{"id":133,"date":"2016-09-13T02:19:27","date_gmt":"2016-09-13T02:19:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/?p=133"},"modified":"2016-09-13T02:20:16","modified_gmt":"2016-09-13T02:20:16","slug":"clothes-civilization-and-performance-in-ulysses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/uncategorized\/clothes-civilization-and-performance-in-ulysses\/","title":{"rendered":"Clothes, Civility, and Performance in Ulysses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In both sections of <em>Ulysses<\/em>\u2014that is, books 1-3 and books 4-6\u2014clothes are indicators of performative personas. There\u2019s a kind of clothing etiquette that clashes with the characters\u2019 observations, desires, and expectations: \u201cHe kills his mother but he can\u2019t wear gray trousers,\u201d Buck Mulligan says derisively of Stephen Dedalus in Book 1 (6). Later Dedalus, confused, wishes to \u201cdress the character\u201d in \u201cpuce gloves and green boots\u201d (17); his tie is \u201crebellious\u201d and his outfit a \u201ccontradiction\u201d (17). Stephen\u2019s out of sync with the persona he should or wants to convey; for this reason, there\u2019s as sense of powerlessness and almost victimization in his interactions with Buck Mulligan, and of neurotic inadequacy when he\u2019s alone.<\/p>\n<p>Because Buck, Stephen\u2019s foil, is the master of performance. His actions are described in terms of his body parts, as though he\u2019s a puppet master or ventriloquist manipulating himself: \u201cface smiling with delight,\u201d \u201cshowing his white teeth and blinking his eyes,\u201d \u201c[speaking] with warmth of tone\u201d (13, 16). His ease with performance and self-manipulation is a demonstration of power and control: Buck controls the self he puts out into the world, and consequently seems to have a kind of self-possession Dedalus envies but can\u2019t himself obtain. \u201cWhom were you trying to walk like?\u201d Dedalus thinks in book 3. \u201cForget: a dispossessed\u201d (41).<\/p>\n<p>For his own part, Bloom seems plugged into a kind of game of clothed, civilized personas hiding much nastier, viscerally unpleasant truths, noting the \u201cyellow blacknailed fingers\u201d of clean-shaven Bantam Lyons (85) and imagining the \u201chorrid\u201d dead body of Paddy Dignam, \u201csphincter loose\u201d (98), so different from the prepared, \u201cwash[ed] and shampoo[ed]\u201d body he expects to see. A lot of his inner monologue too has to do with disrobing, and while that\u2019s often sexual, there seems to be the implication that with the disrobing there\u2019s a performative character that\u2019s shed as well: see the \u201cstylish kind of coat\u201d he notes on the \u201chaughty creature\u201d in book 4. The urge to \u201ctake the starch\u201d out of the woman connotes a deeper desire to get rid of civilized disguises, echoing his \u201cbrutal\u201d character (78): his carnal preoccupation, his love of his own body, his penchant for the \u201cinner organs of beasts\u201d (55). Likewise he contemptuously notes the \u201clarge grey bootsole\u201d under the \u201clace affair\u201d the priest has on, hinting at a workingman-type character hidden behind the man\u2019s \u201cpious fraud\u201d: \u201cSuppose he lost the pin of his,\u201d he thinks, \u201che wouldn\u2019t know what to do to\u201d (81). The scene echoes the book\u2019s opening, where \u201cstately\u201d Buck Mulligan ascends the tower, bearing his shaving kit.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, the two scenes are almost inverse: in one, the priest hides his rough character beneath a \u201clace affair\u201d to retain his \u201caristocratic\u201d bearing (81); in the other, Buck parades in his yellow dressing-robe in overt mockery of the Church while performing what actually seems to be a very serious ritual\u2014the care and maintenance of his face, which, masklike in its manipulative power, is his most bizarrely distinctive feature throughout the books we\u2019ve read so far.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In both sections of Ulysses\u2014that is, books 1-3 and books 4-6\u2014clothes are indicators of performative personas. There\u2019s a kind of clothing etiquette that clashes with the characters\u2019 observations, desires, and expectations: \u201cHe kills his mother but he can\u2019t wear gray trousers,\u201d Buck Mulligan says derisively of Stephen Dedalus in Book 1 (6). Later Dedalus, confused, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135,"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133\/revisions\/135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}