The term “dogsbody”, somewhat unsurprisingly, is a word with less definitions than what others have found. The OED only cites two different forms of the term, both as a noun and a verb. In its noun form, dogsbody has three definitions:

1. n. nautical slang: Peas boiled in a cloth, pease pudding
2. n. sea biscuits softened in water, with sugar added.
3. n. a junior officer or midshipman
4. n. (colloquial) a person who is given menial tasks

In its verb form, the OED only cites one definition for the verb form of “dogsbody” which is:

1. to act or work as a dogsbody; to carry out menial tasks.

dogsbody: someone who does boring, menial tasks. According to a word history, this term was not frequently used until around 1910. This British slang term seemed to have originated in the Royal Navy, and referred to a junior officer responsible for unimportant tasks.

In Ulysses, the term only occurs five times, and only four in the reading we’ve done so far. The first time it is used condescendingly by Buck to describe Stephen, and the second occurs almost immediately after, when Stephen internalizes the term and refers to himself as a dogsbody. The final two instances occur in episode three as Stephen watches a dog sniff the carcass of another dog. Interestingly in this instance, the term is actually used to describe the body of the dead dog, and follows the terms “dogskull” and “dogsniff”. Thus in the first two instances, it is used in the denotative definition, but in the last two, it used like many of Joyce’s other combined words and literally means the body of a dog.

Buck uses this term to call attention to Stephen’s need of appropriate clothing and secondhand clothes, which seems to be an incorrect use of the word. A few passages later, Stephen looks in a mirror and seems slightly repulsed at his face, thinking “Who chose this face for me? This dogsbody to rid of vermin” (Joyce 3). He seems to internalize Buck’s insult, but again does not use the term in its dictionary definition. In Ulysses, “dogsbody” seems to be an insulting term for someone who appears to be of a lower class, a status which is marked by lack of fancy clothing and an association with pests.

Episode 5 of Ulysses–Lotus Eaters–corresponds to Books 7 and 8 of the Odyssey, in which Odysseus and his men eat lotus flowers, and become lethargically intoxicated. This feeling of lethargy pervades much of Episode 5, as Bloom associates narcotics, the East, and flowers in many of his thoughts, but I’m interested in how flowers subtly become tied to sexuality in Bloom’s thoughts. This connection became most apparent in the final sentence of Episode 5, when Bloom foresees his naked body floating and imagines his penis as a “languid floating flower” (Joyce 5.571). Somewhat of an odd comparison, but more of these associations appear throughout the episode; at the very beginning of the episode, Bloom thinks, “Flowers of idleness. The air feeds most. Azotes. Hothouse in Botanic gardens. Sensitive plants. Waterlillies. Petals too tired to. Sleeping sickness in the air. Walk on roseleaves” (Joyce 5.34-36). Following these thoughts on flowers, Bloom has two more sexual thoughts: Again he thinks of the woman in front of him at the butcher and how she walked, and then receives an erotic letter to his pen name alias, Henry Flower. After reading the letter and putting a scentless flower into his breast pocket, Bloom thinks, “Angry tulips with you darling manflower punish your cactus if you don’t please poor forgetmenot how I long violets to dear roses” (Joyce 5. 264-5). This line does not have an obviously clear meaning, but it does associate flowers with ideas of punishment and sexuality, and the line “manflower punish your cactus” both suggests masturbation and links to the scene at the end where Bloom imagines his male genitalia as a flower. I understood all of these linkages between Bloom’s thoughts of flowers and sexuality as a way to deal with the threats to his masculinity, which is challenged both by his fears of Molly having an affair and his inability to control his daughter’s burgeoning sexuality. By associating his genitalia and sexuality with flowers, which are fecund, a symbol of life, and have hundreds of pollen grains, Bloom seems able to alleviate some of his fear toward these threats.

Throughout her essay, Mullins seems quite concerned with distinguishing the goal of these little magazines that published Joyce, and she argues that “Joyce’s central presence in the The Egoist unsettled its contested attempts to transform itself from an organ of sexual radicalism into a forum for literary experiment” (Mullins 380). Her focus on the magazine’s goals and attempts to separate high and low culture–and what is high and low culture–was particularly interesting to me. Joyce’s work resists easy categorization, and Mullins notes that his work both “nuances, or even disrupts, what is often assumed to be the cultural politics of high modernism” (375) and “repeatedly destabilizes any implied opposition between elite and mass cultures” (375). Thus, during our library session, I’m very interested in examining the other content that surrounds Joyce’s work in these magazines, in order to gain a better understanding of what constitutes “high” and “low” culture, thereby gaining a better understanding of how Joyce’s work contextually combines these seemingly disparate elements.

I found Pecora’s criticism on Joyce’s The Dead to be one of the most enlightening. It was not only interesting and unusual because of the re-visitation of his old work, but also because he left his conclusion on an ambiguous note. This is rare in criticism, but thought it was particularly appropriate for such an indefinite ending. Pecora muses,

“There is, I now recognize, something deeply human and moving about Gretta and her sorrow, and about her sense of a lost chance for passion in an otherwise dreary existence. But I cannot shake the feeling that, throughout Dubliners, it is precisely this preoccupation with the loss of missed passions of the past that is meant to be seen as paralyzing, as usurping the chance for passion in the present” (356).

When we read and later discussed this ending of Dubliners that Pecora debates here, I really only understood and came away with one side of the ending: sympathy for the lost and misaligned passions of Gretta and Gabriel. But Pecora’s point about the characters’ preoccupations concerning missed passion of the past rings quite true as well. This ending is much too complex to read as only having one meaning, and I now believe that Pecora is right that the story both mourns the missed loves of Gretta and Gabriel, but takes somewhat of a cynical tone toward the lovers and their choice to remain stagnantly fixed on lost passions instead of seizing happiness in the present.