Classics and the Western Canon discussion

"What do you think, Mr. Budgen, of a book with a big, fat, horrible married woman as the heroine? Mollie Bloom!"

-- Nora Joyce

Here it is, the vaunted and notorious Penelope episode. Congratulations to all who are completing the journey of Ulysses.

The final episode belongs almost entirely to Molly Bloom. Composed of eight unpunctuated sentences, it is the best known part of the book. The lack of punctuation creates a "river of words" which was not brand new to literature, but it definitely makes an impression. It is probably not an accident that this is also the style of Nora Joyce's letter-writing.

Joyce wrote to Budgen: "Her monologue turns slowly, evenly, though with variations, capriciously, but surely like the huge earthball itself round and round spinning." Budgen adds: "It is clearly in her symbolical character as fruitful mother earth that Molly speaks, through the medium of her body, for what individual, socially limited woman, if she were capable of entertaining such thoughts, would not be secretive enough to suppress them? Her very isolation (she is alone on the stage while all the rest sleep) gives her the scale and proportion of a giantess."

I don’t think I can adequately summarize the “earthball,” but here goes… (minus some of the earthier bits) :

Molly's first thought in the chapter reveals something surprising about Bloom -- he has requested breakfast in bed the next morning. This seems to be the converse of the way Bloom’s day begins, and a reversal of his submissive posture with respect to Molly. She immediately concludes that he must have had sex somewhere because of his appetite. She speculates who he could have been with, and about the "pack of lies" he has just told her. The reader quickly learns that Molly knows quite a bit about her Poldy, including the fact that he knows about her and Boylan, and what she doesn't know she suspects. She knows he is covertly writing to someone. She recounts his past relations with the housemaid Mary Driscoll (for which Bloom was put on trial in Circe) and his old flame Josie Breen. She seems to have accepted that her sex life with Bloom is over but she still thinks about having another child with him. Not for more than a second, though, and then it's on to the next thing.

Her stream of consciousness moves to first meetings -- her first meeting with Boylan, with Bloom, and with a Lt. Gardner who died in the Boer War. One of the surprising moments in the second sentence comes when she is looking forward to her Belfast trip with Boylan. She asks herself, "if I could find out whether he likes me".

Molly is fond of receiving letters; as a girl she even posted letters to herself out of boredom. Now she thinks of the family’s housekeeper in Gibraltar bringing her a letter from Lt. Mulvey, her first love, whom she kissed under the Moorish wall, and who sailed away on the H.M.S. Calypso. (She also remembers how she told Mulvey when they first met that she was engaged to a Spanish nobleman, Don Miguel de la Flora.) A train whistles, and the strains of “Love’s Old Sweet Song” trail through her mind.

Her thoughts turn to Bloom again: she hopes he doesn’t make barhopping with medical students a regular habit. She thinks of the time he proclaimed himself an accomplished rower and nearly capsized the rowboat, and how he dealt with a burglar in the night by making as much noise as possible “for the benefit of the burglar.” She alludes to Pisser Burke, one of her supposed lovers listed in the Ithaca episode – here it is made clear that the list is not accurate. (Critics argue over how many lovers Molly has had. Many insist that Boylan is the first since her marriage to Bloom, her reputation notwithstanding.) She thinks of Bloom’s grand and abandoned plans, such as turning their house into a private hotel or musical academy. And she believes that Bloom sent Milly away to Mullingar in order to remove her from Molly’s affair with Boylan.

Molly feels her period begin. As she sits on the chamber pot she thinks about first meeting Bloom, how he was introduced as a potential Member of Parliament and his “blather about home rule and the land league.” Now she looks at him sleeping at the foot of the bed and thinks, “I suppose there isnt in all creation another man with the habits he has”. She complains about her period, saying “I hope they’ll have something better for us in the other world” (Is this an echo of the “other world” of Martha Clifford and Mary Dedalus?)

She speculates again about who Bloom has been with; not Josie Breen, in any case. “hes such a born liar too no hed never have the courage with a married woman that’s why he wants me and Boylan though” but a few lines later, “well theyre not going to get my husband again into their clutches if I can help it making fun of him then behind his back” in part because of Bloom’s common sense. At least he doesn’t drink away his paycheck like Paddy Dignam or Simon Dedalus. He wipes his feet when he comes in the house. He’s polite (unlike Boylan), and though she doesn’t mention this, he dotes on her. Apart from his sexual hangups, Bloom is not a bad catch.

Her thoughts turn to Stephen. Bloom said he showed Stephen her photograph. “I wonder he didnt make him a present of it altogether and me too after all why not”. She wonders if Stephen might be too young for her, but concludes he is old enough. Apparently Molly reads the future in cards, and her reading this morning indicated a “young stranger” and a “rise in society.” She idealizes Stephen a bit, particularly when she thinks of him as “so clean compared to those pigs of men”. On the other hand, Molly also looks at Stephen as a motherless son, and the death of Rudy briefly comes to mind. “I knew Id never have another our 1st death too it was we were never the same since”. After musing for a while on how Stephen might live with the two of them, her thoughts grow a bit angry: “its all his own fault if Im an adulteress …if thats all the harm ever we did in this vale of tears God knows its not much doesn’t everybody only they hide it I suppose that’s what a woman is supposed to be there for or He wouldn’t have made us the way He did”.

And just as quickly the river of Molly’s thought turns again to nature, the wild mountains, and the sea. “as for them saying theres no God I wouldn’t give a snap of my two fingers for all their learning why don’t they go and create something” . She remembers the day Bloom proposed to her on Howth Head. “I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago my God flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes” She relives the moment: looking over the sea, recalling fond moments of her childhood in Gibraltar, “I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”

The worst section of all.

Either Joyce has imagined the woman as a superficial, passive-aggressive, manipulating creature angling for material gain and adolescent emotional dominance or...

Please tell me it wasn't based on a real person. And please tell me that person didn't breed.

Patrice is going to be horrified at this character! I can't wait for her to get back from New York.

Poldy! I'll subsidize your divorce!

First of all, thanks to Thomas for these summaries. This is not easy to do.

Now, to answer the question from the Ithaca summary about how Bloom conquers the suitors, I would suggest we have now have enough info to answer fully: after rationalizing Molly's transgressions, he asks her to bring him breakfast in bed. As only Bloom can, he asserts his dominance a very small, yet symbolic way. He is still master of the house. (?)

Also, I saved the judge's ruling and the foreword until after I had finished the book. I agreed 100% with the judge's ruling even if his methods were rather more subjective than empirical.

The Morris Ernst foreword was a little much.

I rather liked this chapter, especially compared with the previous. I agree that JJ seems either poor at writing women or has a very low opinion of them (which amounts to the same thing). Molly follows the same scatty and bitchy blueprint from the other 2/3 women I've heard from in this book.

I agree that Joyce does not know how to write from a women's perspective…rather he writes as to how he thinks a women would think..totally incorrect and as Nicola states…evidences JJ's very low opinion of women. I did not enjoy this chapter as a result. Alas..poor Bloom.

Not reading the summary or comments yet. Just here to say that it's taking me a long time to read this episode. Every time I lift my eyes from the page I lose my place, and with no actual sentences I end up backtracking a quarter page each time. Two steps forward, one step back. Or sometimes two or even three steps back. Anyway, slow-going for me!

Yes, but WILL Molly make breakfast? Her mind is pretty active at 2am and she has fluttered around most every topic lighting one way and then the other. Can you really visualize her bringing the tray up the steps?

It's easy to criticize Molly after this episode, but below the surface of her monologue is a great deal of suffering. The ugliness of her monologue seems to spring from this suffering, and I think the ultimate source is the same as Bloom's: the death of their son. Neither of them have recovered from this, and neither will deal with it head on.

This is supposedly the most "obscene" episode in Ulysses, but it seems to me like the obscenity in Nausicaa -- there is nothing prurient in it. It's simply sad. Both Bloom and Molly's distress is expressed sexually as a loss of meaning in sex. Bloom seeks out satisfaction in fantasies and masturbation and possibly prostitutes, and Molly now has Boylan, whom she doesn't respect and certainly doesn't love. It's only an imaginary, meaningless, and inadequate substitute for the love that Molly and Bloom have lost.

But there is a glimmer of hope here, at the very end of the story. It's very faint, but it's there for both of them.

Susan wrote: "Yes, but WILL Molly make breakfast? Her mind is pretty active at 2am and she has fluttered around most every topic lighting one way and then the other. Can you really visualize her bringing the tr..."

Well, that's easy. YES!

The checkered flag!

I enjoyed the last half of this book. But maybe because the episodes seemed to have more structure? Odd structure, yes, but still, structure! Even though this episode had no punctuation, her line of thinking was easy to follow as compared with, say, episode 3.

I actually did not think that Joyce's portrayal of Molly's perspective was that far off. I don't think it is meant to be representative of the way ALL women think or behave, but I have known some Molly's. In some aspects, I think I have been Molly at points (sans adultery). Anyway, off or not, his decision to end with an unsympathetic character is interesting.

Linda wrote: "Not reading the summary or comments yet. Just here to say that it's taking me a long time to read this episode. Every time I lift my eyes from the page I lose my place, and with no actual sentenc..."

The audio is very clear. I didn't read this chapter at all.

Genni wrote: "I actually did not think that Joyce's portrayal of Molly's perspective was that far off. I don't think it is meant to be representative of the way ALL women think or "wh

A good point, I think. It's dangerous to generalize with Joyce. On the other hand, there are lots of people who share something with Joyce's people, and a careful look at one's own empathies can reveal some contradictions. I think it quite wonderful how capacious Joyce's imagination is, to find within himself the means to portray so many distinctive and varied people. Every one of them stands out crisp and clear in my memory. The book is a congeries of individuals.

As to the humanity of Molly and others like her, she is not more flawed than most of us. What I respect in Molly is that she is working at life, trying to find a path, to draw out of her disappointments and stratagems and mistakes something positive, accepting. I think it's important that the final Yes is capitalized.

Apparently Bloom and Molly enjoy plenty of sex without vaginal intercourse. That may be the breakfast they enjoy together June 17. Molly seems to be way to much of a diva to literally serve breakfast to me. I feel like I'd been tricked into thinking they had no sensual life together, but now I feel like they experience a level of intimacy and and are bound to each other despite their differences. Isolation and community.

Thomas wrote: "Composed of eight unpunctuated sentences..."

Ahh....OK. I knew I caught one period in there somewhere, I must have missed the other seven. :)

Nicola wrote: "The audio is very clear. I didn't read this chapter at all."

Yeah, I was thinking how the audio would be perfect for this chapter. But at this point in the book I was not about to deviate from my method of actually reading the pages. Next time...

Linda wrote: "Thomas wrote: "Composed of eight unpunctuated sentences..."

Ahh....OK. I knew I caught one period in there somewhere, I must have missed the other seven. :)"

Lol! You beat me, Linda. I missed all of them!

Thomas wrote: "But there is a glimmer of hope here, at the very end of the story. It's very faint, but it's there for both of them."

That was what I picked up in this episode, the hope for Molly and Bloom to experience each other in a way that has been lost for years. I was half-expecting (hoping?) that the novel would end with her bringing Bloom breakfast and them reconnecting then. Of course I wasn't thinking of the logistics that the novel was taking place in just one day so we wouldn't see the light of the morning. But still, that is was I was hoping for. That Bloom asked for breakfast in bed made me smile after all of our discussions about him bringing Molly breakfast in bed at the beginning of the book.

Linda wrote: "Thomas wrote: "Composed of eight unpunctuated sentences..."

Ahh....OK. I knew I caught one period in there somewhere, I must have missed the other seven. :)"

Very funny, Linda. I can see the twinkle in Joyce's eye at this. :)

Oh, and as to Bloom's sleeping head-to-toe. So that was always just a quirky habit of his? He always slept like that, and he didn't just start doing so after Rudy's death?

Genni wrote: "Lol! You beat me, Linda. I missed all of them!"

It's the final one of the book. :)

Lol!! Yep. I totally missed that one. The most obvious one at that. Shame on me. :-)

Susan wrote: " I feel like I'd been tricked into thinking they had no sensual life together, but now I feel like they experience a level of intimacy and and are bound to each other despite their differences. Isolation and community. "

That's a nice way of putting it -- "isolation and community." There are no easy resolutions in the book, but I think there might be a positive trajectory -- from Molly's first sleepy muttered "no" to her emphatic "yes I will Yes".

As for the breakfast, she says she will. Perhaps it is a test of our faith as to whether she really will, but I see no reason to doubt her.

I was also glad to hear of the cat again, and that she likes to hear Bloom play with it. I'm thinking back to when we first meet Bloom when he's talking to the cat and it had made me smile. Now I can imagine Molly upstairs also listening to Bloom talk to the cat.

...and I love to hear him falling up the stairs of a morning with the cups rattling on the tray and then play with the cat she rubs up against you for her own sake I wonder has she fleas shes as bad as a woman always licking and lecking but I hate their claws I wonder do they see anything that we cant staring like that when she sits at the top of the stairs so long and listening as I wait always what a robber too that lovely fresh plaice I bought...

From Terence of ancient classics that may be relevant to our reading of Ulysses, with a perspective from Erich Fromm:

"When teaching students about empathy, Erich Fromm often cited Terence's statement from two thousand years ago -- "I am human and let nothing human be alien to me" -- and urged us to be open to that part of ourselves that corresponds to any deed or fantasy offered by patients, no matter how heinous, violent, lustful, masochistic, or sadistic. If we didn't, he suggested we investigate why we have chosen to close that part of ourselves." The Gift of Therapy, "Empathy: Looking Out the Patient's Window," Irvin D. Yalom

Patrice wrote: "I think the bottom line on this chapter is that Nora Barnacle, after reading it, said "This man knows nothing of how a woman thinks" or something close to that."

Carl Jung wrote a letter to Joyce which some of us can probably relate to (quoted from Ellmann's biography of Joyce):

"Your book as a whole has given me no end of trouble and I was brooding over it for about three years until I succeeded to put myself into it. But I must tell you that I'm profoundly grateful to yourself as well as to your gigantic opus, because I learned a great deal from it. I shall probably never be quite sure whether I did enjoy it, because it meant too much grinding of nerves and of grey matter. I also don't know whether you will enjoy what I have written about Ulysses because I couldn't help telling the world how much I was bored, how I grumbled, how I cursed and how I admired. The 40 pages of non stop run in the end is a string of veritable psychological peaches. I suppose the devil's grandmother knows so much about the real psychology of a woman. I didn't."

Joyce proudly displayed to this tribute to his psychological penetration, but Nora said of her husband, "He knows nothing at all about women."

Nora Joyce refused to read Ulysses, so this is a comment on James Joyce the man, her husband, and not the Penelope episode specifically. (She said this to Samuel Beckett, btw.) To me it sounds like something that Molly could very well have said about her Poldy.

Patrice wrote: "Thomas, if what you are telling me is that Carl Jung, (a man) learned about the psychology of a woman from Joyce (another man) so that my reaction (a woman's), is invalid I don't know what to say...."

I'm not telling you that at all, and I'm certainly not saying your reaction is invalid -- I'm just providing the origin and context of the quote, "He knows nothing about women."

Personally I think Jung is off his rocker. Molly's monologue says as much about how women think as Stephen's monologue in Proteus says how men think. Not much, in general terms. They're the thoughts of Joyce's creations. If they tell us anything, they tell us about how Joyce thought.

I suppose I stand alone, which is ok.

To me, she seems to spend a great deal of the episode comparing Boylan and Bloom, whether inadvertently or directly. As she thinks about Boylan, she is basically focusing on everything that Bloom does wrong. This is the way I think I have been like her at points. I think when you have been with someone for a long time, it is sometimes easy to slip into this way of thinking. However, the reason I think I felt hope for them at the end is because she begins to think about what was right in the beginning, and hence, what could be right again. Imho, this is where hope is in any relationship, when I begin to focus on the right instead of the wrong, or on what my partner does understand instead of what they do not. But I could totally be reading into the text what is not there.

Genni wrote: "I don't think it is meant to be representative of the way ALL women think or behave, but I have known some Molly's. ."

I have as well and if Molly was a stand alone I wouldn't think that, but every female shown in this book (and there haven't been many of them) is depicted in the same way. So, I can only conclude what I have previously stated.

Patrice wrote: " Exactly! When Stephen thinks, it holds up for me. Joyce does a great job of "thinking" like a young Irish lapsed Catholic genius. It felt real and I liked it. But as a friend of mine said "what made him think he could write as a Jew or a woman?" It's not whether or not he liked women or Jews or anyone else but whether what he wrote felt real. It's that "thud", that wrong note that shakes you right out of suspended disbelief that is unforgivable, IMO. "

This is what I feel, although I find Bloom believable enough as I'm not thinking about him as 'a jew' I think of him more as a complete man and his reaction to his circumstances seem believable. That's probably not very well expressed but hopefully you understand. I find it easier to think about Stephen as 'a lapsed Catholic' because I think he's a bit of twit and him obsessing over one aspect of his make up is more understandable than with Bloom who draws on a lifetime of experience.

With Molly though, yes I get aspects of her personality but she seems to have exactly the same type of thoughts as the other women we've seen with the odd variations. It reminds me a small amount of Dickens who was absolutely hopeless at drawing believable 'heroines', they might as well have been cardboard cutouts with different names written across their foreheads. JJ isn't as bad as that thank goodness but I can certainly see some similarities.

In the context of this novel, does Molly "fit" as an appropriate "Penelope" to this "Ulysses" epic?

My first cut answer is "yes." Can I defend that? Not certain. Does seem to bring 20-21st century angst, uncertainty, and confrontation of chaos to the storytelling.

Does Molly represent Everywoman? My own reaction, NO! But any more or less than Bloom is a kind of Everyman? Well, we had a lot more chance to see Bloom in a variety of situations.

We'd all be disappointed, I suspect, if Joyce started giving us role models as characters. (Or did he?)

Anyone here who has comments on other female characters in literature, written by either a man or a woman, with whom they would compare Molly? I don't think I do, at least at the moment.

Do we compare the male characters in Ulysses with men we know? I may a little bit -- at the moment, I haven't particularly compared them with male characters in other books...

Patrice wrote: "I don't think you are reading into it. I saw that too. Poldy won in the comparison. But then why was she planning more trysts with Boylan?"

We are only provided an hour (?) inside of Molly's head. Nothing is resolved. That is why I think there is hope. That hope is not concrete and unwavering. :-)

Nicola wrote: "Genni wrote: "I don't think it is meant to be representative of the way ALL women think or behave, but I have known some Molly's. ."

I have as well and if Molly was a stand alone I wouldn't think..."

I am wondering, do you think Joyce's portrayal of men is any more flattering? I do not think so. Even when some of the posters were talking about Bloom as a Christ-like figure I could not see it, not even remotely.

I would also flip the question around and wonder how we can pass judgements on the male characters in the book as we have been doing. We are not men. Is it safe to say that we have projected afair amount of female perspective onto our conjectures of the male characters as a whole?

Patrice wrote: "Genni wrote: "Patrice wrote: "I don't think you are reading into it. I saw that too. Poldy won in the comparison. But then why was she planning more trysts with Boylan?"

We are only provided an..."

This is really interesting to me. You did not understand Molly. I felt that I did. I think in an earlier post you said that women want to be loved and the way Molly behaves is not in keeping with that line of thinking. I read the novel otherwise. I think she does get love and affection from Bloom. It is sex that she does not get from Bloom and exactly what she does get from Boylan. This in no way excuses her. In the context of marriage, I don't think sex is always an act of love. Sometimes a woman just wants sex. If they have a husband who can readily provide it, then great. If not, it can lead to frustration just as easily as it would for a man. Again, I am in no way defending her affair. I am just saying that I could understand SOME of her thinking. Some. :-) It is not flattering, but I do think that some of it was realistic. Some. :-)

Also, Patrice, I agree with your other comment that her lack of remorse is betraying. There I do think Joyce dropped the ball. Most women I know, even the most modern would have a good deal of guilt mixed in with their thoughts/feelings. Something that is competely lacking in this episode.

Patrice wrote: "I haven't read it in decades but would Emma Bovary make any sense as a comparison? I KNEW Mme. Bovary. She felt true to me. I haven't read Anna Karenna, but does she make sense? The Wife of Bath did come to mind but even she felt more "real"...."

Interesting to me that the examples you suggest as possibilities are written by male authors. Anna Karenina is certainly one of the most complex. I've always enjoyed the story that Tolstoy tried to resist falling in love with her himself.

Jean Rhys is one writer of complex women characters that does come to my mind, even if I often can't personally relate well to them. But that's okay -- rather as one wants characters to challenge. Bebe Moore Campbell's women are more commercial fiction level, but they often seem "real."

Patrice wrote: "Genni wrote: "Nicola wrote: "Genni wrote: "I don't think it is meant to be representative of the way ALL women think or behave, but I have known some Molly's. ."

I have as well and if Molly was a..."

This is a great question. I will have to respond later!

Genni wrote: I am wondering, do you think Joyce's portrayal of men is any more flattering?"

Not necessarily more flattering but he portrays them as individuals. The women all seemed to have the same thoughts and be of a similar type, which to me indicates a writer who either isn't able to write a good woman or thinks that that is truly what all women are like. The men for good or ill are at least distinct.

Patrice wrote: "Isn't it interesting how many men have written about women? I can imagine writing about a man, from the outside. To write a man's inner thoughts seems incredibly arrogant to me and I can imagine how false it would sound to a man.."

Lots and many of them do a great job. I was just reading about Terry Pratchetts Diskworld women last night and really realising how he grew out of the fantasy stereotypes and created women who were just as nuanced and 'real' as his men.

Patrice wrote: But you are right, how do I know how a man would think? Or even another woman for that matter. .."

You can't know how every woman or man would think, that's impossible. But, as a writer, as a 'good' writer you should be able to write about 'people' because not all people are the same. It's a talent I guess, creating a person and not a stereotype.

Genni wrote: "I think she does get love and affection from Bloom...."

I recently read a list of intimate acts short of penetration between the Blooms which one critic cataloged and I had totally missed. It expanded my definition of sex and cast doubt on "poor Bloom's" 10 year abstinence. How would Molly survive without intimacy? They do not share ideas so the family and alternate intimacy might be their bond.

Genni wrote: "I suppose I stand alone, which is ok.

I think when you have been with someone for a long time, it is sometimes easy to slip into this way of thinking. However, the reason I think I felt hope for them at the end is because she begins to think about what was right in the beginning, and hence, what could be right again. Imho, this is where hope is in any relationship"

I also felt hope for Molly and Bloom, but I had not been able to fully analyze her line of thinking. I think you summed this up very nicely, Genni.

Patrice wrote: "Oh, I loved that statement. "sex is not always an act of love". I've been mulling that over a lot! .... As in all things my mind goes back to Plato."

You have a lot more background to pull from than I do, Patrice. I'm enjoying reading through your thought processes, and this post especially was interesting.

Nicola wrote: "Not necessarily more flattering but he portrays them as individuals. The women all seemed to have the same thoughts and be of a similar type,"

To me, the glaring flaw of Ulysses is that there are so few women in it. To make things worse, the reader has to see them through the distortion of Joyce's style -- the barmaids in the Ormond, for example are quite distinct from one another, but it's hard to see that through the chopped-up "musical" style Joyce adopted for that chapter. Aside from Molly, the one female voice we hear the longest is Gerty MacDowell. She's a bit one-sided, but she seem to me nothing like the barmaids or Molly.

Patrice wrote: "I think it's in people's natures to want to make sense of things. To have it mean something. But just as in life, we get stuck. Maybe there is no meaning."

So true, Patrice. As I've gone down the so-called "check list" of life - school, career, marriage, kids - I've hit a point now in my life where I've found myself asking "now what?", and then wondering along the same lines. What is the meaning of it all? It can be a consuming thought process for sure.

Genni wrote: "I suppose I stand alone, which is ok.

To me, she seems to spend a great deal of the episode comparing Boylan and Bloom, whether inadvertently or directly. As she thinks about Boylan, she is basica..."

I may be wrong, but it seems to me that Molly is trying to reconnect with Bloom by inciting him to react. She doesn't know consciously that she is doing it, but Bloom seems to be a focal point of her wandering mind just as much as Molly is a focal point for Bloom's wanderings through the whole book. Especially at the end of the monologue where she talks about sex with Boylan in what are really very angry terms, I can't help thinking that her affair with Boylan is really about her anger and frustration with Bloom. "its all his own fault if Im an adulteress," she says, and she's not entirely wrong.

Patrice wrote: "Oh, I loved that statement. "sex is not always an act of love". I've been mulling that over a lot! Because...if sex is an expression of love, then how can a man impregnate a woman he loves, know..."

You know I am reading through Plato's dialogues right now, but I have not read symposium yet. So the only thing I could say is Joyce's non-physical love is probably not a love of truth, but a love of knowledge (or maybe vocabulary) :p

Nicola wrote: "Genni wrote: I am wondering, do you think Joyce's portrayal of men is any more flattering?"

Not necessarily more flattering but he portrays them as individuals. The women all seemed to have the s..."

I think part of the problem might be that since Ulysses is loosely based on the Odyssey, most of the women we meet here are largely peripheral to the story. The episode Circe comes to mind. In the Odyssey, I believe Circe is a seductress and witch, so it does not surprise me that the women in this episode follow suit. We are not really inside their heads or stories. They areno there to be complex characters but as a part of the plot, imho. There may be a lady of the camelias there, but we would never know because that would be ancillary to the story Joyce is telling.

I have to say though, you may be correct, Nicola. I confess that I spent the first half of the book just trying to get my bearings. It was not until eipisode 14 that something "clicked" and I began to understand (if one can understand) Joyce's humor and appreciate what he was trying to do in literature. So the othe 2/3 women that you refer to may be stereotypical and I simply do not remember them. Gerty is the only one, and I remember thinking that she was believable, but more as a teenage girl than as a woman. So I am open to refutation. :-)

Susan wrote: "Genni wrote: "I think she does get love and affection from Bloom...."

I recently read a list of intimate acts short of penetration between the Blooms which one critic cataloged and I had totally m..."

Susan, I missed it also. Do you mind sharing?

Thomas wrote: "Genni wrote: "I suppose I stand alone, which is ok.

To me, she seems to spend a great deal of the episode comparing Boylan and Bloom, whether inadvertently or directly. As she thinks about Boylan,..."

I think that is possible. We agree that even while she is thinking of Boylan her thoughts are really focused on Bloom. And Whether she is frustrated with Bloom or frustrated sexually (it is probably both), she is definitely frustrated. A frustrated woman is usually not pretty. Lol