SOURCE: "Chauvinist Brew and Leopold Bloom: The Weininger Legacy," in James Joyce Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 2, Winter, 1982, pp. 194-8.

In the following essay, Joly briefly explicates James Joyce's use of Weininger's ideas regarding women and Jews in his characterization of Leopold Bloom in Ulysses.

In his splendid biography of Joyce, Ellmann convincingly unearths myriad prototypes and seminal influences for the realization of Leopold Bloom. Among the latter is Otto Weininger, whom Ellmann informs us looms as a source for the effeminacy of Joyce's hero (JJ 477). Nonetheless, Ellmann's brief treatment of Weininger's role belies the immensity of his contribution to Bloom's characterization.

Himself an apostate Jew, Weininger was a Viennese psychologist given to a prodigious flow of acid commentary on women and Jews in Geschlecht und Charakter, initially published in May 1903, and in its twenty-second edition when Joyce completed Ulysses.¹ It is probable that Joyce discovered Weininger through Italo Svevo...