We read up to: "Val Dillon. Apoplectic" (Penguin 483.30) (Gabler 13.893)
We are nearing the end of the chapter
and the climax of the episode, while the characters on the beach are watching
the fireworks from the Mirus bazaar. Cissy, Edy and the children have got up
and run nearer to see better, but Gerty seems content to remain seated on her
rock and watch from a distance. She looks up and leans far back, pulling up and
holding her knee, supposedly to steady herself, but really to let Bloom get a
good view of her legs and undergarments (just as she had been swinging her legs
to the music from the church a little earlier). Legs at the time, let it be
added, were a rarity and hardly ever on show, which makes this a truly special
moment for Bloom. The display works for him as he seizes the opportunity and
finishes what he had started to do to himself already with his hands in his
pockets.
There are two parallel actions going on
here, one of the fireworks display in the distance and the other that of
Bloom masturbating while he is watching Gerty. Incidentally, this is the part
which took Ulysses to court in the US
in 1920 (an outraged father had protested that it should not be possible that his daughter reads things like this), and the book was banned in America.
To pick out one of the chapters many details:
Gerty leans back and, like everyone else trying to see something, straining her neck while trying to look up high:
And she saw a long Roman candle going
up over the trees, up, up, and, in the tense hush, they were all breathless
with excitement as it went higher and higher and she had to lean back more and
more to look up after it, high, high, almost out of sight (13.719).
Well aware of his looking, she goes through
what Bloom is likely to be able to see: her blue garters, and probably he could see her other things too,
nainsook knickers, the fabric that caresses the skin, better than those other
pettiwidth, the green, four and eleven, on account of being white (13.724)). With "nainsook" (a
type of Indian cotton) and its slogan-like description as "the fabric that
caressess the skin" and the mention of "pettiwitdth" (a
brandname) Gerty goes on to a little digression into the language of advertising
and of buying lingerie. Fritz Senn points out that "nainsook" is an
Indian word meaning 'pleasing to the eye', a detail very fitting to this
chapter.
 |
| (Nainsook knickers. Source: http://www.advintageplus.com/1920-print-ad-chemises-nainsook-envelope-chemise-chemise-and-bloomer-combination/) |
The fireworks (and Bloom's orgasm) over,
Gerty gets up to leave the beach. We read that she walks with a certain
quiet dignity characteristic of her but with care and very slowly because -
because Gerty MacDowell was... Tight boots? No. She's lame! O! Here we
have slipped into Bloom's mind. At the same time as he does, we realize that she has a
limp and probably remained seated all the while because of it. While the others
can run she cannot. On a second reading and going back and, we would now know
why she stayed seated: she was showing off, presenting herself in a favourable
light and at her best (concealing what she called "shortcoming"
(13.650). When she gets up the magic is gone. Bloom thinks of her shortcoming
as a "defect" which is ten times worse in a woman (13.774).
For someone like Gerty a physical handicap lowered the chances of getting
married even more. And Mr Bloom watched her as she limped away (13.772).
Fritz Senn comments
how appropriate the word "limp" is for this passage: it can be used as
a verb (to limp) and as an adjective. As a verb it would be fitting to describe
the way the language of the text now moves on since it, too, is now limping:
the sentences are short, slightly clumsy, nothing as high-flying (or trying to
be high-flying) as in the first half of the episode. As an adjective, "limp"
would go well with the organ that goes limp after an orgasm. In Senn's words, we
are now in the limp part of the chapter.
From here
on, we follow Bloom. He is glad to have been gratified this time (in being granted
a view of Gerty's legs and undergarments), as he remembers the instance earlier
in the day when the same hopes were thwarted (in chapter 5, he had been trying to catch a glimpse of
a pair of female legs when a tramcar drove by and impeded his view). His
thoughts: Made up for that tramdriver this morning (13.787).
His mind
then wanders here and there: to fashion, menstruation, his attraction to women, flirting with them, remembering walking the dark streets in the Appian
way (a street in Dublin, with a name reminiscent of the Romans) wanting to take up a woman, Mrs Clinch, realizing just in time that she was someone he knew. He
tries to imagine what it must be like for a prostitute, especially when new to
the job, to be rejected by a potential customer. He wonders about his watch and
whether it stopped at precisely the time Molly and Boylan were having
intercourse: Funny my watch stopped at half past four. Dust. Shark liver
oil they use to clean. Could do it myself. Save. Was that just when he, she? (13.846)). Other memories float in: Molly's first love, Mulvey, who
kissed her under the Moorish wall, when she was living in Gibraltar (this is
something Molly must have told him); the first days of courting her; some of her
other suitors (his competitors).
Next week when we pick up (in this more earthy, more down-to-earth part) from: There she is with them down there for the fireworks, there will be several pages of relatively easy interior monologue - the relaxedness
of which we may as well enjoy since the chapter to follow will be a much harder one!
