Thursday, 5 June 2014

Marion (Molly) Bloom and Stephen Dedalus

Molly Bloom is a fictional character in the novel Ulysses by James Joyce. The wife of main character Leopold Bloom, she roughly corresponds to Penelope in the Odyssey. The major difference between Molly and Penelope is that while Penelope is eternally faithful, Molly is not. Molly is having an affair with Hugh 'Blazes' Boylan after ten years of her celibacy within the marriage (though some critics, including Gilbert, point out that the celibacy of Penelope is questionable). Molly, whose given name is Marion, was born in Gibraltar in 1870, the daughter of Major Tweedy, an Irish military officer, and Lunita Laredo, a Gibraltarian of Spanish Jewish descent. Molly and Leopold were married in 1888. She is the mother of Milly Bloom, who, at the age of 15, has left home to study photography. She is also the mother of Rudy Bloom, who died at the age of 11 days. In Dublin, Molly is an opera singer of some renown.
The final chapter of Ulysses, often called "Molly Bloom's Soliloquy", is a long and unpunctuated stream of consciousness passage comprising her thoughts as she lies in bed next to Bloom.

Molly Bloom's Soliloquy

Molly Bloom's soliloquy refers to the eighteenth and final "episode" of James Joyce's novel Ulysses, in which the thoughts of Molly Bloom are presented in contrast to those of the previous narrators, Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus. Molly's physicality is often contrasted with the intellectualism of the male characters, Stephen Dedalus in particular.
Joyce's novel presented the action with numbered "episodes" rather than named chapters. Most critics since Stuart Gilbert, in his James Joyce's Ulysses, have named the episodes and they are often called chapters. The final chapter is referred to as "Penelope", after Molly's mythical counterpart.
In the course of the monologue, Molly accepts Leopold into her bed, frets about his health, and then reminisces about their first meeting and about when she knew she was in love with him. The final words of Molly's reverie, and the very last words of the book, are:
"...I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish Wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. "
Joyce noted in a 1921 letter to Frank Budgen that "[t]he last word (human, all too human) is left to Penelope." The episode both begins and ends with "yes," a word that Joyce described as "the female word" and that he said indicated "acquiescence, self-abandon, relaxation, the end of all resistance."Template:Ulysses, by Hugh Kenner p.147 This last, clear "yes" stands in sharp contrast to her unintelligible first spoken line in the fourth chapter of the novel.
Molly's soliloquy consists of eight enormous "sentences." The concluding period following the final words of her reverie is one of only two punctuation marks in the chapter, the periods at the end of the fourth and eighth "sentences". When written this episode contained the longest "sentence" in English literature, 4,391 words expressed by Molly Bloom (it was surpassed in 2001 by Jonathan Coe's The Rotters' Club).[1]

Sources

Joyce modelled the character upon his wife, Nora Barnacle; indeed, the day upon which the novel is set — June 16, 1904, now called Bloomsday — is that of their first date. Nora Barnacle's letters also almost entirely lacked capitalization or punctuation; Anthony Burgess has said that "sometimes it is hard to distinguish between a chunk of one of Nora's letters and a chunk of Molly's final monologue".[2] Some research also points to another possible model for Molly in Amalia Popper, one of Joyce's students to whom he taught English while living in Trieste. Amalia Popper was the daughter of a Jewish businessman named Leopoldo Popper, who had worked for a European freight forwarding company (Adolf Blum & Popper) founded in 1875 in its headquarters in Hamburg by Adolf Blum, after whom Leopold Bloom was named. In the (now published) manuscript Giacomo Joyce, are images and themes Joyce used in Ulysses and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Cultural references

There is a bronze sculpture of Molly Bloom which stands at the Alameda Gardens in Gibraltar. This running figure was commissioned from Jon Searle to celebrate the bicentenary of the Gibraltar Chronicle in 2001.[3]
  • J.M. Coetzee's novel Elizabeth Costello portrays the fictional writer Costello as the author of a fictional novel, The House on Eccles Street, which is written from Molly Bloom's point of view.
  • Molly Bloom's soliloquy was also used as the basis for a dance song by Amber, titled "Yes."
  • The soliloquy is also featured in a Rodney Dangerfield movie, Back to School, wherein it is read aloud to a college English class by Dr. Diane Turner (played by Sally Kellerman).
  • It was also the inspiration for the Kate Bush song "The Sensual World". Originally Bush had written the song to directly quote Ulysses, but Joyce's estate refused permission. Thus she wrote her own set of lyrics in a style that echoed Molly Bloom's soliloquy. Bush's 2011 album Director's Cut includes a newer version of the track (now titled "Flower of the Mountain") with new vocals that use the original Joyce text.
  • Part of the soliloquy is quoted by the character Molly Greaney in the Susan Turlish play Lafferty's Wake.
  • The character Ralph Spoilsport recites the end of the soliloquy as the last lines of the Firesign Theatre's album "How Can You Be In Two Places At Once (When You're Not Anywhere At All)"
  • "Yes I Said Yes I Will Yes", inspired by the soliloquy, is the title of a track by Bristol-based jazz quartet Get the Blessing, appearing on their album Bugs in Amber.

Further reading

  • Blamires, Harry (1988). The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses (Revised Edition Keyed to the Corrected Text). London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-00704-6.
  • Joyce, James (1992). Ulysses: The 1934 Text, as Corrected and Reset in 1961. New York: The Modern Library. ISBN 0-679-60011-6.

References

  1. Jump up^ Parody, Antal (2004). Eats, Shites & Leaves: Crap English and How to Use it. Michael O'Mara. ISBN 1-84317-098-1.
  2. Jump up^ Ingersoll, edited by Earl G.; Ingersoll, Mary C. (2008). Conversations with Anthony Burgess (1. printing. ed.). Jackson: University press of Mississippi. p. 51. ISBN 160473096X.
  3. Jump up^ "Special Events". Gibraltar Chronicle. 2001. Retrieved 16 July 2013.

External links( control click to get to the references) 


 Character Analysis

An Absent Adulteress

For seventeen of the eighteen episodes in Ulysses, we don't get anything but a fleeting glimpse of Mrs. Molly Bloom. In "Calypso," she asks Leopold about the word, "metempsychosis." He tries explaining it in highfalutin terms, and she says, "O rocks! Tell us in plain words" (4.116). But other than that brief flash of her humor and her charm, Molly becomes confined to the words and thoughts of others.

In the men's gossip about town, we quickly learn that Molly is attractive. The general consensus seems to be that her marriage to Bloom is a tragic case of disproportionate beauty, so to speak. John Henry Menton remembers how beautiful she used to be, and wonders why she married a "coon" like Bloom. Often, men offer up an off-color remark about Molly. Lenehan takes it the furthest, when he claims to have groped Molly in a carriage while Bloom was seated just across the way. Later on in "Penelope," we learn that Lenehan's boast is blatantly untrue.

We learn the most about Molly, though, through Bloom's thoughts of her. To an extent, he worships her. He thinks she is a much better singer than the wife of M'Coy, and he romanticizes her childhood in Gibraltar, and her cultural background. The dominant tone, though, is one of sadness. Bloom is tormented by the fact that Molly is going to cheat on him later that same day. Out of sympathy for our protagonist, we can't help but view Molly as an unsympathetic adulteress – how could she do this to Leopold?

Interestingly, in the last episode, we find that Molly herself is very in tune with how she is perceived. In her soliloquy before she nods off to sleep, she turns many of our assumptions inside out.

A Prostitute or a Feminist Voice?

Prostitute is an ugly word. We know. But that's the word a lot of people picked to describe Joyce's portrayal of Molly Bloom after the book came out. Her bluntness about sexual matters – from different positions, to the sensation of her orgasm, to the pros and cons of oral sex – shocked many readers. More importantly, perhaps, it seems that she organizes her entire life in terms of the men that she has known. At first glance, it can almost seem as if Molly doesn't exist separate from one romantic pursuit or another.

Molly may love her husband, but her thoughts about their sex life can be off-putting: "pretending to like it till he comes and then finish it off myself anyway" (18.740). Her concern for her own sexual pleasure comes through in her erotic thought, "I can feel his mouth O Lord I must stretch myself I wished he was here or somebody to let myself go with and come again like that I feel all fire inside me" (18.754). Of course, one must remember that these are supposed to be Molly's privatethoughts, that she wouldn't imagine readers poring over them almost a hundred years later.

But it has been extremely disconcerting to many feminists that these words were put in Molly's head by a man. Often women readers and critics are displeased with Joyce's portrayal of a woman's inner life: "If you think that all we think about all day is men and sex, you've got another thing coming."

These readers and critics have a point, especially considering thatUlysses is Joyce's attempt to blast open the female point-of-view, the point-of-view missing from the Odyssey and much of the male-dominated literary world. In her soliloquy, Molly does spend a lot of time thinking about the hypocritical nature of male-female relations. At one point, she thinks, "They can go on and get whatever they like from anything at all with a skirt on it and were not to ask any questions but they want to know were you where are you going I could feel himcoming along skulking after me" (18.746). For the most part, though, Molly has been rejected as a feminist voice. And we think it makes sense that the real blasting open of the female perspective should come from a woman (e.g. Virginia Woolf).

Yet Molly is a remarkable character, and one possible way to get past the feminist/anti-feminist debate might just be to accept the fact that she is a male creation. In 1909, an acquaintance of Joyce's, Cosgrave, suggested to him that when he (Joyce) had first begun seeing his wife, Nora that Cosgrave had also been "seeing" her. The suggestion drove Joyce mad with jealousy, which is now documented in the letters that he sent to his wife. At first, they are furious, but they gradually become more honest and reveal just how vulnerable Joyce felt.

So one way to think of Molly's soliloquy is as Joyce's attempt to imagine how his wife might have reasoned through the worst of all possible worlds: the one in which she is having an affair. It's a masochistic task, but it's also an attempt to empathize with his wife, to overcome his sexual possessiveness of her. Through Molly, one might say that Joyce tries to turn his jealousy inside-out, to use it against itself in order to imagine his wife's point of view. There's no doubt that Joyce's own sexual neuroses find expression in Molly's sexual cravings – as if he's lashing himself for being so envious of her. We're not saying this is the right or the only way to read "Penelope," but it is one way of moving beyond some aspects of the feminist/anti-feminist debate.

Whether or not Joyce nails it, his portrait of Molly is his honest attempt to capture (as a man) the female point of view.

The Blunt Muse

Molly's monologue forces us to reevaluate a lot of earlier ideas about what's going on in Ulysses. In particular, we have to reevaluate Leopold Bloom. Until "Penelope," we've been sympathetic with the cuckold husband. Here, though, Molly voices her suspicions that Bloom has been messing around on his own. She reveals that not only has he been unable to have sex with her for over ten years, but he has also been cold and affectionless. As Molly thinks, "its all his own fault if I am an adulteress" (18.780).

This upheaval in our judgments and thoughts about the book reveals the extent to which Molly has been a hidden presence in the first seventeen episodes. We spend a lot of time noticing how characters are perceived in their own minds and in the minds of others. (This is, for example, a major preoccupation of Stephen's.) In "Penelope," we find that Molly has a very acute sense of how she is perceived by others. It's as if this sensibility underlies all the careful distinctions made between one's inner and outer life that shaped the book.

Molly is also a singer, and as the book moves on, the prose becomes more and more musical. "Sirens" is the most obvious example, but in other parts the literal meaning of words seems to get a back seat to the melody and play of their sounds. It's like Molly's musical voice began to pervade the pages of the book long before we explicitly encountered her point of view.

Thinking of Molly as the muse of the book also gains credence when one acknowledges that she was based on Joyce's wife, Nora Barnacle. Nora was from the West of Ireland, and in contrast to Joyce's erudition, she was relatively uneducated. She didn't even think much of her husband's writing. In her opinion, he should have stuck to music (Ellmann, James Joyce, 169).

Yet Joyce was fascinated by her. She had a simple and frank manner that captivated him, and she seemed to be much more natural than he himself could ever hope to be. One can get a glimpse of this frankness when Molly derides the supposed learning of the men about town. She thinks, "as for them saying theres no God I wouldn't give a snap of my two fingers for all their learning why don't they go and create something" (18.782). Molly is not Nora, but one can see Joyce's obsession shine through as he tries to follow Molly's wandering thoughts through eight sprawling sentences.

A final point, but the last words of the book are reserved for Molly. Within them, she re-affirms her commitment to her husband by remembering his proposal on Howth's head. The fact that this is a memory is complicated, but here's one way to think of it: the book turns inside itself.

What we mean by this is that we've been set up to expect all sorts of things from the action in the book. We want Stephen and Bloom to become great friends, and we want Molly to renounce Boylan and to throw her arms around Bloom instead. All of these expectations get thwarted, but it's through memory, through the recollection of what's already there that the book reaches its happy conclusion and its resounding note of affirmation. Whereas we had been expecting the future as the province of happiness, we now find that happiness was here already if one could only remember it. In the thoughts of Molly

"and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes." (18.783)

Episode 4: Calypso

  • Bloom makes breakfast in bed for Molly. She doesn't treat him very well.
  • When Bloom brings her a letter from Boylan, she hides it.
  • She asks him about the meaning of the word "metempsychosis," and asks him to get her an erotic book while he is out.
  • Bloom knows she is going to sleep with Boylan later that day, but thinks that there is nothing he can do about it.

Episode 6: Hades

  • On the way to Dignam's funeral, the men discuss Molly and what a good singing voice she has.
  • Later, when John Henry Menton learns that Molly and Bloom are married he is astonished that she married such a fool. He remembers her as quite a woman.

Episode 7: Aeolus

  • As Crawford notes the gathering of talents in the newspaper office, Lenehan points out that if Molly Bloom were there she would represent the fine art of singing. He makes an off-color remark about Molly.

Episode 8: Lestrygonians

  • Bloom thinks back to Molly several times during the episode. In particular, he remembers coming home from a fundraiser with her and watching her before the mirror talking all the pins out of her hair.
  • Later, he recalls a time walking back late from a concert under the moonlight. He was with her and Boylan and he wonders if they were touching at the time.
  • Nosey Flynn asks after Molly in Davy Byrne's pub.
  • Bloom remembers a time when he and Molly made love in the tall grass at Howth's head. He thinks about the contrast between their relationship then and now.
  • After that, Bloom makes a real effort not to think about Molly and to distract himself from the fact that sometime this same afternoon she is going to sleep with Boylan.

Episode 10: The Wandering Rocks

  • All we actually see of Molly in this episode is her arm extend from a window to throw a coin down to a onelegged sailor that is begging on Eccles Street.
  • Yet we also hear a bawdy tale from Lenehan. He claims that one night, after a concert, he was groping Molly aggressively on the carriage ride home. He implies that she was more than willing, and laughs at the fact that Bloom was sitting just across from them looking out at the stars.

Episode 11: Sirens

  • Dedalus, Cowley and Dollard recall a story where Dollard forgot formal clothes for a concert. At the time, Molly and Leopold had a secondhand clothes shop. Dollard went there to get clothes, but the trousers he put on were far too tight. Dedalus makes an off-color remark about Molly.
  • When Bloom remembers the same episode, he recalls how hard Molly laughed after Dollard left. She loved the fact that you could see his privates right through his trousers, and thought about what all the women in the front row at the concert would think. She thinks that those balls are what give him such a good bass.
  • Boylan knocks on the door at 7 Eccles Street shortly after 4pm for his sexual rendez-vous with Molly.
  • Bloom thinks of Molly several times. In particular, he remembers when they first met playing musical chairs and he wonders if it was fate that it was just the two of them left at the end.
  • He thinks of a time when Molly asked him for sex, but can barely get the lines out.

Episode 12: Cyclops

  • While everyone is disparaging Bloom in Barney Kiernan's pub, Molly comes up several times. The narrator seems to know a good deal about the Blooms. He recalls a time when they were living in a hotel, and thinks he heard reports that Molly was very unhappy there.

Episode 13: Nausicaa

  • On the beach at Sandymount Strand a bit after 8pm, Bloom has just finished masturbating. As he composes himself his mind wanders. He thinks of Molly several times. In particular, he remembers their younger days together. He remembers being worth her out on Howth's Head and then thinks that Boylan is with her now.
  • Bloom's watch stopped at 4:30pm and he wonders if this is related to Molly and Boylan sleeping together.
  • Bloom recalls Molly's wit, and remembers her telling him about her first kiss with a lieutenant Mulvey by a Moorish wall.
  • Intermittently, he thinks about Molly and Milly and their family situation.

Episode 14: Oxen of the Sun

  • In a drunken discussion at the National Maternity Hospital, one of the men asks Bloom if he could let Molly die if the life of their child was in danger. He dodges the question.

Episode 15: Circe

  • As Bloom follows Stephen into Nighttown, he has a number of elaborate dream sequences. Molly appears in them two separate times.
  • First, as Bloom is dreaming in the street, Molly calls Bloom. He looks over to see an image of her in a fancy Turkish costume; she teases him as if he were a child.
  • Throughout the rest of Bloom's dream sequences, we see a number of hints that he was unfaithful to Molly in small ways.
  • Later, in a masochistic dream of Bloom's inside Bella Cohen's brothel, Boylan comes for his sexual rendez-vous with Molly, and Bloom is there as a servant.
  • Molly gets out and greets Boylan. Molly says that they can let Bloom watch on so he can pleasure himself.
  • Boylan and Molly moan, and Bloom cheers them on.

Episode 16: Eumaeus

  • While helping Stephen to the cabmen's shelter, Bloom thinks of Molly several times.
  • He recalls how her singing career started before she was even sixteen and wonders if her Spanish background is responsible for her passionate temperament. Bloom thinks of the way in which Molly is like Katherine O'Shea, the lover of Parnell.
  • Bloom briefly thinks that maybe Molly wasn't there when Boylan came over, but then dismisses the thought.
  • Bloom shows a picture of Molly to Stephen from eight years ago. Stephen can't help but notice how low-cut her dress is, and compliments Bloom on the picture (not the low cut dress). Bloom is quite proud.

Episode 17: Ithaca

  • In discussion with Stephen, Bloom alludes to Molly several times.
  • At one point, he thinks of all her improprieties and slips of mind and how he has tried to correct them.
  • He thinks that if Stephen were to become close with the family, he could give her Italian lessons and she could give him vocal lessons.
  • After Stephen leaves, Bloom goes up to bed with Molly. He notices that she and Boylan have made no effort to disguise their adultery.
  • Bloom kisses her butt. She asks him about his day, and he recounts his day (with important omissions). As Bloom nods off, she thinks that they have not had intercourse in over ten years.

Episode 18: Penelope

  • Sometime in the middle of the night (probably after 4am), Molly lies awake next to her husband Leopold. In eight sentences, we get her thoughts before she drifts off to sleep.
  • SENTENCE 1:
  • Molly thinks begrudgingly of Bloom and how he is often charitable without thinking of their own financial troubles.
  • She knows that he keeps pornographic pictures, that he is having an illicit written correspondence, and she thinks that the must have cheated on her at one point or another.
  • Molly also suspects that Bloom had a fling with their old servant, Mary Driscoll.
  • Molly reflects on how much she enjoys sex, and her mind turns to Boylan. She didn't like it when he smacked her on the behind. When she heard a thunderbolt while they lay in bed together, she wondered if they were being judged.
  • She thinks well of Boylan's sexual skill.
  • Her mind goes back to Bloom. She remembers how obsessed he was with her at first.
  • Molly thinks, "Id rather die 20 times over than marry another of their sex of course hed never find another woman like me to put up with him the way I do" (18.744).
  • SENTENCE 2:
  • Molly begins to think of Boylan at length.
  • She remembers how obsessed Bloom is with ladies' underwear.
  • Molly remembers a young lieutenant Gardner who kissed her good-bye at a canal lock and praised her Irish beauty.
  • The last time Bloom lost his job it was Molly who went and tried to get it back for him.
  • SENTENCE 3:
  • When Molly was pregnant with Milly, Bloom used to suck on her breasts and say that he wanted to put the milk right into the tea.
  • She remembers how good her orgasm with Boylan was this afternoon and looks forward to their next rendez-vous.
  • SENTENCE 4:
  • Molly thinks back to her youth in Gibraltar.
  • Molly is irritated that Milly only wrote her a card whereas she wrote Leopold a whole letter.
  • She hopes Boylan will write her a letter in the future, but doubts it.
  • SENTENCE 5:
  • Molly remembers her first love letter ever from Lieutenant Mulvey, who was also the first boy to kiss her.
  • Molly thinks that she never imagined her name would be Bloom. She thinks how far she might have gone with her life if she did not marry Bloom.
  • Molly shifts in bed and farts.
  • SENTENCE 6:
  • Molly can't believe Bloom stayed out until 4am. She would like to spank him for it.
  • It was Leopold's idea to send Milly off to photography school in Mullingar. Molly thinks maybe he did it because he knew her affair with Boylan was coming.
  • When Molly thinks of her daughter's beauty, she becomes jealous.
  • Molly can feel her period coming on, and she hobbles over to the chamberpot to let the blood run out of her.
  • SENTENCE 7:
  • Molly thinks of how in love she and Bloom used to be; now she thinks of him as a bore.
  • She suspects that Bloom went to see a prostitute.
  • Molly decides that she won't let Bloom fall into the clutches of other men, those who are nearly drinking themselves to death.
  • Molly fantasizes an affair with Stephen.
  • SENTENCE 8:
  • She thinks of how crude Boylan is in contrast to Stephen.
  • Molly again thinks how stupid it was of Bloom to kiss her bottom that night.
  • In Molly's opinion, the world would be a better place if women governed it. The problem, she thinks, is that men don't know what it's like to be a mother.
  • She thinks about the possibility of Stephen staying with them for awhile.
  • She imagines waking up and telling Bloom all about the affair with Boylan.
  • The book closes with Molly thinking back to the time that Bloom proposed to her at Howth's Head.
  • Her response: "well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could fell my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes" (18.783).

Stephen Dedalus Timeline and Summary

Episode 1: Telemachus

  • The book opens with Stephen coming up the steps of Martello Tower (outside Dublin, overlooking the bay) to talk with his friend, Buck Mulligan.
  • Buck Mulligan teases Stephen about not praying over his mother before she died, but Stephen is very serious about it.
  • Stephen wants Haines, an Englishman who is living with them, to move out. He has breakfast with Buck Mulligan and Haines.
  • After breakfast, they go down to the sea. Haines tries to engage Stephen in conversation but he is stubborn and withdrawn. He tells Haines, "You behold in me a horrible example of free thought" (1.295).
  • When Haines supposes that Stephen is free to act as he chooses, Stephen says that he is the servant of two masters – an English and an Italian. He spells it out and says that he is speaking of the imperial British state and the holy Roman Catholic and apostolic church.
  • Haines tries to sympathize with him, and Stephen thinks of all the famous heresiarchs in Church history.
  • Stephen says that he won't be swimming and leaves Haines and Buck Mulligan by the sea, but not before Buck Mulligan asks for the house key and twopence for a pint. Stephen leaves them.
  • As he wanders off, he thinks to himself "usurper" (1.356).

Episode 2: Nestor

  • At the start of the Episode 2, we find Stephen teaching a class in Dalkey, questioning his students about Pyrrhus.
  • It is clear that Stephen is not a very good teacher; he makes inside jokes with himself that go over the students' heads.
  • Stephen helps a student with his math problems after class. At first, he thinks the student is pathetic, but then takes a more sympathetic view. He thinks of the love the student's mother must have nourished on him.
  • Stephen meets with Mr. Deasy, the head of the school, in his office.
  • Deasy lectures Stephen and tells him the proudest thing a man can say is that he paid his way. Stephen admits to himself that he cannot say this.
  • Deasy says he knew that Stephen wouldn't and says that though they are generous they must also be just. Stephen says, "I fear those big words which make us so unhappy" (2.122).
  • Deasy has written an article on hoof and mouth disease that the wants Stephen to deliver to the press. Stephen agrees.
  • When Deasy begins going on about what a problem Jews are and how they work against the progress of history, Stephen says, "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake" (2.157).
  • Mr. Deasy claims that all history moves toward one great purpose and they are not to question his ways. There is the cheer of a goal, and Stephen claims, "That is God" (2.162). He says God is "A shout in the street" (2.165).
  • Deasy says Stephen will not remain long at the school, and Stephen agrees.
  • As he leaves, Deasy runs out after him and tells one last anti-Semitic joke. Stephen does not respond, but as Deasy returns, Stephen thinks that the leaves look like sun-spangled coins.

Episode 3: Proteus

  • It's about 11am, and Stephen has come to Dublin from Dalkey by way of public transportation. As you might recall, he has a set meeting with Mulligan at 12:30pm, and in the meantime he has wandered down to Sandymount Strand (the beach at the east-most side of Dublin) to stroll along the beach and think think think.
  • Stephen wanders up and down the Strand and thinks about religion, philosophy, his times in Paris, and his own remorse over his mother.
  • At first, his thoughts are highly abstract. Yet they gradually become more and more concerned with his surroundings.
  • Stephen sees the bloated carcass of a dog, and thinks, "These heavy sands are language tide and wind have silted here" (3.62).
  • After Stephen passes another couple, he sits down on a rock and jots out a poem on a scrap of Deasy's letter.
  • He realizes that he does not know "that word known to all men," i.e. love (3.80).
  • Stephen thinks about death at sea and picks his nose.
  • When he begins to feel as though someone is behind him, he turns and sees a ship coming into the bay.

Episode 6: Hades

  • Bloom sees Stephen in the street and points him out to his father. Stephen waves. His father (Simon) does not see him, but wonders if he is staying with his Aunt Sally. Simon Dedalus complains about the company Stephen keeps, Mulligan in particular.

Episode 7: Aeolus

  • It's shortly after noon at the offices of The Freeman's Journal (and the Evening Telegraph). Stephen Dedalus enters the office behind O'Madden Burke. The editor greets Dedalus, who gives him Deasy's article on foot and mouth disease.
  • Professor O'Molloy and Crawford, the editor of the paper, joke with Stephen and ask what he has been writing lately.
  • When Professor O'Molloy recalls a beautiful speech by Seymour Bushe, Stephen almost swoons at the language.
  • A few minutes later, he suggests they all go for a drink at a nearby bar.
  • On the way, Stephen tells Professor MacHugh an idea he has for a piece. It's a parable about two old women who climb Nelson's Pillar (pillar in the center of Dublin, no longer there), eat plums, and throw the seeds down onto Dublin. MacHugh picks up on all of the literary allusions in the parable and thinks it is very clever.

Episode 9: Scylla and Charybdis

  • It's 2pm in the National Library.
  • Stephen is joking with John Eglinton, the librarian, and George William Russell, a well-renowned mystical poet in Dublin. They want to know what he is working on.
  • They debate Aristotelian versus Platonic views of art and begin to discuss Shakespeare's Hamlet.
  • Stephen argues that Shakespeare drew heavily on his own life in order to write Hamlet, particularly on his relationship with his father and with Ann Hathaway. Russell strongly disagrees with him.
  • When Eglinton suggests that Shakespeare's marriage to Hathaway was a mistake, Stephen snapped back, "Bosh! A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery" (9.90).
  • When Russell announces that he is going to leave, they talk about a poetry reading. They fail to invite Stephen and he feels left out.
  • Eglinton is very skeptical of Stephen's argument so Stephen circles back and makes it more elaborate.
  • Mulligan appears while Stephen is explaining the theory. He gives Stephen a hard time for ditching him and Haines at the bar and Stephen laughs.
  • Stephen argues that fatherhood is nothing but a mystical state, and concludes that Shakespeare was his own father. Eglinton now seems impressed.
  • Stephen wraps his argument. Then "he laughs to free his mind from his mind's bondage" (9.365).
  • When Eglinton asks if Stephen believes his own theory, he says that he does not believe it.
  • As Stephen and Mulligan pass out, they see Bloom. Mulligan jokes that Stephen should watch out for Bloom because he thinks he saw Bloom turn a lustful eye on Stephen.

Episode 10: The Wandering Rocks

  • Stephen runs into his sister at a bookcart on Bedford Row. She has bought a French primer in an effort to learn French. Stephen tries to act as if this is only natural.
  • Looking at her, Stephen thinks, "She is drowning. Agenbite. Save her. Agenbite. All against us. She will drown me with her, eyes and hair. Lank coils of seaweed hair around me, my heart, my soul. Salt green death" (10. 477).
  • He is torn between the desire to pull her out of her miserable situation, and the fear of being dragged into it with her.

Episode 11: Sirens

  • Lenehan passes on Stephen's greetings to Simon. He tells Simon how everyone was fawning over his son at Mooney's earlier in the day (where they went after the "Aeolus" episode).

Episode 14: Oxen of the Sun

  • It is 10pm at the National Maternity Hospital. Stephen is sitting in a room of medical professionals, students, and men about town. He is the drunkest of them all.
  • He is blabbering on about Church teachings having to do with pregnancy, but most of the men are ignoring him.
  • Bloom watches him as he goes on about the passage from death to life. A thunderclap is heard and Stephen becomes scared; he seems to think that God is punishing him for his blasphemy.
  • Stephen suggests they all go to Burke's pub, which they do. He drinks absinthe (very strong liquor) there and buys the first few rounds.
  • He wonders off to Nighttown (the red light district) when the bar closes. Bloom follows behind.

Episode 15: Circe

  • Recall that the episode opens at midnight, that it is told in the form of a play dialogue, and that much of it consists of the dreamscapes of Bloom and Stephen.
  • Stephen and Lynch are in high spirits as they wander the streets. Stephen calls for gesture to become a universal language, but Lynch dismisses the idea as "pornosophical philotheology" (15.21).
  • A bit later, when Bloom finds the two of them in the brothel, Stephen is sitting alone at the piano, playing drunkenly.
  • When Lynch laughs at Stephen, Zoe says, "God help your head, he knows more than you have forgotten" (15.436).
  • The prostitutes try to get Stephen to sing, but he says that he is a finished artist. Stephen has a dialogue with the drunk and sober personifications of his conscience.
  • Stephen tries to pay the prostitute madame, but gives her too much. Bloom takes his cash so he won't lose it.
  • The girls are quite taken with Stephen and begins acting like a French prostitute. Bloom watches over him paternally.
  • Stephen begins dancing with the prostitute Zoe, but when he has an image of his dead mother rising up to greet him, he becomes terrified.
  • When the ghost asks him to repent, he begins crying nonsensically (for the others to hear): "The intellectual imagination! With me all or not all. Non serviam!" (15.915).
  • Stephen raises his ashplant, smashes the chandelier and rushes out of the brothel.
  • He gets into an argument with an English constable, Private Carr, on the corner. He speaks condescendingly to Carr, and when Carr thinks that he has insulted the English king, he punches him in the face.
  • Stephen curls up on the sidewalk.

Episode 16: Eumaeus

  • It is 1am on the corner of Beaver Street. Bloom helps Stephen up, and the two of them go to a shelter under Loop Line Bridge.
  • Stephen runs into his acquaintance, Corley. He loans Corley money, and Bloom thinks that Stephen has been too generous.
  • When Bloom asks Stephen why he left his father's house, and Stephen says, "To seek misfortune" (16.27).
  • Bloom tells Stephen that his father takes great pride in him and notes that Mulligan is taking advantage of him. Stephen doesn't respond.
  • At the cabmen's shelter, Bloom orders for the two of them while Stephen listens to some men haggle in Italian.
  • Stephen begins to discuss the soul with Bloom. When Bloom describes his idea of a utopia for Stephen, Stephen becomes sullen because it leaves out a place for the artist.
  • Bloom shows Stephen a picture of Molly and invites him to come home with him. Stephen agrees.
  • They walk arm in arm to Bloom's house discussing different types of music. When Stephen sings a few lines in German, Bloom is baffled by how good he is.

Episode 17: Ithaca

  • It's 2am as Bloom and Stephen make their way from the cabmen's shelter to Bloom's house at 7 Eccles Street.
  • On the way, they discuss music, literature, Dublin, women, diet, and the Roman Catholic Church.
  • Stephen shares his views on "the eternal affirmation of the spirit of man in literature" (17.4).
  • Inside, Bloom makes cocoa for Stephen.
  • They discuss a woman that they new in common, Mrs. Riordan.
  • Stephen tells Bloom "The Parable of the Plums."
  • They discuss famous Jews, and Stephen shares his knowledge of Gaelic with Bloom.
  • Stephen's sings an anti-Semitic song. He imagines both he and Bloom could be the victims in the song, but it makes Bloom unhappy.
  • When Bloom proposes Stephen stay the night, Stephen politely declines. He suggests they go pee in the garden. They do, and they see a shooting star.
  • They make a number of plans before Stephen departs: Molly will give Stephen vocal lessons; Stephen will give Molly Italian lessons; Bloom and Stephen will meet for intellectual discussions.
  • Before parting, Stephen " affirmed his significance as a conscious rational animal proceeding syllogistically from the known to the unknown and a conscious rational reagent between a micro- and a macrocosm ineluctably constructed upon the incertitude of the void" (17.149).
  • They shake hands and Stephen walks off, alone, into the night.

Episode 18: Penelope

  • Having heard about Stephen from Bloom, Molly thinks of maybe taking Italian lessons from him in the future.
  • She imagines that she could teach him some Spanish, and thinks she will study so that he won't think that she is ignorant.
  • At first, Molly fantasizes a romantic relationship for her and Stephen, but her thoughts eventually become more motherly. She thinks that the reason Stephen is carousing about town is because he doesn't have a mother, and imagines him staying with her and Leopold.
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