen to her music under another's command. There's a tone of resignation surrounding his song. The harpist and the harp, therefore, become allegorical of Ireland under the British Empire in the eyes of the watching world as the two perform.in the hope of money. These connections are made more explicit through the choice of the song “Silent, O Moyle,” whose artist Thomas Moore celebrated the personification of the harp as Ireland in his other works (p. xx). The Irish nation is the motherland of Joyce and the inhabitants of his novels, presented as a mother in Ulysses' Eumeus by the politician Parnell: «Ireland, said Parnell, could not spare a single one of her sons» (p. 595) . ). With Ireland's image established as that of a woman and a mother, Joyce explores Parnell's claim by showing that while she "could not spare a single one of her children"; Ireland seemed able to spare many of her daughters. Joyce presents the daughters of the motherland as integral components of what assembles the Irish country. McLintock points out that women are typically constructed as symbolic bearers of the nation and, fittingly, in Joyce's works, their commodification represents the objectification and slow disintegration of Ireland. Gerty is "the finest specimen of charming Irish girlhood that she might once have wished to see" (p. 333), the epitome of an unspoiled and flourishing young Ireland. However, by becoming the sexual target of Bloom's public masturbation, Gerty and the pure vision she represents are corrupted and degraded. Objectification, therefore, undermines the foundations of a nation. Gerty's withered leg becomes a symptom of this, the disabling factor in an otherwise pure and childlike specimen: 'Mr. Bloom watched her limp away" (p. 351). His disability suggests a limping Ireland, in decline under British rule, held back by the commodification of its products and people. In Dubliners, the namesake of the short story "Eveline" also represents the selling out of Ireland and its people (particularly its women) as a way to weaken the country. Eveline chooses to "leave her home" (p. 25), Dublin, to follow her lover Frank "to become his wife and live with him in Buenos Ayres where he had a home waiting for her" (p. 27). The Irish home is rejected in favor of the distant and exotic, “Buenos Ayres,” but there are also undertones of a sinister industry that points to a deeply rooted problem in the arena of human labor. Buenos Aires had an international reputation as a center for the importation of Irish women who would be subjected to sexual exploitation. Thus, while Eveline's ultimate choice to reject Frank, "her eyes gave him no sign of love, farewell, or recognition" (p. 29), may indicate that she avoided becoming a victim of human trafficking , it remains that she, and Ireland, were vulnerable to the sector. Eveline represents all the Irish women who have undermined, overshadowed and highlighted their country's struggle by being victims of white trafficking. However, Ulysses shows that it is not simply the trade of people that can build or destroy a nation, but also that of its material goods which the land equally features. In Ulysses, Joyce describes this in a way that links the sale of Irish produce with his painful memories of the Great Famine of the 1840s, and later with his place in the British Empire. As Stephen Dedalus walks the streets in "Lestrygonians", he sees a "divided herd of branded cattle" (p. 94) and thinks "probably for Liverpool". Old English roast beef. They buyall the juicy ones' (p. 94). Cattle are "branded" with fire in the literal sense, but also figuratively as products of the Irish brand. Their explicit export to "old England" in Dedalus' head resonates with a vexed issue relating to the Famine: the continued export of Irish livestock to England, even after the potato blight had destroyed the crops and left the Irish starving. The cattle trade thus exemplifies how raw materials were crucial in making or breaking a nation – in this case, it contributed to the struggles that followed the ruin of food sources. The potato plague is most explicitly alluded to in a fight during "Circe" between Bloom and the prostitute Zoe over a potato. "He greedily puts the potato in her pocket" (p. 450) and later, when Bloom asks for it back, he justifies his request by stating that "it is nothing, but still a relic of poor mother" (p. 518). Here the potato as a symbol of both the Irish homeland and the struggle for food during the famine is reiterated, as is the fond sentiment behind "poor mother" Ireland. The comforts of Ireland have tired her and, in the pitiful tone of 'poor mum', suddenly it is obvious that the potato has become a 'relic', a symbol reflecting her country in decline. The parallels between convenience and female sexuality are drawn again when Zoe reveals 'her bare thigh and unrolls the potato from the top of the stocking” (p. 518). The physical proximity of the staple food to the apex of Zoe's thighs, as well as the image of its slow withdrawal, is no different than the export of potatoes or of any Irish good constitutes a loss to the woman, the motherland, from which she comes. However, how authentic is Ireland in Joyce's work as a victim of consumerism and commodity trading? While the commodification of Ireland, its products and its people remains, Joyce undermines it through the demonstration of Ireland's imperialist role. Products from other British colonies are scattered throughout Ulysses as an integral part of the daily lives of the Irish. Over the course of the novel, reference is made more than seventy-five times to the Irish domestic need for "tea", a good imported from the East that also echoes a mastery of English tradition. The Flower Pantry, examined in the episode "Ithaca", is filled with goods imported from other parts of the empire. Only on the middle shelf could one find "instant coke, five ounces of Anne Lynch's choice tea at 2 shillings a pound... the best crystallized lump sugar, two onions, one larger, Spanish, whole, the other, smaller, Irish, bisected with increased surface area and more fragrant' (p. 628) There is the "cocoa" of Africa, the "tea" of the East and the "crystallized sugar" of the Caribbean, all national slaves and goods of the British Empire. Even in his nationalist struggle, Joyce portrays Ireland as playing the imperialist game, and as a result not only a victim, but also a conqueror alongside the English, feeding the empire through economic means in the same way where the commodification of Ireland hinders it, the same dilemma for the other colonies reconstructs it. Onions demonstrate the difference between independence and colonialisation, with the Spanish onion being 'whole' and 'larger', contrasted with an Irish onion." divided in two" with an "increased area", figuratively the area of ​​the country increased under foreign power. Joyce juxtaposes the weak, commodified Ireland with the abundance and wealth of imported goods, but at the same time points out that, although being sold is bad in Ireland itself, in reality Ireland is constructed through goods purchased from other subjugated nations. Joyce then demonstrated..