Mauves

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  • A shade of purple.
  • Joyce mentions the color mauve in Ulysses at least six times—in Chapters 6, 7, 13, 14, 15, and 17. The color may have a sacramental significance.
  • The name mauve derives from the same root as the word “mallow.” The mallow flower is the symbol of delicate beauty and gentle affection, or of maternal tenderness.
  • The word “mauve” also reminds one of the name Maeve, famous in Irish mythology. Maeve, or Medb, was a Celtic warrior-queen who defeated the Irish hero Cúchulainn. She was named after the Celtic Goddess of Intoxication, and had an insatiable sexual appetite, boasting openly of sleeping with thirty men in one day.
  • Mauve also has a liturgical, and thus sacramental, significance, in the Catholic liturgy. The color violet is the color for the season of Lent. It denotes mourning and penitence, and is also symbolic of humility, suffering, sympathy, and fasting.
  • Mauve, or Violet is also the last color in the visible spectrum. ROYGBIV.