Issy

'Issy' is the daughter of prominent tavern-owner HCE and his wife ALP. Her mother's name, Plurabelle, hints at the multiplicity passed on to the daughter Isabelle, a plural-belle represented at times by the two temptresses in Phoenix Park, the two-in-one figure of Vanessa/Esther, the seven rainbow maidens, the 29 flower girls. Issy seems literally to suffer from a split or schizophrenic personality. The splitting-head syndrome may be a trait passed on from her father, who at times seems to think that he was the sole parent of his daughter, as Zeus produced Athena from his own cleft skull; and as you may notice, Joyce's daughter herself suffered from the same disorder.

In the archetypal triad of the triple goddess, is the maiden counterpart to ALP as matron and Kate/Kathe as the "ygathering gnarlybird" crone, analogous to Persephone, Demeter and Hecate. Since in this role Issy is simultaneously a daughter and a youthful mother, her father is tormented by incestuous feeling. This guilt is expressed in the text as a nervous and embarrassing stutter, and instantiated at the transgression in the park.

In what could be called the frame story of the narrative, Issy corresponds to Porter's daughter Ann. Her mythological and historical stand-ins elsewhere in the text include the Isolde of legend, the Hindu deity Isa, the Biblical Eve. She appears as Isa, Isabeau, Isabel, Is, Iz, Isabelle, Isolde, Ish, Eve, Isse, Mishe, Iss, and other iterations, and by the siglum of the toppled-T.

Her sexual potency both creates and destroys. Issy’s potential as a childbearing woman means she is to be valued as the heiress to her mother’s fertility, but her virginal beauty is a temptation that transforms husbands into lechers.