Citation

Sultan, Stanley. “The Strand (Bloom).” Critical Essays on James Joyce’s Ulysses. By Bernard Benstock. Boston, MA: G.K. Hall, 1989. N. pag. Print.

Annotation

Starting with a summary and deconstruction of the interaction between Bloom and Gerty MacDowell, and moving through analyses of Bloom’s relationship with Molly, Bloom’s masturbation and Gerty’s turgid, sentimental rhetoric, Stanley Sultan concludes that “Nausicaa” is representative of Bloom’s spiritual self-defeat and destruction in the wake of Molly’s affair with Boylan (168). Sultan first analyzes Bloom’s character and emotional state at the outset of “Nausicaa”, juxtaposing Bloom’s “undiminished ardor for Molly” with the knowledge of Molly’s affair (169); he concludes Bloom is passive, impotent, and reliant on masturbation as escape from his own impotence. Gerty MacDowell, Sultan argues, is no better: in fact she’s worse, brainwashed by syrupy novelettes into an escapist sentimentalism so fundamentally hypocritical it turns “black into white” (173).

Sultan moves to a broader social context by comparing “Nausicaa” to a popular novel he posits Joyce was directly parodying, The Lamplighter. Gerty, in this context, becomes “the ultimate popular development of Flaubert’s Emma Bovary, the product of the degeneration of romantic idealism into sentimental wish-fulfillment and self-delusion” (174). Ultimately, Sultan claims, Bloom is saved by his own “frank analysis” after the fact (176): ashamed and exhausted, he nevertheless escapes the institution of sentimentalism by accepting the blame for his passivity, a fate not afforded to Gerty and her like-minded audience “blighted by self-deluding sentimentality” (174).

Related Topics

Thought and Action

Native and Foreign

Waste

GOLD

Forms: gold, golden

Related terms: Gild, gilded, green, silver

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” (25.212), 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 (35.7); he thinks of “a girl with gold hair on the wind” (50.242), “tumbled beauties, shattering with gold teeth chaussons of pastry” (36.14), and “Danevikings, torcs of tomahawks aglitter on their breasts when Malachi wore the collar of gold” (38.2). 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” (83.499). 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 (57.535). Even the idealized “greengoldenly lagoons” Dedalus notices on his walk seem indicative of an idealized decay and sickness that pervades his conception of Ireland (41.454).

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” (187.312)

“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” (253.591).

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 boulders, a warren of weasel rats. Hide gold there.” (37.289)

“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”(135.488).

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” (212.82).

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

1. 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” (36.14).

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” (83.499).

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

“Gold light on sea, on sand, on boulders” (35.7).

“Sadly she twined in sauntering gold hair behind a curving ear” (212.83).

“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” (114.722).

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

Performance in Ulysses seems most closely tied to identity and the power or disenfranchisement that identity provides. People create themselves or else are created: the balance of power seems to lie in who does the naming. Gerty’s performance of sexuality for Bloom gives her (in her mind) the disembodied romance she’s wanted, but when Bloom sees her lame leg she loses her sexual power and becomes pathetic in his eyes, “left on the shelf” for her “defect” (368). Buck Mulligan’s ease with his performative selves lend him a kind of ominous power as he traverses the same social circles in which Stephen and Bloom struggle; Stephen’s nervousness about his inability to “dress the character” mimic Bloom’s eager-to-please shapeshifting in ‘Circe,’ where he changes at each demand for a new stereotype: as Jew, as woman, as infant, and so on.

If the characters perform identity for one another to the extent that it’s difficult to discern actual identities, authenticity might come from the narrative forms themselves: book 4, in entering Bloom’s head, shows a scope of self-understanding that’s far more complex and comprehensive than the trope-selves he performs in ‘Circe’; the panorama of individuals in ‘Wandering Rocks’ are understood through thoughts more than through titles (or the titles are reflected in their thoughts: see “the superior” John Conmee, who smiles often, recalling he “had cleaned his teeth…with arecanut paste” (219)). Likewise the contrast between the glib romanticism for the first half of ‘Nausicaa’ and Bloom’s brutal fragmented consciousness in the second half show far more about the characters understandings of themselves and the world than they profess to understand aloud. In short, the forms narrative takes in Ulysses attempt to understand and unpack, even as the expressions and performances of the characters within attempt to confound.

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.

This last section seemed to thematically align with the Odyssey, in the sense that Molly’s parallel with Penelope feels like a kind of homecoming. Through Molly’s thinking, a lot of anxieties expressed by Bloom and Stephen seem to be resolved: she talks about adultery with a kind of casual sensibility (“Why can’t you kiss a man without going and marrying him first” (740) ), thinks about religion and atheism with equal light contempt, thinking first about lecherous priests and then about “atheists or whatever they call themselves go and wash the cobbles off themselves first then they go howling for the priest” (782), and seems to hold both Irishness and Jewishness in herself without as much difficulty as Bloom does, citing her “Irish beauty” and worrying about her “accent” when speaking with an Englishman (771, 762), and recalling Stephen and Buck Mulligan’s nationalistic little discussion about the tea in Book 1 with her affinity for “throw[ing] a handful of tea into the pot” (751); at the same time, she talks about “being jewess” without any apparent insecurity (771). At the same time, she’s also light about national identity, noting some as “sincerely Irish…judging by the sincerity of the trousers I saw on him” (782).

She’s also a kind of pivot point or center for all of her affairs: both Gardner in “South Africa,” and Harry Mulvey “on the black water” seem like parallel Blooms/Odysseuses with their “voyages those men have to make to the end of the world and back” (762). Molly is anchored in herself: as both a national symbol and a female symbol she seems to be oriented in and as the home.

Where the first half of Circe was centered around Bloom’s anxieties and desires by putting him under hallucinatory scrutiny and attack, the second half then turns to Stephen and does the same. The hallucinations seem to to target an individual in a way that makes that individual seem unstable or off-balance–“My centre of gravity is displaced,” Stephen says. “I have forgotten the trick” (589). Where Bloom was othered, ostracized, and inspected so closely by his manifest anxieties that he seemed the one unnatural thing in the given world (even though that given world made no sense), so Stephen is attacked by Privates Compton and Carr and scrutinized and discussed by others (“He expresses himself with much marked refinement of phraseology,” says Biddy the Clap; “And at the same time with such apposite trenchancy,” says Cunty Kate).

I found it strange that during this section Bloom (very paternally) justifies and explains Stephen to the various characters with an ease that runs counter to the estranging scrutiny he was subjected to earlier. Now he seems comfortable in this world, talking “softly” to the privates and commanding Cissy Caffrey to “speak” with confidence. I think this is the first time I’ve seen Bloom act instead of react in Circe, and the effect is to make him seem like an agent instead of an object.

I thought it was interesting, too, that the crescendoing violence and apocalypse in Circe peaked before the end of the chapter (with the death of Dublin) and ended instead in a moment of inaction, where Bloom sees his son Rudy as he’s standing by Stephen. The whole chapter seemed really structured, action-wise–there seemed to be a kind of parade of increasingly menacing characters (from the decaying dog to “The End of the World” to Stephen’s dead mother) that ended, post-culmination, with a moment that seemed counterintuitively quiet and even holy.

I found Circe’s play format really interesting and relevant to the different kinds of performances I thought were taking place in the book’s first half. Since I had trouble keeping track of what was going on, I tried to keep track of the different costume changes, especially Bloom’s. Costumes in Circe seem to be used to caricature or typify a person, which made the people around Bloom–who, unlike Bloom, have limited appearances in their given costume–seem like stock characters. Bloom’s mother “pantomime[s]” in her “dame’s stringed mobcap” (438); likewise Bloom’s father Rudolph is a Jewish caricature in “the long caftan of an elder in Zion” (437). Tom and Sam, the black men, wear “Sambo chokers” and do a minstrel routine (443). I was especially interested in Molly’s fetishized “Turkish costume” (439), which reminded me of Araby, and the way the protagonist projects exoticism onto the bazaar as a way to understand his own desires. It seemed like likewise Bloom’s hallucinating Molly in costume as a way of making his guilt and desire manifest.

I thought this guilt and desire was also projected into costume by the ways women appear in the section: they’re all menacing, accusatory, or repulsive in some way. Gerty is “bloodied” and “slobbering” (442), the bawd has “wolfeyes” (442), a woman “pisses cowily” near what Bloom thinks of as “hellsgates” (450, 449); otherwise they’re overwhelmingly powerful, like the trio of “honourable” women who accuse Bloom of unwanted advances (468). It seems like the only instances in which Bloom is comfortable or happy with female presences is when they’re so overcome by him they commit “enthusiastic” suicide (492); he’s also at ease with sex that’s disconnected from ideas of femaleness, like the harmless disembodied “kisses” that flutter around him (474).

Bloom’s costume, though, is ceaselessly shifting in response to other claims on his identity: to Molly’s friend he’s a “squire of dames” (445), to his mother he appears in “youth’s smart blue Oxford suit” (448); to his accusers he’s a foreigner with a pidgin accent in “lascar’s vest and trousers” (463). Instead of portraying these changes as positive indications of Bloom’s open-mindedness, however, I was surprised to find they seemed to indicate Bloom’s visceral, frenetic anxiety about himself–who he wants to be and who others demand him to be, and the extent to which his identity is constructed by the names other characters assign him.

Gold

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.
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.
3. fig. 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.

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

4. The metal as used for the ornamentation of textile fabrics; gold thread; in early use often with the place of manufacture specified.
5. The colour of the metal: a bright golden yellow.
6. Archery. The gilt centre or bulls-eye of a target. To make a gold: to hit the bulls-eye.

“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’ seems to gild the concept of death and decay, but the effect is one that heightens rather than eases the narrative’s descriptions of death. “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.

My obsession is performance, which worked really well with the voyeurism and roleplaying I saw in Book 13. The narration is over-refined and archly suggestive in the manner of romance novels or women’s magazines, combining gossipy confidentiality and a kind of gilded diction–a lot of alliterations and words like “whence” and “oft”. The descriptions of the young women likewise convey a kind of performance–they are created by the narration’s tone and consequently exist in this preordained girlish domesticity. The three have personas: Cissy the tomboy, Edy the “old maid”, and Gerty the beauty, and the way they interact and feel about one another seem filtered through these personas. Gerty in particular seems to have been created by products–“iron jelloids” and “eyebrowleine” among others (348, 349), and her clothes are likewise calculated to match the expectations of the “Lady’s Pictorial” (350). The effect of the product placements is to make Gerty’s emotions seem mediated through appearance–her eyebrow makeup is what gives “that haunting expression to the eyes” (349).

The performative domain changes and complicates the narration’s projected domesticity on the group. Weirdly, Cissy, the avowed tomboy, is the most genuinely maternal: Edy fakes domesticity, “pretending to nurse the baby” (360)while jabbing at Gerty’s romantic life, and Gerty harbors disgust for the “squalling baby” and “exasperating little brats of twins” (357, 359), despite the narration’s claims that she’s like a “second mother” in the house (355). In fact, Gerty’s dreamy self seems fundamentally at odds with the domesticity assigned to her, and this manifests in the impossibility of her desires–her idea of a “dreamhusband” is as unreal as her longing to “eat something poetical like violets or roses” (357, 352).

This impossibility gets confirmed after her encounter with Bloom, and the perspective switches to him: suddenly the romantic diction is gone, and Bloom remembers the event with coarse language and brutal imagery, comparing a cheating wife to “gumchewed gristle” off another man’s “cold plate” (370) and reminiscing about prostitutes he’d seen in the past. Near the end, he remembers the letter in his pocket and his mistress’ reluctance to use the word ‘brutal,’ calling him a “naughty boy” instead (381), which seems to encompass the impossibility of a reconciliation between a male perspective and a female perspective that’s unable to access that same brutality due to the way it’s constructed in women at a societal as well as an individual level.

The discussion of Shakespeare and theater that dominates Book 9 seemed to set up and lead into a reflective kind of meta-theater enacted by Stephen, Mulligan, Best, and Eglinton. After a couple pages, the narrative starts using epithets, paralleling the Greek prose-poem tradition, for the characters—“beautifulsadness Best,” “ugling Eglinton,” “Monk Mulligan,” “Sonmulligan” (204, 205, 208)—that change according to the role they’re taking on (Buck Mulligan, for example, is at first Monk Mulligan as he intones Latin, but later becomes Sonmulligan when he’s imagining himself to be his own father, clasping his face with “birthaiding hands” (208). As in earlier books, however, the roles assigned and enacted to and by the characters don’t always seem to fit; descriptions in these passages seem discordant and almost nonsensical: Buck Mulligan “gagged sweetly” instead of speaking; all characters “smiled their smiles” (206), a phrase that evokes a kind of strained mechanism.

The role-playing atmosphere also then fits with the play format that’s used for a page: paralleling the discordant role of the descriptions and epithets used earlier, the stage directions seem nonsensical and forced—how does someone speak “A tempo” (209)? I’m not sure at all what that means, but it definitely makes the dialogue seem stiff and unnatural.

Following this passage, I thought the discussion of names was especially meaningful. As Stephen explains it, Shakespeare’s name is “dear to him…dearer than his glory of greatest shakescene in the country” (210). Where Shakespeare’s manipulation of his name is an almost holy revelation, however—“revealed…in the sonnets where this is Will in overplus” (210)—Stephen’s name is a burden, an indication of his spoiled boots and the “holes in his socks” (210). “I am tired of my voice, the voice of Esau,” he reflects (211): like Esau, who disguised his voice to claim his brother’s birthright, Stephen finds himself fraudulent and without poetic integrity. Tellingly, when Eglinton calls Stephen a “delusion” and mockingly asks if he believes his own theory (213), Stephen “promptly” replies “No,” voiding any emotional weight or significance his ideas ostensibly held (213).