While, as far as sexuality goes, there is much to write about in Ulysses – from Bloom’s lascivious staring at the women he passes on the street to Stephen’s scorn towards the milk lady’s “old shrunken paps”(1.398) – I would like to bring particular notice to a slightly less overt aspect of the text’s portrayal of sexuality: its repeated but somewhat cryptic references to homosexuality.

The first moments in the text which brought the topic of homosexuality to my mind were the repeated references to Oscar Wilde in the first three episodes – both referenced by Buck Mulligan and conjured up in Stephen’s head. The first of these is early in episode one, when Buck Mulligan presents Stephen with a cracked mirror and, quoting Wilde about “the rage of Caliban at not seeing his face in a mirror”(1.143), shouts “If Wilde were only alive to see you!”(1.143-144). It at first seems coincidental that this conversation about Wilde, mirrors, and paradoxes is followed by the intruding thought of “Cranly’s arm. His arm.”(1.159), which Ulysses Annotated indicates is a reference to an estranged friend of Stephen’s. Despite Buck’s assurance later in episode one that “We have grown out of Wilde and paradoxes”(1.554), however, in episode three there is another striking Wilde reference: “Staunch friend, a brother soul: Wilde’s love that dare not speak its name. His arm: Cranly’s arm”(3.450-451).

As with so much else in “Proteus,” this section is hard to parse at first. What is immediately apparent about it, however, is that Stephen is referencing a line famously used in trial against Oscar Wilde for “gross indecency” – Wilde’s insistence that the line referred to a “spiritual affection” only was not enough to prevent him from being convicted. Stephen’s reference to it follows another fragmented memory that appears to be of him trying on a women’s shoe – this moment of apparent delight in gender transgression spiraling into the suggestion of something beyond friendship in the interlocking of Stephen’s arm with Cranly’s, although the meandering nature of this episode means that, within lines, this possibility is literally swept away by the sound of waves, “fourworded wavespeech”(3.456-457) dominating the next paragraph after one final, perhaps meaningful glance at “Cock lake”(3.453). A glance at the index of Ulysses Annotated, however, foretells many more Wilde references to come as we read on through Ulysses.

In addition to these Wildean references, there is one other major reference to homosexuality that stands out in these first six episodes: Bloom’s imagining of a female Hamlet in “The Lotus Eaters.” Upon reflecting on a “male impersonator” he saw as Hamlet, Bloom thinks: “Perhaps he was a woman. Why Ophelia committed suicide. Poor Papa!”(5.196-197). Given that Bloom seems characterized otherwise by an effusive, albeit powerless, heterosexuality, it is compelling here that not only does the thought of a female Hamlet occur to him, but that it leads him immediately – if only via the topic of suicide – to his own father. This comparison of Bloom’s father to Ophelia only continues in “Hades,” as imagery both of Ophelia’s suicide and Bloom’s own feelings about his lost father recur. What are we to make of this comparison, and Joyce’s conjuring of an Ophelia driven to suicide by her relationship with a woman?