Penelope

When I wrote my blog entry for the Nausicaa episode I anticipated that an interesting contrast between Gerty and Molly's perspectives would emerge in this chapter. The contrasts are definitely there, but I was surprised by how similar the two women are. They are both fiercely competitive with other women. They both make enormous mistakes about the subjects of their sexual fantasies. And they both have sentimental perspectives on sexuality.

On the other hand, Molly is much more honest with herself than Gerty is. Sometimes strikingly so. She hates it when people skip over dirty words and doesn't seem to care if her sexual episodes are revealed to others. Both put down other women. But Molly is more lucid about it. She mocks older women and their futile attempts to remain attractive. But she almost simultaneously acknowledges that she will one day be in the same boat.

Molly's misunderstandings about Stephen are very similar to the mistakes Gerty makes about Bloom. Molly hilariously fantasizes about Stephen swimming in the bay, unaware that he is terrified of water. She presumes that he is clean, but he hasn't bathed in months. She thinks she might impress him if she reads books that he likes or if she teaches him Spanish. She hates atheists without realizing that Stephen is an avid one.

This pattern of misunderstandings about desired objects is really important to the book. Many of the narrative styles that Joyce takes on function on false presumptions and misunderstandings. The "climactic anticlimax" of the novel in the Eumaeus episode is what it is because Bloom fundamentally misunderstands Stephen, defying the empathy that is the source of his heroism.

Molly's candidness about sexuality puts her in stark contrast to Gerty. Gerty doesn't directly mention Blooms masturbation, her approaching menstruation or her limp in her own thoughts. Molly greets this kind of material readily in her consciousness, including her own faults. But Molly's sexual appetite isn't all that different from Gerty's. Both characters focus on long kisses. They don't merely seek pure sexual gratification. They want to be watched and admired. It's significant that Molly wishes her garters were hanging up for Stephen to see. Gerty orgasmic experience took place when she revealed her underwear to Bloom. Molly's thoughts dwell on Gibraltar, Moorish sailors, and other centers of foreignness. Bloom appeals to Gerty because of his foreign features.

I'm not sure what to make of all this except that it's not too admirable for Joyce to attribute these stereotypes to both major female characters. But I like these coincidences anyway. Maybe its because I read them as symbols connectivity throughout Dublin. The fact that Gerty and Molly both menstruate within hours of each other testifies pretty strongly to this. The women in Bloom's life...are...consubstantial?

Ithaca

This chapter is really beautiful. The detached fact-listing interview actually lends a lot of intimacy and emotion to the scene. Sometimes reading through the entire contents of Bloom's drawer can be tedious, but we've badly needed a perspective in this novel that at least tries to be comprehensive. And the lists that whisk us away from the setting of the story connect these insignificant events to the rest of the universe. When Bloom turns the water on, the whole infrastructure of Dublin participates. Bursting suns in the distant universe are a part of Bloom and Stephen's pissing contest. It's not a coincidence that Bloom has Spinoza in his library. Bloom's view of the world strives towards the one that Spinoza advocates: the perspective of eternity. He sees both sides and wants the best for everyone, not just his friends and family.

Bloom and Stephen as a pair aren't hopeless anymore. Joyce brings them together, but in an unexpected way. By emphasizing their differences, Joyce reconciles them in a way. It endows them with a kind of symmetry. Bloom writes out Hebrew. Stephen writes out Irish. Bloom sips his cocoa faster than Stephen, but in a consistent proportion: 3 to 1. Their educational histories may differ, but each would have excelled in the other's shoes. Stephen turns down Blooms offer to stay - mirroring Bloom's decline to Stephen a decade earlier.

I can't remember where, but I remember hearing that his was Joyce's favorite episode in the book. That's not surprising. Everything fits into place here without being predictable. This is modernist structure at its most poetic; a nonsensical kind of order that liberates and humanizes these characters. Nonsense words slip in towards the end like "handtouch" and "lonechill" as if the narrator is nodding off with Bloom. The scientific style gives way to the absurd rhymes that characterized earlier narratives: "plump mellow yellow smellow melons..." and "Sinbad the Sailor and Tinbad the Tailor...", etc.

Eumaeus

The first thing I noticed about this episode was its resemblance to the Nausicaa episode. Bloom shifts out of his heroic role and back into his social obliviousness. Like Gerty, Bloom makes more of his relationship to Stephen than is actually there. Like Bloom in Nausicaa, Stephen does little to correct this misunderstanding. The narrator and perhaps Joyce's ideal reader also makes this mistake: "Thought they didn't see eye to eye on everything, a certain analogy there somehow was, as if both their minds were travelling, so to speak, in the one train of thought." Stephen, who barely utters a word the whole time, does not appear to share this sentiment.

One especially obvious moment is when Bloom hears Italian in the streets and comments on the language's beauty. He asks Stephen why he doesn't write poetry in Italian and Stephen somewhat cruelly tells him: "They were haggling over money." Bloom takes know notice when Stephen points out that he is looking at things shallowly.

The narrative seems to be an approximation of what Bloom's writing would be like if he followed through with his periodic impulses to submit something. Joyce jokingly alludes to this fact in Bloom's consciousness. "My Experiences in a Cabman's Shelter" could be what we are actually reading. The narrative also seems like a convergence between the styles of the earlier episodes and the storyteller style implied by the sailor.

One thing I couldn't really figure out was the significance of the sailor's Odysseus-ness. He wanders the sea and hasn't seen his wife or son in seven years - a lover of adventures. Maybe this is just another device to emphasize the difference between Bloom and the traditional hero - an assertion that's made quite a lot in this strangely anticlimactic episode.

Circe

This chapter is quite a mouthful. It isn't just long, it interacts pretty blatantly with every episode so far. A lot of ideas that appeared between the lines earlier in the book are voiced overtly in this chapter - almost to the point of vulgarity. Bloom's femininity is explicitly realized in one of the fantasies. His sympathy to animals, the flirtatious side of his acquaintanceship with Mrs. Breen, and his figurative impotence are also physically described where they were only hinted at before. The idea that Stephen is intentionally concealing his talents emerges in Zoe's oblivious jeer ("The bird that can sing but won't sing"). Stephen's guilt about his mother literally flies up out of the ground in what may be the only fantasy that is actually experienced by either Stephen or Bloom.

At first I was disheartened that Joyce started shouting what seemed like secrets before. But with these exposures, a new level of subtlety appears. We get some pretty contradictory messages. Bloom sways between birthing children and receiving penetration from a masculinity woman to callously critiquing Bello's appearance. The fantasies towards the beginning of the episode portray Bloom as soft and pathetic. But this episode is also the climax of Bloom's heroism. He takes charge of Stephen's money. His insight into other points of view saves Stephen from an arrest. Bloom's cowardice and empathy give way to patience and compassion. We're tempted to read Bloom as hallucinating and lost in his shameful desire, but he is actually quite lucid - at least when Stephen needs him. The fantasies divide him into different people: Bloom in various points of his life, the weak cuckolded Bloom, Virag who is Bloom's hyperlogical alter ego, and Henry Flower. But Bloom has never been more put together. Most importantly, Bloom is no longer an idle thinker or a wanderer. He is an agent; without his agency having to compromise his sensitive, empathetic character.

Oxen of the Sun

In this chapter, the narrative breaks down into a series of imitations which are supposed to map the genealogy of Irish English. There's a lot to be said about this strange "birth" with all its trimesters and the retelling of evolutionary history in womb. But I think it's more interesting (and a little harder) to look at how the narratives interact with events in the plot (imagine that).

In Aeolus we were regularly interrupted by goofy headlines and useless rhetoric. It was pretty clear that Joyce was making a point about the relationship between the language that journalists use and their intentions. He reminded us that our knowledge of the events and characters that make up this book - and the knowledge we have about anything at all - is only as good as the point of view Joyce allows us to take.

In Oxen of the Sun, Joyce tests the limit of this premise. In Cyclops, Nausicaa, and Aeolus we were challenged to look behind the deceptive styles to find an underlying reality. Or at least that seemed like something that one could and should do. Gerty's syrupy narrative left things out explicitly for us to pick up on, like masturbation and menstruation. There seemed to be a concrete reality behind the rhetoric that could be revealed.

But in Oxen of the Sun, the narratives begin to constitute reality. It gets pretty hard to read into Bannon's intentions as he gazes at Milly's portrait. The style of an Irish cleric glosses over what seemed to be indicators of maliciousness in our previous encounters with this character. In Naussicaa, Joyce provided Bloom's stream-of-consciousness to counter Gerty's romantic imaginings. But in this chapter, important information often only gets touched by a single not-so-trustworthy voice. "Thrice happy will he be whom so amiable a creature will bless with her favours." The language doesn't allow Bannon to slip up much. Even conversations with Mulligan about condomns are cloaked in slang and innuendo. Umbrellas, coats "in the French fashion", and fairy mushrooms form a barrier of innocence that makes the most important information - what they are going to do to Milly - harder to discern.

Another moment of fractured reality occurs when Haines makes his absurd appearance - suddenly the murderer of Samuel Childs. It looks like a lot of these plot-points were written around the narrative styles not the other way around. The intellectual buffon of Britain becomes a mysterious ghostly character. Mulligan is "overcome with emotion."
These are flourishes of style that dramatically effect character development and action in the plot. Again, Joyce wants us to recognize the role that our point of view plays in the construction of reality.

This episode was really hard.

Nausicaa

This is the first episode with explicit sexual action, a turning point in the book. In it, a number of themes take on new dimensions. Hats up until this point were primarily associated with men, agency, courtesy, and reverence (for the dead in Hades for example). But in this chapter, a hat is used in an erotic display. It hides Gerty's face and is part of her-as-an-object for Bloom. It is united with Gerty's passivity as being-watched. Joyce and Bloom both understand that this passivity is really not so passive. Gerty's mind reveals that although she wants to think of herself as idle and passive, she is deliberately putting on a show for Bloom and making subtle changes to her behavior in responce to Bloom's look.

This new development in the implications of the hat is indicative of a larger development in the theme of ideal vs. real. Gerty has an idealized sense of love and sex. She envisions a perfect, passionate and exciting love in her future. She wants a good Catholic marriage, but with many of the elements you'd find in an affair - like in "Sweets of Sin." Bloom, when he is masturbating idealizes Gerty in a similiar way. This is why Bloom is glad when he sees her limp that he didn't see it while he was masturbating. "See her as she is spoil all," he thinks.

Once he's finished, Bloom provides a kind of reality check to counter these complementary fantasies. He guesses many of her thoughts, including her excitement that he might be married but still love her ("That's what they enjoy. Taking a man from another woman.") Bloom demonstrates in this chapter that he can break through sexual idealism as easily he can political idealism. In a way, what we know of Bloom already by itself provides a counter to Gerty's fancies. Molly, who's thoughts on sex and love appear in the last chapter is the real to Gerty's ideal. Bloom doesn't not hesitate to see Molly and Gerty - she reminds him of the early years of his marriage.

It's significant that Gerty's hat is straw like Boylans. Gerty seems like she'd be fair game for Boylan. He exploits these kinds of sexual ideals in other women. We don't know if the techniques he used on the cashier in "The Wandering Rocks" are the reasons why Molly is compelled to sleep with Boylan. It certainly doesn't seem like it's the cause of her infidelity in general. But, having lightly read Penelope in the past, I think that chapter and this one will be complementary. This chapter would voice the Irish woman's sexual ideal and Molly's chapter sexual reality for women.

Cyclops

This episode is probably the hardest we've read so far. I had a hectic weekend and not too much time to soak in the nuances of Cyclops. But I'll do my best.

Joyce is highly concerned with points of view throughout Ulysses, but in this episode the obsession is more obvious than ever before. In Aeolus Joyce provoked us to distrust the narrative by interrupting the story with newspaper headlines. This chapter takes this technique to a new extreme. The narrator is a character who we have never met - one with a very narrow point of view. And we get interrupted again, this time with whole passages that sometimes span pages. Like the headlines in Aeolus, their relevance to the plot is pretty thin. They demonstrate how the style of the writer is indicative of his point of view. If there is a goal to convey the truth clearly in any of these passages, it is completely undermined - usually because the rhetoric is trying to entertain. Joyce is trying to remind us that journalists and others have allegiances other than the truth.

It seems like everyone except for Bloom is cycloptic - that is, one-eyed and unable to put themselves in other people's shoes. This trait of Blooms is becoming more and more important to the idea of a "modern epic". A few characters that we don't really like that much are called heroes in this chapter. All together Bloom is pushed around by the guy who's giving us the information. I think Joyce is prompting us to respond by noticing Bloom's heroism. He's given tangible adversaries in this episode and Bloom shows some courage (kind of). But what's important is that Bloom is pitted against people who can't consider other perspectives.
This makes Bloom's empathy seem less like a quirk and more like a magic power.