![]() ![]() He also recalls the romance between Molly and Mulvey, and he thinks again about the time when he made love to Molly on Howth Hill. Clinch, whom he mistakenly took to be a prostitute, and then he recalls the occasion when he paid a girl in Meath Street to say dirty words aloud. The second part of "Nausicaa," as noted, concerns Bloom's thoughts - lethargic ones, for the most part, after his sexual emission therefore, it is of little wonder that his ruminations deal with physiological matters. It was, in fact, Joyce's revelation of the darker passions of repressed womanhood, as well as its "blasphemous" commingling of sex and religion, that led to the suppression of Ulysses (in its serial format) by the New York Society for the Prevention of Vice in 1921. Stephen interpreted his "Pagan Mary" as beckoning him to the freedom of Europe but in Ulysses, Joyce effectively portrays here the limitations of human nature, as well as its exalted moments. In short, she is scarcely the "fair unsullied soul" that Stephen saw calling to him at a climactic moment towards the end of Book Four of A Portrait. Gerty has been told in the past about men's passions by Bertha Supple thus, Gerty is very much aware of why Bloom keeps his hands in his pockets as he watches her display her underclothing. ![]() She is aware of the allure of her transparent stockings: "Her woman's instinct told her that she had raised the devil in him." She finds a coconspirator in her friend Cissy Caffrey, who goes to ask her "uncle Peter" what time it is. Gerty knows exactly what she is doing in "seducing" Bloom - the dark and mournful foreign stranger - as she leads him to a moment of communication, albeit an ultimately unproductive one. In fact, in two significant ways, Gerty foreshadows Molly: Gerty, as does Molly, pleads for more understanding from men, especially priests, who hear women's intimate confessions and Gerty and Molly are compared many times by Joyce to the Blessed Virgin. Joyce, in "Nausicaa," however, is doing much more than satirizing cheap, sentimental romance fiction: In this episode, he reveals the hidden side of Irish womanhood, as he will also later do in "Penelope," in Molly's soliloquy. Mary, of course, is the Catholics' Refuge of Sinners and, to them, a last resort for bewildered and perplexed mankind - in this instance, Bloom. Gerty is also compared to the Blessed Mother, and Mary's colors, especially blue, appear throughout the episode. In addition, Nausicaa in Homer's epic performed the menial task of washing her family's linens Joyce's heroine, however, causes Bloom to (ironically) "dirty" his clothes by masturbating. She also parallels the unmarried Nausicaa of Homer because marriage is much on Gerty's mind, especially after her breakup with her steady boyfriend, Reggie Wylie (a parallel here with Bloom's "loss" of Molly). Gerty (Joyce's Nausicaa) aids Ulysses-Bloom by enticing him into the sexual respite provided by auto-eroticism, an act which he has been postponing until now. Not nonplussed by the appearance of a naked stranger, Nausicaa told the hapless, storm-tossed wanderer to go to her father's palace to receive succor. Odysseus, washed ashore on the land of the Phaeacians, was awakened from sleep when he was struck by a ball misthrown by Princess Nausicaa and her friends the resourceful and beautiful young girl had come to the shore to play and wash some clothing. Parallels with Homer are not difficult to recognize. ![]() The first part of the episode deals with Gerty the second, with Bloom and his ruminations. Also, the form of the episode is as simple as its style (Joyce called it - perhaps knowingly - a "marmalady" style, a sticky style). The rising and falling of the biscuit tin that was flung by the Citizen is reflected in the various ascents and declines in "Nausicaa!': for example, Gerty MacDowell's tempting leg, the Roman candle's rise and climactic explosion from the Mirus Bazaar, and the swinging censer of the church benediction - all of these risings and fallings lead up to and down from the simultaneous orgasms of Gerty and Bloom. Joyce gains continuity with the previous episode, "The Cyclops," despite the time differential by continuing several motifs from that chapter, the most prominent of which is the arc. on Sandymount Strand, the same shore where Stephen had earlier that morning contemplated the meaning of life's changes in "Proteus." Bloom has just come from visiting the Dignam family (in Sandymount), and "Nausicaa" provides him with a "relief" from the unpleasantness of Barney Kiernan's pub in "The Cyclops," and it also furnishes him respite from the somber atmosphere of the bereaved Dignam household. This episode takes place at around 8:00 p.m. ![]()
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