Today we started a new episode. This 13th episode of the novel is known as Nausicaa in Joyce's list. We stopped the reading at "... as it wasn't of a Friday." (Penguin 456.19) (Gabler 13.187)
In Book 5 of The Odyssey, Odysseus leaves Calypso's island, is harassed by Poseidon, and is finally beached at the mouth of a river in the land of a fabulous seafaring people, the Phaeacians. Odysseus hides in a thicket to sleep off his exhaustion and in Book 6 is eventually awakened by the activities of the Princess Nausicaa and her maids-in-waiting, who have come to the river to the palace laundry. (Gifford's introduction to the episode, 13.1 - 1306)
The very first sentence of the episode sets the tone for the entire episode.
A far cry from the Joycean style which we have gotten to know in the previous episodes, the tone of this episode is one of over-sentimentality, very flowery, sticky sweet as honey, and reminded me of the Mills and Boon romantic novels. It is certainly very different from the crudeness, vulgarity, violence and nationalistic feelings of Cyclops, the previous episode. All this proves, if proof is needed, the versatility of Joyce's writing!
It is summer evening. The time is 8 p.m. The venue, Sandymount strand. Three girl friends are seated on the rocks. At first we get to know only two of them - Cissy Caffrey and Edy Boardman. The four year old twins - Tommy and Jacky Caffrey have come along with the girls, who have also brought a eleven month old baby in a pushcart. Tommy and Jacky are building castles in the sand. Naturally they fight with the selfwilled Master Jacky falling on the headstrong Master Tommy, destroying the castle the latter had built, leading to screams.
The third of the three girls, Gerty MacDowell, enters the picture as Edy Boardman tries to console Master Tommy. Gerty MacDwell, seated near her companions, lost in thought, gazing far away into the distance was, in very truth, as fair a specimen of winsome Irish girlhood as one could wish to see.
What follows is a long description of how Gerty looks and what she wears (a neat blouse of electric blue, a navy three-quarter skirt, coquettish little love of a hat, shoes that were the newest thing in footwear), her dreams,.... We also get some glimpses of her character, of her superstitions. We get to know that she is older than 17 (though Gerty would never see seventeen again, Penguin 455.34), that she has (had?) an admirer, a boy that had the bicycle off the London bridge road always riding up and down in front of her window, whom his father kept now in in the evenings to study. So Gerty is now wearing blue for luck, hoping against hope (of meeting the boy again). That morning she had also nearly slipped up the old pair on her inside out and that was for luck... Gerty knows (or feels) that Edy Boardman is jealous of her because of that boy.
Thus, so far we have come to know the Nausicaa of the episode but the Odysseus is still 'hiding'. Not in a bush but on the rocks!
In Book 5 of The Odyssey, Odysseus leaves Calypso's island, is harassed by Poseidon, and is finally beached at the mouth of a river in the land of a fabulous seafaring people, the Phaeacians. Odysseus hides in a thicket to sleep off his exhaustion and in Book 6 is eventually awakened by the activities of the Princess Nausicaa and her maids-in-waiting, who have come to the river to the palace laundry. (Gifford's introduction to the episode, 13.1 - 1306)
The very first sentence of the episode sets the tone for the entire episode.
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| (Source:http://www.blogcdn.com/www.mydaily.co.uk/media/2011/02/mills--boon-cover.jpg) |
It is summer evening. The time is 8 p.m. The venue, Sandymount strand. Three girl friends are seated on the rocks. At first we get to know only two of them - Cissy Caffrey and Edy Boardman. The four year old twins - Tommy and Jacky Caffrey have come along with the girls, who have also brought a eleven month old baby in a pushcart. Tommy and Jacky are building castles in the sand. Naturally they fight with the selfwilled Master Jacky falling on the headstrong Master Tommy, destroying the castle the latter had built, leading to screams.
The third of the three girls, Gerty MacDowell, enters the picture as Edy Boardman tries to console Master Tommy. Gerty MacDwell, seated near her companions, lost in thought, gazing far away into the distance was, in very truth, as fair a specimen of winsome Irish girlhood as one could wish to see.
What follows is a long description of how Gerty looks and what she wears (a neat blouse of electric blue, a navy three-quarter skirt, coquettish little love of a hat, shoes that were the newest thing in footwear), her dreams,.... We also get some glimpses of her character, of her superstitions. We get to know that she is older than 17 (though Gerty would never see seventeen again, Penguin 455.34), that she has (had?) an admirer, a boy that had the bicycle off the London bridge road always riding up and down in front of her window, whom his father kept now in in the evenings to study. So Gerty is now wearing blue for luck, hoping against hope (of meeting the boy again). That morning she had also nearly slipped up the old pair on her inside out and that was for luck... Gerty knows (or feels) that Edy Boardman is jealous of her because of that boy.
Thus, so far we have come to know the Nausicaa of the episode but the Odysseus is still 'hiding'. Not in a bush but on the rocks!
