Episode 13 features some repeated allusions to the Virgin Mary, one of Catholicism’s most important figures and a principle symbol of divine maternity and pure femininity. Nausicaa seems to be offering blatant conflations of religious fervency and sexual arousal, paralleling Gerty’s beauty and sexuality with the Virgin Mary’s immaculacy.
\nThe presences of the two women, one bodily and one spiritual, become influential forces that profoundly affect proximate male observers in both reverent and salacious ways. A particular juxtaposition I noticed can be made between the reverend John Hughes and his adherents and Leopold Bloom.\u00a0 The Virgin Mary, being a paramount facet of the Catholic faith, inspires utmost incitement in a devout sense among the clergy members, “still the voices sang in supplication to the Virgin most powerful, Virgin most beautiful” (303-304). Similarly, Bloom experiences stimulation, however, in an explicitly more sexual expression, “O! in raptures and it gushed out of it a stream of rain gold hair threads” (738-739).<\/p>\n
Later in the Episode, Bloom has a contemplative moment that encapsulates the intersection of religion and sex, “Girl friends at school, arms round each other’s necks or with ten fingers locked, kissing and whispering secrets about nothing in the convent garden. Nuns with whitewashed faces\u2026their rosaries going up and down” (809-812). What are the implications of Joyce’s experimentation with combining religiosity and sexuality? Regardless of whether or not its outward appearance is divine or comely, Joyce seems to be conveying femininity as an inexorably sexual power over men.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Episode 13 features some repeated allusions to the Virgin Mary, one of Catholicism’s most important figures and a principle symbol of divine maternity and pure femininity. Nausicaa seems to be offering blatant conflations of religious fervency and sexual arousal, paralleling Gerty’s beauty and sexuality with the Virgin Mary’s immaculacy. The presences of the two women, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314","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\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":315,"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314\/revisions\/315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}