Tracking my obsession of “the unspoken” throughout Ulysses has been pretty difficult, and in hindsight, I wish I had chosen a much more concrete topic. While this obsession did lend me a lot of wiggle room when it came to posting each night, I do not feel like having it as my obsession gave me a better understanding of the novel, mainly because of how unspecific and massive this obsession could be. That said, I’ll now discuss the ways in which I did find a consistent thread throughout my topic.

Ulysses as a novel has many different styles of narration, and some of these episodes occur completely in the thoughts and minds of Stephen, Bloom, or Molly. What I saw as the three main episodes of unspoken “stream of consciousness” for each character, respectively, were Proteus, Circe, and Penelope. While similar in the basic format, the narration of each episode is incredibly different, which seems like another way that Joyce works to create a sense of individuality in each character. In Proteus, Stephen’s thoughts are difficult to follow, as they trace the works of many great philosophers and writers, but this format is probably the most traditional or common “stream of consciousness”.  but he comes off as incredibly well educated and intelligent, if not a little narcissistic and deliberately obtuse. Bloom is quite obviously not as intelligent as Stephen, but in Circe, his masochistic fantasies reveal an intellect and depth to his character. The style of Circe–set as a play with stage directions–also reflects a greater literary tradition. However, in the final episode of Penelope–which I talked about in my last post–Molly seems to lack these characteristics, and even the way her prose is styled further suggests this lack. While one of the critical articles we read for class points out that Molly’s lack of schooling, and therefore proper grammar and syntax, would have been common at the time, the majority of the content of her thoughts is focused on stereotypically feminine issues. Thus, this is one of the main, more consistent ways in which I saw Joyce using the unspoken elements of the novel to subtly add another complex level to the development of the main characters.

Throughout all of Ulysses, there have been several instances where questions were asked in a whimsical, albeit philosophical, sense. Characters such as Stephen and Bloom would ask themselves “what if” or “why” questions (some of which end up not having any answers). At times, these questions interrupted their train of thought as they went about their day. In addition to this, characters also asked questions of each other simply with the hopes of gaining new information: such as where a certain person was, or what they were doing, etc. Looking at these two types of questions, it is clear that Joyce is combining them both in the sense of relating to art and science. Questions related to art don’t necessarily need to have solid answers and said answers can be opinionated. On the other hand, while some questions that are related to science are also opinionated, they also deal with factual evidence.

Because there are two themes of science and art, we are able to compare this to both Bloom and Stephen in the sense that Bloom is a man of science, whereas Stephen is more of a man of art. Additionally, certain questions in each episode pertain to themes in Ulysses and are debatable among the characters. For one, in Episode 14, the men discuss the question of whether or not, when in danger, a mother should be saved or her baby. The aftermath of such a downfall is alluded to in terms of religion. According to Stephen, “both babe and parent now glorify their Maker, the one in limbo gloom, the other in purgefire.” (14.224). The theme of motherhood, gender, religion and mortality are explored in this short section.

Currently, I am in the process of developing a thesis for the short paper. Right now, I have multiple routes of analysis to take, but most regard the conflation of identity and religion in Ulysses.  I am very intrigued, however, by the possibilities of applying critical race and sexuality theory to the Circe episode.

The episode appears to me as the epitome of Bloom’s culture-less characterization. Bloom is apparently not truly Jewish as critically expressed in Circe’s dreamscape, “are you not my son Leopold, the grandson of Leopold? Are you not my dear son Leopold who left the house of his father and left the god of his fathers Abraham and Jacob?” (U 15. 261-262).

Furthermore, despite Bloom marrying Molly, he will never be considered a true Irish-Catholic. Bloom exists in a Dublin purgatory of sorts. This episode’s thorough assailing of Bloom’s character conveys the utmost dejection he feels.

As noted in a previous post, Bloom breaks free from the dreaminess of the Circe episode by finally confronting the nymph, a feminized entity. I believe there is much to be dissected in this interaction. How much is this nymph a reflection of Bloom’s own character? Is his reaction to the nymph a form of submission to projections of gender upon him, or does Bloom assert himself in his response?

There is much to be said regarding nationalism, religious associations intertwined with national identity, and gender in Ulysses, particularly Circe.

Ulysses captures the events of one day, June 16^th 1904, and does well to fully observe even the simplest of everyday functions. Joyce includes all aspects of eating, digestion, and defecation in Ulysses to provide an honest portrayal of life in Dublin. In his effort to describe the essence of the human experience, Joyce identifies the importance of these processes to the human experience. Food is an aspect of life that is shared by all- eating is necessary for survival. However, food is not only sustenance, food is also taste, preference, or potentially governable. In this sense, food is uniquely diverse in its ability to both create and level distinctions between people. Groups of people eat differently and one can use food to identify characteristics about a person based on what they eat. There are foods which can be designated as belonging to different groups- poor, wealthy, Irish, Jewish, etc. This makes food a useful tool in the construction of identity. Despite the infrequency in appearance, food plays a prominent role in Ulysses through its ability to serve as a marker for the identity of characters while simultaneously making these characters’ identities prominent through their individual relationships with food.

Joyce’s inclusion of food provides a mode to discuss Ireland’s colonial relationship to England through a system of exportation and tariffs levied on Irish-cultivated food. Throughout the Irish famine of 1846-1851, England continued to export food from Ireland which left the Irish people without food for themselves. Food was literally being taken from a country in a time of famine to feed the more powerful and wealthy English state while the Irish peasant starved. This relationship is realized in Episode 16 and facilitated by Skin-the-Goat’s comments on Ireland’s exportation of, “coal in large quantities, six million pounds of pork exported every year, ten millions between butter and eggs,” (16, 989-991). Food is used as a marker of natural prosperity. However, this prosperity is lost to the British who levy taxes on the poor. In this instance food serves as a symbol of British colonial rule and the pillaging of the poor by way of taxes. Joyce uses food to undermine geo-political and colonial relationships between colonized and colonizer.

The implications of England’s colonial pillaging of Irish food sources are seen in the descriptions of the Dedalus family. The Dedalus family is poor and are described on multiple occasions by what they eat or are presumed to eat. In this instance, like many others in Ulysses, food is a marker of identity. The Dedalus family are relegated to certain foods by way of economic necessity. They are not afforded the luxury of choice. In fact, their food is defined by its cost and by its cultural relevancy. Whereas a character like Leopold Bloom eats Kosher foods, the Dedalus family are strictly Irish-Catholic and eat as such. Stephen Dedalus muses on the memory of his family eating various foods including “cocoa that was in the sootcoated kettle,” oatmeal water, herring, an egg, and eggshells and charred fish heads for the cat, (16, 271-276). The food described is all very cheap and native to Ireland. This description therefore illustrates the Dedalus’ state of poverty and Catholic identity.

Bloom is perhaps the most interesting character in terms of relating to food. Bloom is initially introduced to the reader while he is eating, “Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls,” (4, 1-2). Leopold Bloom is distinctly different from the other characters in the book, oftentimes holding an “othered” identity. Bloom is not accepted as truly Irish because of his Jewishness and is not fully Jewish because he does not strictly observe Kosher laws, thereby leaving him in a state in which he lacks a firm identity. We are confronted with Bloom’s distance from Judaism and devotion to Kosher as he thinks of kidneys while often alluding to pork, both of which are not kosher. Bloom’s choice of food aids the reader in locating Bloom’s identity or in this case, his lack of identity.

Joyce’s deployment of food as a marker of identity is not only self-defined but is also ascribed to groups of people, revealing assumptions made on that group by the individual ascribing. In Episode 16, the sailor brings up a fictitious story about Peruvians that he claims to have encountered who eat “corpses and the liver of horses,” (16, 470-471). Since the sailor has already been labeled as a fraud by Stephen and Leopold, his story should not be taken seriously. Regardless, the sailor’s choice of food to pair with the Peruvians reveals a sort of xenophobia. Clearly, ascribing cannibalism and the consumption of horse meat to a group as broad as “Peruvians” is derogatory and meant to express a mysterious disgust with the alleged backwardness of the act of human consumption. The sailor’s claim about the food of the Peruvians reveals the sailor’s identity as xenophobic and untruthful. Joyce allows the reader to extract more from his characters based on their relationships to food.

Joyce attempts to capture the mundane and the bodily to accurately represent the human experience in all forms. The general ubiquity of food provides an interesting point of departure for Joyce. Despite foods necessity to life, food is incredibly diverse and unique, allowing it to serve as a marker of identity for characters. Joyce’s use of food has enabled him to an alternative way of developing character and bringing his character’s identities into prominence by way of the character’s relationships with food.

GOLD

Forms: gold, golden

Related terms: Gild, gilded, green, silver, geld

Explication

“Gold” appears in several contexts throughout Ulysses: as a noun, it’s synonymous with money and wealth; i.e., Dedalus goes to Deasy’s “strongroom for the gold” (29), where he’s lectured (very pompously) on the value of saving money. As an adjective, it’s used for lyrical, almost pastoral descriptions of the sea and surroundings: the “gold light on the sea” complements the “slender trees” and “lemon houses” Dedalus walks by (42); he thinks of “a girl with gold hair on the wind” (61), “tumbled beauties, shattering with gold teeth chaussons of pastry” (42), and “Danevikings, torcs of tomahawks aglitter on their breasts when Malachi wore the collar of gold” (45). In each mention, gold is associated with opulence—the decadence of gold teeth and pastry—or loot, like Deasy’s strongroom or the Danevikings’ plunder. Death floats around some of these allusions: “It’s all the same,” Bloom thinks on the way to the funeral. “Palbearers, gold reins…pomp of death” (100). The use of the word ‘gold’ gilds the concept of death and decay, but the effect is one that heightens rather than eases the narrative’s descriptions of death, an effect heightened by gold’s associations with various watches, implying anxiety about time left or time passed. “Poetical idea pink, then golden, then grey, then black…Day, then the night,” thinks Bloom (69). Even the idealized “greengoldenly lagoons” Dedalus notices on his walk seem indicative of an idealized decay and sickness that pervades his conception of Ireland.

1. The most precious metal: characterized by a beautiful yellow colour, non-liability to rust, high specific gravity, and great malleability and ductility. Chemical symbol Au.

“He turned suddenly from a chip of strawberries, drew a gold watch from his fob and held it at its chain’s length.”

“What’s the time by your gold watch and chain?”

“The objects (which included several hundred ladies’ and gentlemen’s gold and silver watches) were promptly restored to their rightful owners and general harmony reigned supreme.”

2. The metal regarded as a valuable possession or employed as a medium of exchange; hence, cold coin; also in rhetorical use, money in large sums, wealth.

“And there, the stoneheaps of dead bulders, a warren of weasel rats. Hide gold there.”

“They buy the place up with gold and still they have all the gold. Swindle in it somewhere. Piled up in cities, worn away age after age.”

3. With allusion to the brilliancy, beauty, and transcendent preciousness of gold. Often in phr. Of gold= golden adj. heart of gold: a noble-hearted person; a kind and noble heart.

“Sauntering sadly, gold no more, she twisted twined a hair.”

“Dignam used to be in his office. Mat Dillon’s long ago…Cold fowl, cigars, the Tantalus glasses. Heart of gold really.”

a) The metal as employed for coating a service, or as a pigment; gilding.

“In Rodot’s Yvonne and Madeline newmake their tumbled beauties, shattering with gold teeth chaussons of pastry, their mouths yellowed with the pus of flan Breton”.

4. The metal as used for the ornamentation of textile fabrics; gold thread; in early use often with the place of manufacture specified.

“Pallbearers, gold reins, requiem mass, firing a volley. Pomp of death.”

5. The colour of the metal: a bright golden yellow.

“Gold light on sea, on sand, on boulders.”

“Sadly she twined in sauntering gold hair behind a curving ear.”

“He saw them three by three, approaching girls, in green, in rose, in russet, entwining, PER L’AER PERSO, in mauve, in purple, QUELA PACIFICA ORIAFIAMMA, gold of oriflamme, DI RIMIRAR FE PIU ARDENTI.”

6. Archery. The gilt centre or bulls-eye of a target. To make a gold: to hit the bulls-eye.

My obsession, “consumption and spending”, gave me a tenuous grip on Ulysses that was frequently expounded upon through other peoples’ related topics. The concepts of spending and consumption were entangled with sexuality, morality, and pertinent world events through repetitive association and clever allusions. Bloom’s seedcakes, Stephen’s poverty, and Dublin generally (through seedy bars or unruly landlords) paints a morbid picture of overconsumption. British imperialism (“The British Hyenas”), the catholic church (“free money, free rent, free lay”), Irish politicians and citizens, prostitutes, and many more are all critiqued for obsessing over money. While the text stops short of completely disavowing capitalism, the novel solidly places obsessive money grubbing as a major cause of conflict.

This relatively straightforward reading of consumption in the novel is complicated by the constant entanglements that surround the concept. Bloom in particular has a strange relationship with consumption, taking great relish in course and barbaric seeming meals, while experiencing revulsion when others eat around him. Interestingly, his discourse around consumption reflects many of his other attitudes surrounding the people around him. His relative outsider status is reflected in his personalized approach to eating, while the conflation between food and sex is reflected in his inconclusive response to Molly’s fidelity. Does he truly resent Molly and Boylan, when he actively facilitates their relationship?

Bloom’s relationship with prostitutes, who Joyce frequently metaphorizes as uncommitted adultery or enticing quasi-consumption reveals more about the role of consumption and spending in the plot. Bloom’s “saving” of Stephen from the whore-house unites the two characters and underlines how consumption is something to be protected from. In this way consumption is placed on either side of a diametrically opposed divide. On the one hand consumption is necessary to life; on the other overconsumption leads to lethargy, corruption, and death. In this way Joyce establishes another seemingly contradictory concept, in which a balance must be established between over and under consumption.

        On the surface, the numerous references to sports that Joyce makes throughout the novel often times feel random or isolated, little islands of sport existing independent from the other competitive moments in the text (with the exception, however of the recurring references to the Gold Cup or the cycling races. The only obvious connection between the boxing match and the Gold Cup, or the rule about playing sports in the park and the collegiate cycling races appears to be that all instances are sports or examples of competition in daily life. However, when considering each of these instances in a collection, sports and competition serve to sustain specific gender roles and expectations of masculinity and femininity, thus producing an anxiety in those who challenge or fail to live up to those gendered guidelines.

As Bloom goes throughout his day, constantly following him is the pervasive presence of sports, along with underlying expectations of manhood, masculinity, and participation in sports. A common trend that surfaces throughout these interactions is Bloom’s separation and exclusion from masculine and competitive pastimes, from his refusal to drink alcohol with his peers in bars to his childhood memory in “Circe” of wearing a football jersey but being off to the side of his sport playing peers. Bloom is frequently positioned as being outside the sports world, visibly uninterested in the cycling races, horse racing, and engaging in these traditionally male domains. While he never openly expresses a distaste for sports or competition, Bloom’s fixation on the ongoing “battle” between him and Boylan, and his recollection in “Circe” of the he losing a running race after slipping underscore an anxiety he associates with athletic endeavors. Despite all these references to sports, playing of sports, and conversations of sports, Bloom never actually participates in any of these. And as a result of this separation between Bloom and a traditionally masculine domain, Joyce highlights the ways in which Bloom is seen as an inferior male compared to his athletic, beer drinking peers and the numerous people participating in sports around him.

As Joyce recounts Bloom’s day, his multi-faceted love affairs with Martha and Molly (and hers with Boylan) fill his mind just as frequently as his masculine shortcomings become incredibly salient in comparison to his wife’s new man. As a result, this internal competition that Bloom constructs versus Boylan, which Joyce likens to a boxing match, serves as a reminder of Bloom’s physical inferiority. Bloom concentrates on the possible ways he can please Molly, in effect “one-upping” her lover, anxiously questioning his various physical inadequacies. Joyce portrays Bloom’s physical fixations as a feminine characteristic, in Molly’s obsession with constantly comparing her beauty with that of her peers in “Penelope.” In this competition between Bloom and Boylan, Joyce underscores the importance of masculinity in this boxing match, something that Bloom clearly lacks in this head to head battle. As the Boylan and Molly love affair progresses over the course of the novel, Joyce continues to emphasize the importance of masculinity and fitting within gender norms, given that Bloom struggles to successfully handle his wife’s love affair, but also navigate the hyper masculine social world around him.

CROWN

Forms

crown, crowns, crowned, crowning, Crown

Related terms

head, royal, coronation, king

Explication

Crown, a word that can be deployed as a noun or a verb, is used in a wealth of different ways in Ulysses. While the definition with the largest number of uses is 8 (the coin), it only makes up one-fourth of the total uses. Many of its usages evoke the British monarchy – there are lots of mentions of “the crown” and the Crown” which are both synecdoches that refer directly to British rule. More symbolically, Bloom’s “sham crown Derby” teacup – a gift from Milly – is mentioned four separate times. Crown Derby is a real English porcelain manufacturer which is still in business today.

Crown also tends to carry a spiritual association – “crown of thorns,” “saint Stephen’s iron crown,” etc. Considering this double association – with English royalty and with Christian religion – crowns and crowning seem to be tied to national (and personal) identity.

An interesting property of crown is that it has a range of definitions wide enough that it can almost be considered one of the self-opposite words that we’ve discussed Joyce being so fond of. Crown can be used to represent the highest power in a country (and perhaps the world), but it can also denote something as common and working class as the foam on the top of a glass of beer. Similarly, while only one person in a nation can wear the crown as it refers to monarchy, everyone in a nation possesses a crown as it refers to the top of one’s head.

Definitions and Examples

(n.) 1. An ornament for the head, and immediately derived senses. (also: Christian crown of thorns)

“Crown of thorns and cross.” (5.329)

(n.) 2. A wreath or circular ornament for the head symbolizing victory.

“And all came with nimbi and aureoles and gloriae, bearing palms and harps and swords and olive crowns…” (12.1714)

(n.) 3. The sovereignty, authority, or dominion of which a royal crown is the symbol; the rule, position, or empire of a monarch.

“The crown had no evidence, Mr Power said.” (6.472)

(n.) 4.  fig. Something which adorns or adds distinction like a crown; a chief or crowning ornament or achievement.

“But Gerty’s crowning glory was her wealth of wonderful hair.” (13.116)

(n.) 5. Esp. in names of constellations: a group of stars likened to a crown; usu. with distinguishing word or phrase; spec. = Northern Crown

“Whence, disappearing from the constellation of the Northern Crown he would somehow reappear reborn above delta in the constellation of Cassiopeia…” 17.2019

(n.) 6. The top part of the skull; the top of the head.

“He put his boot on what he had spat, wiping his sole along it, and bent, showing a rawskinned crown, scantily haired.” (10.636)

(n.) 7. The top part of a hat or other covering for the head.

“The sweated legend in the crown of his hat told him mutely: Plasto’s high grade ha.” (4.69)

(n.) 8. Any of various coins, originally one bearing the imprint of a crown. b. A British or English coin (latterly silver) with a face value of five shillings or (now) 25 pence, now minted only for commemorative purposes. Hence: a monetary unit based on this, the sum of five shillings (now hist.).

“”He shot from it two crowns and two shillings.” (2.221)

(n.) 9. In reference to the Royal Crown Derby Porcelain Company, the oldest remaining English porcelain manufacturer. (not found in OED)

“He filled his own moustachecup, sham crown Derby, smiling.” (4.283)

(v.) 10. To place a crown, coronet, etc., on the head of, as a symbol of newly acquired sovereignty or royal status; to invest with sovereignty or regal power by coronation. Also: to place a crown, etc., on or around (the head).

“…he reflected about the errors of notorieties and crowned heads running counter to morality such as the Cornwall case a number of years before…” (16.1201)

(v.) 11. To cover, surround, or occupy the head or summit of, as a crown does, usu. so as to add beauty or dignity.

“The face of William Shakespeare, beardless, appears there, rigid in facial paralysis, crowned by the reflection of the reindeer antlered hatrack in the hall.” (15.3823)

Forms

organ, organisation, organise, organiser, streetorgan, mouthorgan, organgrinder, organism, organic, organtoned, stillorgan

Related Terms

Flesh, Host

Explication

In Ulysses, the word organ takes on many different meanings, from musical, to scientific, to sexual, with the ambiguity between these meanings highlighting the blurring between the bodily and the artistic/spiritual in the novel. Most often, an organ in Ulysses is a musical instrument, typically associated with the church but also, as a mouthorgan or streetorgan, smaller devices whose notes play across the streets of Dublin. While often mentioned, these instruments are usually heard in passing – as in the “two shrill voices, a mouthorgan” that echo through the hallways of the telegraph – or reduced to the object of Bloom’s thoughts, as with the “Who has the organ here I wonder?(5.395) in “Lotus Eaters”. Indeed, Bloom thinks about church organs several times: “saint Werburgh’s lovely old organ“, the “organ in Gardiner street”, “the pealing anthem of the organ“.

An organ is also, however, a specialized structure of flesh: the very first sentence about Leopold Bloom in Ulysses characterizes him as someone who “ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls”(4.1). This is also the book’s first use of the word organ, here in its most fleshly sense as “a part of an animal or plant body that serves a particular physiological function”(OED). Far from musical or holy, this reference instead suggests Bloom’s perhaps unusual frankness about the physicality of the body. The dissonance between these two definitions of the word – the physical and the musical – suggests that any unity might lie in the more abstract meaning of an organ.

At various points in Ulysses, we see this definition of the organ abstracted to refer to other forms of arrangement and assembly. As each organ in a body serves its function, the Telegraph operates as a “GREAT DAILY ORGAN“(7.84) and The Irish Independent is “for the old woman of prince’s street […] the subsidized organ“(12.218-219), furthering a metaphor of a kind of body politic in which the periodical serves the function of a voicebox. Yet more abstractly, any kind of arranging can be referred to as organising, which in Ulysses most often refers to Boylan, the “organiser” of Molly’s concert tour.

This notion of Boylan as one who “organises” Molly highlights how the interplay of the divine/spiritual and the biological as two ways of structuring bodies within Ulysses also carries a sexual charge, wherein even the talk of organs and organizing in all its definitions discussed above hints at another, hidden organ: the penis. When Simon Dedalus, for example, declares that Ben Dollard will “burst the tympanum of her ear […] with an organ like yours”(11.536-537) he refers not only to Dollard’s baritone voice breaking eardrums but to a deflowering, as emphasized by Father Cowley’s added joke: “not to mention another membrane”(11.540). Similarly, Bloom’s reference to Boylan as Molly’s organiser hints at his awareness of the sexual infidelity occurring. The obsession in Ulysses with organs, therefore, is indicative of Bloom’s fixation not just on religion or guts, but also on the shame and anxieties about sexuality that are perhaps most visible in “Circe”.

Definitions and Examples

I. Organ, n. (OED n.1 2a) A musical instrument (usually large) consisting of a number of pipes, supplied with compressed air, sounded by keys, which on being pressed down let air into the pipes by opening valves.

“Not going to be any music. Pity. Who has the organ here I wonder? Old Glynn he knew how to make that instrument talk, the vibrato: fifty pounds a year they say he had in Gardiner street”(5.394-397)

II. Organ, n. (OED n.1 3a) With distinguishing word. Any of various instruments resembling an organ in sound or construction. See also barrel organ n., hand organ n., mouth organ n. 1b.

“The noise of two shrill voices, a mouthorgan, echoed in the bare hallway from the newsboys squatted on the doorsteps”(7.425-426)

III. Organ, n. (OED n.1 5c)  A periodical which serves as the mouthpiece of a particular political party, cause, movement, etc.

“HOW A GREAT DAILY ORGAN IS TURNED OUT”(7.84)

IV. Organ, n. (OED n.1 7a) A part of an animal or plant body that serves a particular physiological function

“Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls”(4.1-2)

V. Organ, n. (OED n.1 8) The human organs of speech; the human voice.

“Sure, you’d burst the tympanum of her ear, man, Mr Dedalus said through smoke aroma, with an organ like yours”(11.536-537)

VI. Organ, n. (OED n.1 10)  The penis.

“The distinguished scientist Herr Professor Luitpold Blumenduft tendered medical evidence to the effect that the instantaneous fracture of the cervical vertebrae and consequent scission of the spinal cord would, according to the best approved tradition of medical science, be calculated to inevitably produce in the human subject a violent ganglionic stimulus of the nerve centres of the genital apparatus, thereby causing the elastic pores of the corpora cavernosa to rapidly dilate in such a way as to instantaneously facilitate the flow of blood to that part of the human anatomy known as the penis or male organ resulting in the phenomenon which has been denominated by the faculty a morbid upwards and outwards philoprogenitive erection in articulo mortis per diminutionem capitis”(12.468-478)

VII. Organise, v. (OED v. 2d-e) To make arrangements or preparations for.

“—My wife? says Bloom. She’s singing, yes. I think it will be a success too. He’s an excellent man to organise. Excellent”(12.994-995)

VIII. Organisation, n. (OED n. 4a) An organized body of people with a particular purpose.

“How long since your last mass? Glorious and immaculate virgin. Joseph, her spouse. Peter and Paul. More interesting if you understood what it was all about. Wonderful organisation certainly, goes like clockwork. Confession. Everyone wants to”(5.421-425)

IX. Organism, n. (OED n. 3a) An individual animal, plant, or single-celled life form.

“His project, as he went on to expound, was to withdraw from the round of idle pleasures such as form the chief business of sir Fopling Popinjay and sir Milksop Quidnunc in town and to devote himself to the noblest task for which our bodily organism has been framed”(14.650-654)

Related Topics

Bodies, Music, Medicine, Science, Politics & Media

Forms

Geld, Gelded, Gelding

Explication

Gelding and the state of being Gelded relates to a pervasive male anxiety that has cultural and political connotations, but especially relates to the character of Leopold Bloom, his status as a cuckold, his fruitless relationships with women, and his strange, uneasy presence in male environments. Odysseus, Bloom’s Homeric analogue, is defined by his violent phallic and penetrative power, evidenced by such actions as the blinding of Polyphemus with a stake, Odysseus’ rape of Circe and the destruction of her wand, and, almost comically, Odysseus’ signature feat of shooting an arrow through the heads of a dozen axes. While attempting to map Homer’s Odyssey directly onto Ulysses may not be a universally productive strategy, the dissonance in this aspect of Bloom’s relationship to Odysseus is pointed. Bloom may be, in some ways, reductively figured as a gelded Odysseus.

Of particular interest are the animalistic connotations of the word; it refers with equal ease to male humans and male animals, blurring the boundary between the two. This aspect of gelding becomes particularly relevant in Circe, where, in a hallucinatory sequence, Blazes Boylan, entering Bloom’s home for his rendezvous with Molly, “hangs his hat smartly on a peg of  Bloom’s antlered head.” (15.3763-3764) Bloom, bearing the cuckold’s antlers, assists in his wife’s adultery. While the antlers mark him as cuckold, they also introduce an animalistic quality to his humiliation and abasement. Moreover, Circe sees Bloom dominated by Bella/Bello Cohen, and in the course of this Bloom is referred to by feminine pronouns. In the midst of all of this, Bloom submissively refers to Bella/Bello as “Master! Mistress! Mantamer!” (15.3062) Thus, the act of gelding, advocated for use upon Bloom by Mrs Bellingham earlier in the episode, and its figurative echos of humiliation and domination, blurs and perhaps collapses the boundaries between man and animal, as well as male and female identities.

Definitions and Examples

1. Gelded, adj. Of a person or animal: Castrated.

“A choir gives back menace and echo, assisting about the altar’s horns, the snorted Latin of jackpriests moving burly in their albs, tonsured and oiled and gelded, fat with the fat of kidneys of wheat.” (Ulysses 3.116-119)

1. Geld, v. To deprive (a male) of generative power or virility, to castrate or emasculate.

“MRS BELLINGHAM: (Shakes her muff and quizzing-glasses vindictively.) Make him smart, Hanna dear. Give him ginger. Thrash the mongrel within an inch of his life. The cat-o’-nine-tails. Geld him. Vivisect him.” (Ulysses 15.1112-1115 )

III. Gelding, n. A gelded person, a eunuch. Obs.

“When countrybound velocipedes, a chainless freewheel roadster cycle with side basketcar attached, or draught conveyance, a donkey with wicker trap or smart phaeton with good working solidungular cob (roan gelding, 14 h).” (Ulysses 17.1575-1578)