6
Critical Realism and Parallel Narration

“Cyclops” and “Nausicaa”

In his seminal essay, “Ulysses and the Reader,” Wolfgang Iser argues that modern literary theory changed radically in response to a revolution in literature itself. He goes on to explain that “there is no doubt that James Joyce’s Ulysses was at the forefront of this revolution” (131). Though not uncontroversial, both points are plausible. However, Iser goes on to claim that Ulysses particularly “destroyed” the norms we formerly employed for literary analysis, specifically concern with authorial “intention” and “message” as well as aesthetic “harmony” (132). As should be clear from the preceding discussions of simulation, theme, narration, and style, the present analysis takes a view quite different from that of Iser. Moreover, Iser supports his contentions by insisting that Ulysses “dispenses with” the attempt to “represent reality” (133). The emphasis I have placed on critical realism could hardly be more at odds with any view of Joyce’s novel, at least apparently.

Iser explains his reasons for seeing Joyce as rejecting realism. These include a rejection of “a coherent point of view” and “a story line to give overall structure to the plot” (133). Here, then, we begin to see some ambiguity. It is far from clear that a single narrational point of view is the most conducive to realism. In any case, a single narrator is hardly a requirement for realism, particularly when part of the realism involves the internal or subjective experience of different characters. (I leave aside the question of coherence per se since there does not seem to be any reason to infer that Joyce’s narration is incoherent.) More strikingly, the rather minimal use of story organization is presumably part of the realism of the work, since the world is more complex and various than genre structures. Indeed, Iser seems to acknowledge this when he states that “the world eludes portrayal” (133). If he has in mind strict organization into a story, then he would seem to be acknowledging that realism will avoid such strict organization.

On the other hand, perhaps in saying that “the world eludes portrayal,” Iser means that one cannot convey any understanding of the world. (If so, the comment is not only mistaken, but incoherent, since it clearly pretends to convey a fact about the world.) Indeed, he goes on to indicate that we not only cannot portray the real world, but we cannot understand the world of Ulysses. Ulysses, he claims, presents us with a “gigantic mass of information” that “is deprived of all coherence” (134). I believe Iser is right that the novel “sinks to the level of a puzzle” or “riddle” (134) if one seeks coherence in the superficial correspondences with the Odyssey1 (though some of these correspondences are locally illuminating). But there are many other ways in which one can discern the coherence of the work. To take a simple example treated in chapter three, a great deal of Stephen’s and Bloom’s thoughts and actions are explained as soon as we note that Stephen is inclined toward mood congruent processing, whereas Bloom has a tendency to engage in self-distraction as a means of mood repair. Moreover, this coherence is closely connected with the work’s psychological realism.2

In short, the preceding analyses indicate a profound disagreement with Iser on fundamental issues, particularly regarding Ulysses and realism. On the other hand, unsurprisingly, even from the perspective of the present study, Iser is onto something. He has recognized and developed two points. First, that the work is not “realism” in the usual sense. Something is amiss here, and we need to be clear about what that is. Second, this deviation from standard modes of “realism” is related to the extra work the reader must do when reading and rereading the novel. (The second half of Iser’s essay treats the topic of the reader.) However, it would seem that the activity of the reader has significance only in relation to some interpretive norm, a norm that is commonly one of meaning. Here, as elsewhere, I take that meaning to be defined by authorial receptive simulation, which is to say, the author’s understanding of the text from the simulated position of a reader (rather than his or her understanding of the initial production of the text, with all its private biographical sources and idiosyncratic associations). That view of meaning and simulation, in turn, helps us understand what is involved in the specific sort of realism practiced by Joyce.

This chapter, then, first reexamines the idea of realism, exploring the different sorts of realism, along with their relation to narration and style. In connection with this, it returns to the political concerns of the opening chapters, reconsidering Joyce’s implied attitude toward morality and his tacit understanding of the operation of ideological aggrandizement and sentimentalization. It then turns to the two episodes that most clearly and directly manifest Joyce’s critical realism. In “Cyclops,” Joyce addresses the distortion of history and current social conditions by nationalist ideology. In “Nausicaa,” he takes up the distortion of sexuality by popular romance.

Varieties of Realism

One fundamental division here is between what we might call “representational realism” and “communicative realism.” Representational realism tries to mirror or transcribe reality. In contrast, communicative realism undertakes the cultivation of an understanding of reality. In literature, representational realism will, among other things, presumably be as close as possible to a literal statement of the facts of the story world. Thus statements such as “Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed” are consistent with representational realism. In contrast, a statement of the following sort is probably not consistent with representational realism: “Stephen’s mother, emaciated, rises stark through the floor, in leper grey with a wreath of faded orangeblossoms and a torn bridal veil, her face worn and noseless, green with gravemould.” We might contrast this with a more representationally realistic account, such as, “Stephen felt grief, but also anger, as he remembered his mother’s use of her suffering to coerce his religious submission.” But the greater representational realism of the latter statement does not entail any greater communicative realism. In comparison with the literal statement, the apparition of Stephen’s mother may communicate, metaphorically, a greater understanding of Stephen’s emotional state at the moment—and, thereby, of the emotions experienced by someone in the grip of grief and shame. In this sense, the metaphorical statement, though less representationally realistic, may have greater value for communicative realism.

A second division is no less important, that between objective and subjective realism. In objective realism the depiction or communication of reality is accurate. In subjective realism the depiction or communication of reality is accepted by the reader.3 Prima facie it would seem that the problem addressed by Iser is not that Joyce’s work is objectively unrealistic (or non-realist), but that it is subjectively unrealistic, not accepted as realistic (or realist) by readers. Since subjective acceptance is not simply a function of objective accuracy, we might ask what characterizes subjective realism. The question is particularly pressing since, for literature, it is not clear just how a reader might come to feel that a work is representationally accurate. In the case of painting, there is a simple criterion—looking at the painting is like looking at the world. Of two paintings, one is more subjectively realistic if looking at it provides an experience more like that of looking at similar objects in the real world. But this does not precisely hold for a collection of sentences.

Here we might distinguish between experiencing something as real or realistic and explicitly judging something to be realistic. I suspect we have “experiential subjective realism” in any case of undisrupted simulation. Thus Bloom takes his travelogue-inspired imagination of the Middle East to be realistic as long as he is imagining it. He only rejects its realism when he comes to question it explicitly (“Probably not a bit like it really”). This may seem to suggest that merely ending the simulation is enough to undermine subjective realism. However, it seems likely that the experience of subjective realism carries over into explicit judgments of realism unless there is some reason for a change. In keeping with general principles of mental operation, we tend to proceed along the lines of default motivational responses unless some task conflict shifts our attentional focus and leads us to reevaluate a default response.4

There are many things that might give rise to such task conflicts. In some cases, they derive from habitual thought processes (e.g., if the person is characteristically skeptical). In other cases, they may derive from more pressing current goals. In Bloom’s case, the imagination of the Middle East is a way of imagining an escape from his current alienation. However, it is not a real option for action. Thus there is a current conflict in goals. Moreover, the idea that he would be at home in the Middle East could be disturbing to him, since going there is beyond his capacity. This could trigger mood repair processing, perhaps in this case leading him to challenge the view that this appealing scene is realistic (rather than simply ignoring it). Beyond such relatively spontaneous processes, a judgment regarding realism may be produced by effortful consideration of the issue, as when one engages in historical analysis or ideological critique.

More significantly for our purposes, an alteration in the judgment of realism may derive from properties of the work that make the artificiality of the work salient. The most obvious instances of this are clear physical impossibilities. This holds even when the impossibilities are, ultimately, metaphorical and serve to enhance the communicative realism of the work, as when Stephen’s mother appears to him as a ghost. It may also involve obtrusive narration. This would include cases of unusual narration (e.g., the forms of “extreme narration” discussed by Brian Richardson) or in some cases even shifts in narration. Indeed, this is presumably the reason Iser takes consistency of narrator to be a feature of realism. Finally, obtrusive features of style, such as we find in the “Sirens” episode, call attention to the fact that the novel is a made object, not reality itself. In some ways, these are familiar points. For example, they recall remarks by Brecht on producing an alienation effect in theater. However, my goal here is not to suggest that disturbing default processing is necessarily good. It is simply to say that disrupting default processing is likely to affect one’s subjective sense of a work’s realism. As such, it may change the “transported” experience of a work’s subjective realism into a judgment that it is not realistic.

In short, the disruption of subjective realism by the artifact qualities of a work tends to occur when certain normal, thus habitual modes of narration and style are saliently violated. We may refer to these habitual modes of narration and style as “formal realism.” Realism proper is substantive or objective. It concerns accuracy of a work with respect to the world. In contrast, formal realism concerns a set of unobtrusive features that sustain default processing. These features include, for example, a plausible and literal selection and construal of events as well as a consistent (and probably unobtrusive) narration. Formal realism is the textual counterpart of subjective realism.

Formal and subjective realism seem to be what most people have in mind when they say that, after a certain point, Ulysses stops being realistic. However, the contention of the present study is that Ulysses is a prime case of communicative realism (in the specific form of critical realism, to which we will turn shortly). As should be clear, communicative realism is not bound by the conventions of formal realism at any level. It may involve obtrusive narration. It may be metaphorical at the level of verbalization or plot. It may even be subjectively implausible at the story level. Indeed, part of the challenge of Joyce’s novel is that it presents us with aspects of reality that are usually censored or romanticized; in consequence, they may appear to us implausible, even if they are highly accurate.

Of course, communicative realism may employ conventions of formal realism as well. But these techniques are only some of the options available for communicative realism. Moreover, they are techniques available for the misrepresentation and obfuscation of reality as well. For this reason, a work of communicative and substantive/objective realism may be formally “unrealistic,” whereas a corresponding work of great formal realism may have a high degree of communicative and substantive/objective unrealism (or falsity). (This distinction also allows so-called “magical realism” to be a genuine form of realism, at least in some cases.)

The foregoing analysis has stressed that communicative realism concerns truth and not some sort of simple resemblance. Before going on to treat critical realism, it is important to clarify what sorts of truths are involved here. First, as is no doubt obvious, this is not, in most cases, a matter of particular truths. Indeed, the (usual) irrelevance of particular truths is arguably what distinguishes fiction from nonfiction. Communicative realism is generally concerned with broad principles, most often social or psychological principles (rather than, say, principles of physics or biology). In Ulysses, psychological principles are of course particularly important. Communicative realism in mentalistic fiction generally involves the examination of (usually implicit) cognitive and affective processes that produce cognitive and affective events and states. This rarely includes the explicit formulation of general principles. It only requires the author to have an intuitive sense that certain simulations work properly (i.e., realistically). For instance, Joyce very aptly represented Bloom as engaging in mood repair through self-distraction. However, it seems very unlikely that he ever explicitly formulated anything like a general principle here.

Second, as repeatedly indicated in the preceding pages, truth is not confined to literal statements. First, literal obviously does not mean true (since literal claims are often false). Second, nonliteral does not mean false. Metaphorical assertions, allegories, statements with synecdoches, and other figures of speech may be true or false. Nonliteral claims or implications are prone to considerable ambiguity. In argument or analysis, we are likely to wish to be as literal as possible, separating out multiple meanings. But in literary works, the ambiguity may actually contribute to the accuracy of the depiction, due to the complexity of the conditions and events at issue. Again, when Stephen’s mother appears to him in “Circe,” this suggests a complex set of feelings and thoughts. These include not only guilt and anger, but also disgust over her decaying body, indicated by her appearance in his imagination—“her face … noseless, green with grave-mould.” Indeed, the disgust was presumably not merely a function of thoughts about her corpse. It was perhaps even more the result of memories from when she was alive and vomiting her green bile (1.109), memories that affect Stephen’s thought and feeling, though he is not fully aware of them at this moment. This connection is nicely suggested by the color of the “green … gravemould.” Such a complex metaphorical presentation conveys a complex psychological response to death, a response that is by no means idiosyncratic to Stephen. It would be difficult to spell out the various implications of this metaphor in a way that would fit in a novel (rather than in a psychology article), replicating its communicative psychological realism in literal representation.

One part of this complexity involves expectations and attitudes. These can, to some extent, be spelled out literally, though they are often conveyed more effectively in nonliteral depictions. In any case, this leads us to a third point about the truths of communicative realism. Among other things, such realism treats norms—not in the sense of what is good, but in the sense of what is ordinary. In certain areas, communicative realism, and objective realism more generally, convey a sense of what is usual or common. In the case of Ulysses, this has consequences for our sense of shame in particular. For example, if young women have the idea that sexual thoughts are evidence of a perverse and sinful nature, they may feel shame at their own sexual thoughts. In contrast, if they understand that sexual thoughts are the rule for adolescents, they are likely to respond differently. Similarly, if young men think masturbation is a rare occurrence, they will understand their own masturbation differently than if they think of it as very common.

Critical Realism and Romanticization

The last examples suggest that realism may serve to disabuse readers of emotionally, morally, or socially consequential misconceptions—which leads us to critical realism. As should be clear by this point, critical realism is any form of realism that opposes specific, misleading ideas about—thus misunderstandings of—reality. These misunderstandings may involve (tacit) descriptive and explanatory principles, such as how the mind operates, or they may involve norms and expectations. In any case, they commonly manifest some influential ideology. In the case of Ulysses, the ideological targets of critical realist critique commonly involve shame. More precisely, there are two sorts of ideology at issue here. The first serves to create shame. The second serves to conceal shame. Both have two subvarieties. We may refer to these as the shame of disgust and the shame of disdain—or, alternatively, personal and social shame.

Specifically, we may feel ashamed of properties or actions that do or (we imagine) would provoke disgust on the part of others. We may also feel ashamed of properties or actions that do or (we imagine) would provoke a humiliating disdain on the part of others. The first sort of shame (relating to disgust) is fundamentally associated with aspects of our bodies—most obviously excretory and sexual. This is the shame over our animal nature, stressed by Nussbaum (200–206). The second sort of shame (relating to disdain) is fundamentally associated with social categories and social identities. Gerty’s shame over her menstruation is a case of the former. Stephen’s shame over his voice is of the second sort.

There are many ideologies that may foster these forms of shame. Disdain-based shame derives from social ideologies that justify social hierarchies. These occur in patriarchy, racism, colonialism, homophobia, and elsewhere. Disgust-based shame derives from any ideologies that cultivate revulsion over the body—for example, many religious ideologies. As indicated in chapter two, disgust-based shame may be involved with social hierarchies as well, insofar as the relevant identification criteria bear on the body. We see this in three paradigmatic forms of social group bias—misogyny, anti-Semitism, and homophobia (on the links of all three with disgust, see Nussbaum 205). This is unsurprising since misogyny is necessarily linked with male/female bodily differences; anti-Semitism is connected with circumcision; and homosexuality is a form of sexuality.

Again, Joyce’s critical realism responds not only to the two forms of shame-producing ideology. It also responds to the corresponding forms of shame-concealing ideology. Both involve “cleaning up” reality. In the case of disgust-based shame, this commonly involves passing over the disgust-provoking aspects of the body or presenting them in euphemistic, sentimentalized ways. We will see cases of this in Gerty MacDowell’s prettified imagination of sexuality. In the case of disdain-based shame, the shame-concealing ideology is most often a matter of elevation or aggrandizement, exaggerating the value of the denigrated group’s properties and achievements. We will see examples of this in the misrepresentation of the Citizen as a great mythical hero.

Both these shame-concealing ideologies are forms of romanticization. We may refer to them as sentimental and aggrandizing romanticization respectively. They are both problematic on two counts. First of all, they are problematic from the perspective of veracity. Insofar as they convey a misunderstanding of normal bodily function or of the social conditions and accomplishments of a group, they are faulty from the perspective of realism. As such, romanticization is perhaps the main target of critical realism, at least in the case of Joyce. Second, by concealing the shame-producing personal and social properties, they tend to render them all the more abnormal. Thus they may serve to make the stigmatized properties more powerful in their shame-producing effects.

Before going on to Joyce’s critical realist treatment of romanticization, however, we need to slightly complicate our account of shame. In the preceding pages, we have characterized human cognition as commonly involving two sorts of processes. First, there is default, relatively automatic processing. In some cases, this default processing hits some sort of snag, triggering a more self-conscious, effortful processing through working memory. We would expect the same thing to happen in the case of disgust, disdain, and shame. For example, colonizers are likely to experience conflict in their relations with colonized people, spontaneously empathizing with their humiliation even while disdaining them. In cases such as this, the resulting effortful processing is likely to take the shape of self-justification. In other words, the colonizer is likely to rationalize his or her disdain. Perhaps the most forceful way of doing this is through morality. Colonial ideology, racist ideology, and so on are for this reason centrally moral discourses. They impute moral inferiority to the denigrated group. The point applies to disgust as well as disdain. Thus the most effective ideologies of disgust impute immorality to the disgust-provoking activities (prominently, those connected with sexuality). In each case, such moralism is a powerful motivating force for aggrandizement or sentimentalism. These counter-ideologies do not function by rejecting the moralism that justifies disdain and disgust. Rather, they seek to conceal the putative fault, inferiority, or sin, or to redirect the stigma.

As the last point suggests, shame-concealing counter-ideologies may operate in two ways—positively and negatively. Positively, they elevate the in-group. Negatively, they denigrate an out-group. The latter is complicated by the fact that the denigrated out-group need not be the dominant group. Thus, for example, nationalism may cultivate particular disdain or disgust for the colonizer. However, this impulse is often frustrated by the obvious power and authority of the colonizer. One common result of this dynamic is that negative shame-concealing ideology tends to isolate a weaker or more vulnerable out-group. In other words, it often produces scapegoating. This is arguably what we find in, for example, nationalist anti-Semitism. Indeed, in the Irish case, Jews are a group to which we would expect this scapegoating to apply in part because of the analogy, articulated in “Aeolus,” between the Irish and the Jews. Given this analogy—which brings Jews into the associative complex of English colonialism and Irish nationalism—Jews would be a readily available cognitive target for Irish nationalist ideology repudiating shame.

In contrast with these shame-concealing ideologies, Joyce’s novel has the task of rejecting shame itself. This rejection necessarily extends to the moralism that justifies disdain, disgust, and their associated forms of shame. In that sense, Joyce’s realism takes him “beyond good and evil.” It is not the establishment of a different moralism that would leave a different group of people open to our disgust or disdain, thus fostering their shame. It is, rather, a rejection of moral shame-mongering of any sort. In this way, Joyce’s critical realist project is arguably rather different from the project of many political activists who share his support of demeaned and exploited social groups. Often, such activists do not oppose shaming per se, but rather feel that the wrong targets are being shamed.

A Note on Narration and Style

Up to this point, we have generally assumed a single encompassing narrator with one or more embedded narrators. For example, in the first episode, we have a general, non-personified narrator who explains that Buck was “Stately” and “plump,” that he “came from the stairhead,” and so on. We also have “external” embedded narration, when Stephen recounts what happened when he went to Buck’s home after May Dedalus’s death. This is embedded because the encompassing narrator recounts that Stephen tells something. Stephen’s telling is thus incorporated into the broader narration. We have “internal” embedded narration when we are given Stephen’s thoughts. These, too, are recounted by the encompassing narrator.

However, in addition to embedded narration, it is possible to have parallel narration. Parallel narration occurs when there are two narrators treating the same story world, but neither encompasses the other. Parallel narration can be combined with embedded narration—indeed, it usually is. Thus Buck and Stephen are parallel narrators governed by a single encompassing narrator. However, the interesting and consequential cases of parallel narration occur when there is no overarching narrator. In that case, the hierarchy of narration ends, not with a single narrator, but with two or more narrators. An obvious case of parallel personified narration occurs in Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, where the different chapters have different narrators, named in the chapter titles.

Again, critical realism involves some contrast between an ideology, on the one hand, and the communicative/objective realism on the other. Parallel narration is obviously well suited to conveying this contrast. This is not to say that the ideology must be confined to one narrator, with the realism confined to the other narrator. This can, of course, happen and is the most obvious and straightforward use of parallel narration for critical realism. But even if the ideology and the realism are combined in the different narrative voices, parallel narration facilitates the establishment of contrasts that are crucial for critical realism.

One possible complication here is that it is very difficult to distinguish parallel non-personified narrators. Thus the use of parallel narration often involves the personification of one or both narrators. Joyce does this in the “Cyclops” episode where he gives us a first-person narration, distinct from any of the encompassing narrators we find elsewhere in the book.

However, another way of distinguishing parallel narrators is through style. Indeed, style is relevant to ideology and critical realism as well. Though no style has an intrinsic ideological orientation, there are some styles that have developed in such a way as to facilitate aggrandizement and other styles that have developed in such a way as to facilitate sentimentalism. This is bound up with the fact that style affects construal. Certain styles can bear on just how we construe, say, sexual desire. Unsurprisingly, styles of aggrandizement are often associated with nationalism whereas styles of sentimentalism are often associated with romantic love, thus sexuality.

In “Cyclops,” Joyce carefully distinguishes two separate narrations.5 In other words, he expands the spatial parallelism of “Wandering Rocks” and the psychological parallelism of “Sirens” to a parallelism of narrational voices. He also keeps to his usual meta-principle of easing the reader into the technical innovation by making the parallelism clear through both personification and style. Specifically, he presents one, non-personified voice in the aggrandizing, epic style, as well as some related styles from newspaper reporting and elsewhere.6 This is contrasted with the colloquial and conversational style of the first-person narration. The critical realism of the episode is largely associated with the personified narration. This is in some ways the more formally realistic part as well. However, the alignment of formal and substantive realism here is not complete. For example, newspaper reporting style—a type of formal realism—enters into the parodic or apparently unrealistic narration. Conversely, the substantively realistic part is connected with personal testimony rather than the apparent “voice of truth” typically identified with non-personified narration (Margolin 423). In these ways, Joyce’s treatment of ideology and critical realism involves complex and partially unexpected relations to style and narration.

In “Nausicaa,” there are further complications. We have two nonpersonified narrators. One embeds Gerty’s thoughts in free indirect discourse. At the same time, it involves an obtrusive stylization drawn from romance novels. The suggestion is that the stylization represents the manner in which Gerty thinks about the events around her. Thus we have a case of what might be called narrational mimesis, the narrator’s imitation of the target character’s manner of thought. This Gerty-focalized narrator is contrasted with the more ordinary non-personified narrator who embeds Bloom’s interior monologue. Here, the distance between the parallel narrations is not as great as in “Cyclops.” In the earlier episode, the ideological passages often greatly and overtly misrepresent the actual situation. In “Nausicaa,” however, the Gerty section generally reconstrues shame-provoking sexuality, rendering it covert, but not entirely denied. Put differently, it would be possible to reconstruct most of the critical realistic points of the scene with only minimal information from the Bloom section. Here, too, critical realism is more associated with the formally realistic part (i.e., the Bloom section). However, that critical realism is distributed across both parts to a greater extent than may at first be obvious. (By “Circe,” the critical realism will be associated primarily with the less formally realistic, fantasy passages.)

“Cyclops”

As already noted, this episode comprises interleaved parallel narrations. Half of these treat the events in Barney Kiernan’s pub in a more or less formally realistic manner through first-person narration. The other half present parodies in the non-personified (third-person) narration. The parodies largely focus on nationalist rhetoric—“the various forms of Irish propaganda,” as Lawrence aptly put it, propaganda that utilizes “language that romanticizes and simplifies the Irish past and present” (103; see also Kenner, Dublin’s 255).

As elsewhere in Ulysses, Joyce prepares us for these parodies, most obviously through the “Aeolus” episode. In that episode, the strange captions, often in the style of titles, suggest the possibility of a more extended, parodic critique of news reporting. More significantly, “Aeolus” includes an example of hyperbolic political rhetoric in Dan Dawson’s speech. This speech prepares the reader for the hyperbolic rhetoric of the political parodies in “Cyclops.” Moreover, it gives the reader a point of reference, a way of identifying the likely targets of these parodies. Indeed, there are already hints of parody in “Aeolus” itself. We see this, for example, when Dawson’s celebration of Ireland’s “overarching leafage”—that is, trees—is cut down to size by Ned Lambert’s revision of it to “overarsing leafage.”

Further preparation comes at the end of “Sirens.” That episode concludes with Bloom’s expulsion of wind directly paralleling Robert Emmet’s last words. Emmet was a nationalist martyr, and his final words have become a rallying cry for subsequent generations of patriots. The suggestion of paralleling the expulsion of flatus with the call for an Irish nation suggests rather obviously that the latter itself is just so much gas.

Finally, the reader is given an example of actual parody in “Cyclops”— Arthur Griffith’s fake news story about a visiting African delegation. In this case, the target of the parody is British colonial nationalism, not Irish anticolonial nationalism. But we see the same aggrandizing distortion. The Citizen explains that there is a story about a “Zulu chief that’s visiting England,” thus locating the ruler in southern Africa. The article goes on to say that the ruler—the “Alaki”—is from “Abeakuta,” thus modern Nigeria. A complication of this parody is that it is difficult to tell just how the criticism operates. It could be that Joyce’s simulated Griffith is unaware of the difference between Zulu and Egba, the thousands of miles distance, and so on. He may also be unaware that “Massa” is more associated with American slave speech than the speech of African rulers, that “squaw” is a Native American term, and so on. In other words, the profound cultural ignorance manifest in the piece may be Griffith’s. Alternatively, Joyce may be presenting Griffith as parodying the cultural ignorance of the British reporters who write such stories. In any case, the parody certainly presents British newspapers as mis-representing relations with colonial regions.

In connection with these points, it is perhaps worth noting that a 1904 article in the Journal of the Royal African Society, “Lagos, Abeokuta and the Alake,” begins with the sentence, “The Territory of Lagos, including the Colony proper and the Protectorate connected with it, is nearly of the same area as Ireland” (MacGregor 464). The article goes on to stress the Yoruba desire for home rule, extending the parallel with Ireland—implicitly, but more significantly. One striking feature of the article is that it treats Africans— specifically, the Yoruba of this region—very respectfully. In contrast, Griffith’s article in some ways seems to satirize African customs more harshly than British colonial practices. In that way, Joyce may be using the Griffith parody to criticize both British colonialism and Irish nationalist scapegoating. If so, it is more a target than an illustration of Joyce’s critical realism.

The episode as a whole begins with the first-person narrator running into Joe Hynes and explaining that he has been working for Moses Herzog, whose Jewishness is immediately identified by the (potentially disgust-provoking) characterization, “Circumcised.” The narrator and Hynes go on to discuss a legal problem faced by Herzog, bearing on a client’s refusal to pay. It is not entirely clear from the discussion just who is justified. The first insertion of the second (non-personified) narrator indicates that Herzog should indeed be paid. The point is in keeping with some then-contemporary events. As Beja explains, in 1904, a Limerick priest “accused Jews of violence against Christians” and told “gentiles that they need not honour debts to Jews.” This and an associated boycott “led to the financial ruin and emigration of about half the small Jewish community in Limerick” (58). For our purposes, it is important that this first insert from the second narrator is different from the others. It is in the style of a legal document and at least appears to indicate that Herzog is in the right. This is more in keeping with what one might expect from non-personified narration—a “voice of truth” placed in opposition to a fallible first-person account. Again, this is not generally the case in the rest of the episode. It may, however, bear on the final insertion (the organizational counterpart of this first insertion), which initially seems to be true as well, though metaphorically rather than literally. The connection is particularly significant as both inserts may serve as correctives to the anti-Semitism of the characters in the main story.

The parodic quality of the non-personified narrator appears in the subsequent insert. Hynes and the personified narrator decide to go to a pub to drink and talk about foot and mouth disease. The non-personified narrator then describes their rather banal trip in glorious terms, managing to bring in the entire landscape of Ireland, which is all wondrous beauty and plenty. The parody is not entirely fabricated. It is based on aspects of the natural features of Ireland. However, it exaggerates these. For example, the Shannon river makes an appearance, though Hynes and the narrator are nowhere in its vicinity. It is characterized as “Lordly” and “unfathomable.” It is the longest river in Ireland and thus might perhaps be termed “Lordly.” But it is hardly unfathomable. More significantly, the insert stresses the great fecundity of the land, its wealth of produce, meat, and fish. In various episodes of the novel, readers have seen that many people in Ireland (e.g., Stephen’s siblings) are actually hungry. The mythic aggrandizement of Ireland, with its emphasis on natural bounty, occludes this hunger. Of course, this does not mean the parody is entirely irrelevant to our understanding of the real situation in Ireland. The stress on plenty suggests that the problem of hunger is economic rather than agricultural.

The narrator and Hynes arrive at the pub and meet the Citizen. The third insert makes the function of the parodies more obvious. It characterizes the nationalist Citizen as a great mythological hero. As we learn in the course of the episode, the Citizen is little more than a cantankerous, opinionated drunk, who cadges drinks and spews out hatred of practices and people that do not fit his idea of Ireland—including Jews. The suggestion of the parody is that the nationalist movement is ideologically imagined as a revival of the great epic heroes fighting against their English foes. But the reality is very different. Specifically, the aggrandizement suggests great activity, purity, sincerity, and other qualities of the nationalist—all of which are rather obviously lacking in the Citizen.

In its list of great heroes, the passage also parodies the tendency of nationalist movements to associate all values with the home culture. For example, the list includes “Patrick W. Shakespeare.” Additionally, the insert takes up the common nationalist idea that the nation is eternal and Edenic by including “Adam and Eve” among the “Irish heroes and heroines of antiquity.”

Two very brief parodies follow. However, they are very effective in critiquing the aggrandizing style of some nationalist rhetoric. The first concerns Denis Breen, a man who is psychologically disturbed and who has caused his wife, Josie, considerable distress (“the poor woman”). There is a suggestion that he has some illness that has caused swelling of his skull (“Look at his head. Do you know that some mornings he has to get his hat on with a shoehorn”). This and symptoms of mental illness are concealed by the elevating, epical style that celebrates all things Irish as grand. The non-personified narrator explains that “there passed an elder of noble gait and countenance, bearing the sacred scrolls of law and with him his lady wife a dame of peerless lineage, fairest of her race.” The same event is subsequently explained by the nameless first-person narrator as follows: “what was it only that bloody old pantaloon Denis Breen in his bathslippers with two bloody big books tucked under his oxter and the wife hotfoot after him, unfortunate wretched woman, trotting like a poodle.”

Another instance concerns alcoholism, a recurring problem in Ireland. Bob Doran is “snoring drunk blind to the world,” on “one of his periodical bends.” He wakes up, inquiring about the discussion from his intoxicated haze. At this moment, the aggrandizing narration enters, praising the “nectarous beverage” drawn from “divine alevats” and brewed with the aid of “the sacred fire.” The contrast between the reality of alcoholism and the epic celebration of the divine intoxicant is too obvious to require commentary.

Subsequent parodies cover a range of topics relevant to Irish nationalism. The next treats theosophy, most famously associated with W. B. Yeats and George Russell (AE). This involves a séance that putatively contacts the departed spirit of Paddy Dignam. In addition to suggesting a lack of discernment on the part of Irish Renaissance leaders, this practice may occlude the animal reality of death as well. That reality has already been stressed, as when, at the cemetery after Dignam’s burial, Bloom spies an “obese grey rat” that he imagines feeding off the corpses (6.980–6.981).

This concealing of death is extended with the introduction of the executioner’s letters. H. Rumbold, the master barber, indicates that, for the state, an execution is a technical matter, reducible to such details as securing the noose to prevent escape. The ideological obfuscation of death culminates in the aggrandizement of the nationalist “hero martyr.” Bloom and the Citizen have been debating “about all the fellows that were hanged, drawn and transported for the cause [of Irish freedom] by drumhead courtmartial.” The following, lengthy insert takes up one of the most common tasks of nationalist propaganda. Such propaganda sets out to transform the sordid and miserable death produced by an execution into a glorious self-sacrifice. Since these are historical events, the style shifts from mythic (or mystico-philosophical, in the Theosophy section) to that of news reporting. Here we are faced with a style that has many aspects of formal realism. However, the entire point here is, of course, that it is entirely unrealistic. The pseudo-news report presents the hero martyr’s death as taking place before a huge, appreciative crowd, and it portrays the hero martyr as filled with unwavering bravery. The event is characterized as a “last farewell” and as “affecting in the extreme.” In keeping with the conjunction of (political) hero with (religious) martyr, the nationalist’s execution is tacitly judged and condemned by “the angry heavens.” The bearing of the hero martyr recalls much of the nationalist propaganda that has been presented literally in earlier episodes, prominently including the song of the Croppy Boy and Robert Emmet’s last words, both from “Sirens.”

The insert culminates with a turn to allegory, as the hero martyr’s beloved “Sheila” (or Ireland) weeps for his loss. Since the hero martyr cannot marry his beloved, it appears that she will be left miserable, alone, and disconsolate. But no! In a “most romantic incident,” she is courted by a “young Oxford graduate.” Their engagement brings tears to the eyes of even the most hardened imperialists. This part of the insert may seem baffling at first. But its point becomes clear as soon as we recall that we have a young Oxford graduate who has taken up the role of Ireland’s redeemer in the very unheroic figure of Haines.7 In effect, the ridiculous miscommunication of Haines and the old milkwoman has been allegorized into the salvation of a rejuvenated Ireland by the anthropological interests of liberal English colonialists.

The next insert takes us to literature. The Citizen is interacting with the dog Garryowen, talking to him as if he were human. In relation to this, the parodic narrator discusses the supposed discovery of Irish dog poetry. The point is presumably twofold. First, this further satirizes the Citizen, who treats Garryowen as a person, but fails to treat Bloom similarly. More importantly, it takes up two aspects of the Irish literary revival, the nationalist affirmation of Irish literary tradition. The first aspect is that literary nationalism tends to celebrate a work based on its national origin rather than its aesthetic qualities. Here, the point of the parody is roughly that nationalists would take even the growling of a dog to be “infinitely more complicated” than the verse of national competitors—so long as the dog was Irish. Indeed, I suspect there is a concealed pun here to the effect that nationalists will celebrate even dog growls/doggerels if they are Irish.

The second aspect of the parody concerns the colonialist attitude bound up with this aggrandizement. The parody begins by referring to those “interested in the spread of human culture among the lower animals.” The “lower animals” stand in part for the Irish generally, as they are viewed in colonialist ideology. The spread of human culture recalls the spread of English culture. The liberal colonialist appreciation of Irish cultural achievements then becomes a patronizing equivalent of humans appreciating the achievements of dogs. The idea takes up the ending of the preceding parody, where the noble young Oxford graduate rescues damsel Ireland. Indeed, this parody makes direct reference to Douglas Hyde’s Love Songs of Connaught, which we have already learned are a particular interest of Haines’s.

As these references to colonialism suggest, not all the parodies in the episode are antinationalist. Some are anticolonialist. Though limited in number and extent, the anticolonialist inserts are in some ways harsher than the parodies of anticolonial nationalism. For instance, after the introduction of Rumbold, the barber/executioner, the non-personified narrator comments, “In the dark land they bide, the vengeful knights of the razor.” Though aggrandizing in the manner of Arthurian or other legends, the passage also associates the executioners with revenge rather than justice and characterizes England as “the dark land,” suggesting the absence of enlightenment, despite (or perhaps because of) the following association of the executions with God’s will. Subsequently, an insert characterizes the British navy as “believ[ing] in rod, the scourger almighty, creator of hell upon earth.” The obvious implication is that they invoke “God the almighty, creator of heaven and earth,” but in fact are committed only to cruelty. In short, though the episode focuses on a critical realist response to Irish nationalist ideology, it does not ignore British colonialism.

Clearly, we cannot go through the entire episode in this detail. However, it is important to consider the culmination of the episode in nationalist anti-Semitism. The first thing to note is the great irony of the situation. Bloom’s credentials as an Irishman are questioned by a group of collaborationists who work for the British government and a group of drunks who, to all appearances, do nothing at all for the advancement of Ireland beyond mouthing slogans while cadging drinks and fulfilling anti-Irish stereotypes. Bloom, in contrast, risked arrest in protesting British South Africa policy and may have been involved in the development of some aspects of Arthur Griffith’s Sinn Féin (see 12.1635–12.1637).

In keeping with the preceding episodes, nationalist fervor is linked with anti-Semitism and with misogyny. For example, the group is speaking about Reuben J. Dodd, whom they all believe to be Jewish. Taking up a common stereotype of Jewish uncleanliness, the Citizen says, “Those are nice things … coming over here to Ireland filling the country with bugs.” (It is important to recall what we know about the bathing practices of our main characters. The Jewish Bloom takes a bath that day, whereas the more evidently Irish Stephen hasn’t bathed in eight months [17.238–17.239].) Immediately after this expression of anti-Semitic xenophobia, the Citizen turns to women blaming. He explains that an “adulteress … brought the Saxon robbers here,” going on to assert that “A dishonoured wife … that’s what’s the cause of all our misfortunes.” As history, the point is obviously ludicrous. It is simply a misogynistic use of myth and legend—just the sort of thing we would expect from the nature of shame and its relation to scapegoating. The tendency goes along with a rigid attitude toward gender roles, specifically what might be called “reactionary masculinity,” a profound rejection of putatively “feminine” traits, a rejection deriving largely from shame.8 We see this, for example, when Ned Lambert tells how Bloom was buying food for his unborn child and the Citizen objects to this as unmanly behavior (12.1654).

Bloom tries to ignore the taunts of the Citizen in order to avoid confrontation. Eventually, however, he responds. Most of the interaction is straightforward and does not require commentary. However, there are a few points worth noting in conclusion. First, Bloom identifies Jesus as a Jew. This leads the Citizen to exclaim, “By Jesus … I’ll brain that bloody jewman for using the holy name. By Jesus I’ll crucify him.” The irony here is relatively self-evident—the Citizen himself “uses the holy name” when condemning Bloom. The point is parallel to what happens subsequently with Stephen and the British soldier. The soldier explains his assault on Stephen by exclaiming, “I’ll wring the neck of any fucker says a word against my fucking king.” Clearly, the soldier in effect says a word against his king in the process. In both cases, the point is not simply to reveal hypocrisy. It is, I take it, to suggest that the invocation of the “two masters” (as Stephen calls them) is regularly a matter of rationalizing violence.

The other interesting aspect of the Citizen’s expression is that he implicitly analogizes Bloom himself to Jesus by saying that he will “crucify” Bloom. This is a sort of tacit mythologization of Bloom that many readers are likely to wish to accept. Sympathizing with Bloom’s plight, humane readers are likely to see Bloom bathed in an almost divine light as a sort of hero martyr, bravely facing a dangerous foe. This is taken up in the final parody of the episode. Bloom is now assimilated to Elijah, and the car where he stands is assimilated to a chariot ascending into heaven. Drawing on Judeo-Christian rather than Irish mythology, the episode in many ways parallels the hero martyr insert. However, for the most part, it is not clearly parodic. Rather, it seems initially to be metaphorically true, thus a sort of counterpart to the opening insert, which suggested the innocence of Moses Herzog. However, Joyce wishes to critique any sort of romanticization, not only the romanticization of characters we dislike. Thus he ends the episode with a sharp deflation, explaining the “ben Bloom Elijah” is “ascend[ing] to the glory of the brightness … like a shot off a shovel.” We do and should admire Bloom in this episode, while rejecting the Citizen. Nonetheless, in the end Bloom is no more Elijah than the Citizen is a great Irish hero or the dog Garryowen is a poet.

Before going on to “Nausicaa,” it is important to remark briefly on the two preceding parodic inserts. The first of these involves the concealment of everything unpleasant in the events. It presents anti-Semitism and violence as a “ceremony … characterised by the most affecting cordiality.” This is what we would expect from romanticization. Moreover, this concealment of sordid reality is what will be emphasized in “Nausicaa,” for which this insert prepares us. The penultimate insert, however, is very different. It actually transforms the small and largely inconsequential squabble into a natural disaster of vast consequence (“The catastrophe was terrific” with many deaths). This is an important aspect of nationalist ideology. That ideology not only divinizes the nation and its “heroes,” fabricating glory to conceal misery and suffering. It may also exaggerate small hurts into terrible disasters—as long as these exaggerations continue to serve the function of avoiding shame. In short, nationalist ideology is not only epical, but also melodramatic. Joyce opposes both with his critical realism.

“Nausicaa”

“Nausicaa” extends the systematic realist critique of romanticization found in “Cyclops.” However, in this case, rather than the politics and ideology of government and nationhood, we have sexual politics and ideology. Whereas the former were largely a male preserve in 1904, the latter involved women and men in equal measure. Indeed, given the largely patriarchal organization of the society of Ulysses, we would expect the romanticizing ideology of love to bear more fully on women, since they bore the costs of sexual ideology and constraint disproportionately (through misogyny, unwanted pregnancy, lack of employment opportunities encouraging prostitution, and so on).

As in “Cyclops,” Joyce develops his critical realism here through parallel narration. Unsurprisingly, the style of the romanticized section is not that of myth, news, or other forms of nationalist discourse. Rather, the style is that of popular romantic novels. The point is so widely discussed in the literature on Ulysses that it is unnecessary to go through the style in detail. However, it is important to consider a few points.

First, as already noted, the Gerty sections are in third person with a great deal of free indirect discourse. Sections that are not in free indirect discourse appear to involve narrational mimesis.9 In other words, the narration seems to mimic the inner speech and thought processes of Gerty even when it is not specifically reporting her inner speech or even thought. In contrast, the Bloom sections are in what we might call the “standard” narrator’s voice or idiom, interspersed with interior monologue in the manner familiar from the first half of the book.

Martha Nussbaum has argued that there is a sort of dialectic in the reader’s understanding of this episode. First we see Gerty as “deluded” and Bloom as “realistic” (695). It is not clear that this is the right way to phrase the opposition. Both Bloom and Gerty make mistakes. The key point is that Gerty’s entire imagination and understanding involve a tendency to romanticize, to conceal the sordid quality of some events and experiences. Rather than saying that Gerty is deluded and Bloom realistic, we might rather say that Gerty’s thoughts and construals systematically misrepresent reality and that we can recognize this in part because we have access to the Bloom section. For example, Gerty thinks of the gentleman (Bloom) as having great “selfcontrol” when Cissy Caffrey approaches to ask him the time. Because we have access to the Bloom section, we know that Bloom has been masturbating. The behavior that Gerty identifies as self-control is simply a matter of trying to conceal what he has been doing as Cissy approaches. In some cases, her misapprehensions are comic, as when she imagines the aroused and masturbating Bloom as “a man of inflexible honour to his fingertips.”

Similarly, Gerty’s imagination of Cissy and Edy construes them as innocent but mildly mischievous—so tame that they consider it quite daring to allude to the word “bottom” by half spelling (“On the beeoteetom”). Gerty finds it highly “unladylike” to say a “thing like that out loud.” Later, Cissy lets out the exclamation, “O my! Puddeny pie!” But in “Circe,” we find Cissy dating a British soldier and even identifying herself as a “whore” (though the latter may be merely a fantasy). None of this requires that we think of Bloom as realistic in opposition to Gerty. The key point is simply that the Bloom sections allow us to understand the romanticization; the critical realism of the work is enabled by the parallel narration.

In any case, Nussbaum goes on to say that “deluded” Gerty versus “realistic” Bloom is overly simple. This is certainly correct. But it is not clear that it is correct for the reasons Nussbaum mentions. First, Nussbaum points out that “Gerty’s fantasies are not hers alone. They are broadly disseminated in her (and our) society” (695). This is extremely important. But that does not rescue the fantasies from critique. Rather, it is precisely why Joyce engages in the critique. The point of “Cyclops” is not that the Citizen has strange, idiosyncratic beliefs that no one else shares. The point of critical realism in that episode is to expose the deleterious consequences of a broadly influential, romanticizing nationalist ideology. Similarly, in “Nausicaa,” it would hardly make sense for Joyce to critique views that were simply peculiar to one fictional character. The point of the critique is just that the views are general.

Nussbaum recognizes that this commonality could suggest a more thorough critique. However, she opts for another view, one that valorizes fantasy and calls on us “to acknowledge the omnipresence of fantasy in sexual life” (696). But this conclusion relies on an ambiguity in the word “fantasy.” On the one hand, there is fantasy in the sense of erotic imagination. That is omnipresent in sexual life. But that sense of “fantasy” is very different from fantasy as romanticization, the concealing of what is or is thought to be sordid, the false idealization of life.

This sort of concealment is what young Stephen objects to in A Portrait when he sees “the world about him” transformed into “a vision of squalor and insincerity” (313). In Stephen’s case, his father’s decline in fortune is not only hidden (however ineffectively) but also fostered by the insincerity— indeed, self-deception—that serves to conceal the truth, from Simon Dedalus himself more than from anyone else. We can imagine similar results in Gerty’s case—for example, in her dreamy longing for Reggie Wylie, a Protestant boy (Gerty is Catholic) who is five years her junior. Reggie is hardly a possible romantic prospect, and her fantasy of marriage with him seems likely to have little result beyond disappointment. In keeping with this, later in the episode, we find the sort of romantic melodrama we saw at the end of “Cyclops.” Simply because Reggie has not ridden his bicycle out that evening, Gerty laments, “She had loved him better than he knew. Lighthearted deceiver and fickle like all his sex he would never understand what he had meant to her and for an instant there was in the blue eyes a quick stinging of tears.” Of course, one could argue that this melodrama is as insincere as the romanticization elsewhere. But even so, Gerty herself briefly recognizes that “the years were slipping by for her” with no real hope of improvement in her life. It seems unlikely that daydreams of a high school boy on a bicycle will console her for much longer.

In any case, there is a far more significant point against Nussbaum’s conclusions. The very system of romantic idealizations that leads to Gerty’s distorted imagination of love and sexuality is also the system that has fostered debilitating shame. Specifically, Gerty seems to experience and to deny a great deal of shame over her (female) body. One rather alarming instance of this concerns “Her figure,” which “was slight … inclining even to fragility.” The disturbing aspect of this comes with a later hint. She cooked happily, but “she didn’t like the eating part when there were any people that made her shy.” She seems ashamed even to eat—a symptom sadly familiar today. Her figure is not her only concern. She worries over vaginal discharges (13.86), though discharges of some sort are normal. Shame over her body is intensified by “that one shortcoming” that “she always tried to conceal”—her leg. Note that she only barely admits this flaw, and even then does not name it, but considers it only obliquely, a mere “shortcoming.” In each case, her shame is inseparable from idealizing fantasy—a fleshless, odorless, flawless female body.

Gerty’s feelings of shame are often signaled by blushes. Indeed, she is plagued by blushing, so much so that her attention is drawn to the possibility of “blushing scientifically cured.” A key instance of this occurs in her memory of confession. Speaking of Father Conroy, she recalls how “He told her that time when she told him about that in confession, crimsoning up to the roots of her hair for fear he could see, not to be troubled because that was only the voice of nature … and that that was no sin because that came from the nature of woman instituted by God.” Gerty certainly feels shame for whatever she is confessing. It appears to be, first of all, menstruation. If so, the profound shame she feels for her own body is striking, since it includes even ordinary bodily functions. On the other hand, there is some indication that Gerty belongs to the class of women who find themselves particularly susceptible to sexual arousal during menstruation. (We will return to this connection in the following.) Thus the shame and the blushing in this case may be related to feelings of sexual desire.

Gerty’s shame and blushing more clearly suggest sexual arousal elsewhere. Specifically, when Gerty notices Bloom staring at her, she feels “the warm flush … surging and flaming into her cheeks.” This could simply be a sign of embarrassment, self-consciousness at being watched. But subsequently it becomes clear that Gerty has a tendency toward sexual exhibitionism. Given this, one might at least wonder if the flush is a response to her own arousal. This is further suggested by the comment that this flush was “a danger signal always with Gerty MacDowell.” It is clear that she does not fear this man, whose face is not threatening, but rather “the saddest she had ever seen.” The likely alternative, then, is that the danger is from her own feelings.

The point becomes clearer when Gerty or the narrator draws on the myth of the Fall to think about her interaction with Bloom. He is like “a snake,” and she has “raised the devil in him.” The scene of a devil-possessed snake and a young woman clearly alludes to the Garden of Eden and the seduction of Eve. It is important to recall that a prime result of that seduction was the feeling of shame. In connection with this, we are given a further suggestion of sexual arousal when told that “her breath caught as she caught the expression in his eyes.” Of course, the catch in the breath could be fear. But that seems contradicted by other aspects of her reaction—for example, the fact that Bloom’s look “set her tingling in every nerve.” Moreover, when Gerty’s “breath caught,” she “swung her buckled shoe faster,” perhaps suggesting a sort of masturbatory rhythm on her part as well as Bloom’s. Finally, Gerty’s recognition of Bloom’s arousal—partially concealed under the idiom of “rais[ing] the devil in him”—is the result of “Her woman’s instinct.” The phrase recalls Father Conroy’s explanation of “the nature of woman instituted by God,” but as such it also connects with the thoughts of Stephen, Fr. Conmee, and Molly about how sexual desires must have been given by God. Crucially, Gerty’s partial—and partially self-concealed— recognition of Bloom’s arousal gives rise to “a burning scarlet [that] swept from throat to brow.”

The most striking instance of blushing may be found toward the end of the Gerty section. Gerty has clearly come to understand just what Bloom is doing, though she skirts any direct statement, preserving decorum even in her internal verbal thought. She sees that “His hands and face were working”; as a result, “a tremour went over her.” She leans back to allow him to see her thighs and undergarments. There are hints that her perceptual imagination is more graphic than her verbal acknowledgment, for “she seemed to hear the panting” and the “hoarse breathing.” She allows herself to think about something “not very nice that you could imagine” some men do “sometimes in the bed” surrounded by “pictures cut out of papers of those skirtdancers and highkickers”—which is to say pictures of women raising their skirts to men’s view, just as Gerty is doing at this moment. (The thought has a degree of pathos since Gerty’s disability precisely prevents her from ever being any sort of dancer or kicker—a point stressed when she first fails to kick the ball that lands at her feet [13.358]). As she leans back further and further, “her face was suffused with a divine, an entrancing blush.”

The connections with her own sexual arousal are developed in this passage as well. Specifically, as just noted, Gerty is indirectly thinking about male masturbation. She then shifts to a highly elliptical meditation about female masturbation. Thus she shifts from Bloom’s arousal to thoughts of how there is “absolution so long as you didn’t do the other thing before being married”; in other words, one could confess the sin of masturbation and receive forgiveness as long as one did not have actual sexual relations. This sentence might seem to refer to Bloom, saying that he could receive absolution. But the completion of the sentence makes clear that Gerty has shifted to female masturbation. Thus she continues, “there ought to be women priests that would understand without your telling out.” Here, again, we see Gerty’s concern with decorum. She is, it seems, not so worried about masturbation itself as about having to say anything very explicit about it. It is as if her shame is a shame over words as much as or even more than it is a shame over deeds. She goes on to reflect that both Cissy Caffrey and Winny Rippingham had “that dreamy kind of dreamy look,” and she recalls how the latter is “so mad about actors’ photographs.” The actors’ photographs prized by Winny Rippingham parallel the snapshots of skirtdancers and highkickers mentioned a few lines earlier, thus further suggesting a parallel between Winny’s actions and those of the man surrounded by those photos. This indirectly connects Gerty with masturbation as well. Specifically, Gerty has linked Bloom with “Martin Harvey, the matinée idol,” for whom Winnie Rippingham was “stagestruck.” The passage shortly precedes Gerty’s admission that “she wanted him.”

Finally, this passage links Gerty’s sexual desire and arousal with her menstruation. Earlier, there was a suggestion of this when Gerty observed Bloom “put his hands … into his pockets.” At that moment “She felt a kind of sensation rushing all over her.” There is a hint that this is a feeling of sexual arousal. But Gerty immediately identifies it as the beginning of her period—“that thing must be coming on,” she reflects, connecting it with the recurring phase of the lunar cycle. The link with sexual arousal becomes more evident after her indirect considerations of female masturbation and the “dreamy look.” Specifically, she reflects that “it was on account of that other thing coming on the way it did.”

Yet, having said all this, it is important to acknowledge that Gerty’s romanticizing is far less harmful than that of the nationalists. Indeed, it may even allow Gerty some freedom from an otherwise debilitating shame. We noted at the outset that Gerty is distressed by Cissy’s inclination to say “unladylike” things “out loud.” Similarly, when she considers female arousal and (it seems) masturbation, she wants “women priests that would understand without your telling out.” There is a suggestion of hypocrisy in this. Moreover, that hypocrisy has social consequences. By refusing to acknowledge bodily normalcy (e.g., the fact that people have bottoms, to cite Cissy’s offensive word), Gerty’s decorousness may contribute to a social shaming of ordinary bodily processes and functions. Moreover, hypocrisy of this sort tends to promote double standards and destructive practices, at least among people who have more social authority than Gerty. On the other hand, given her apparently high level of “trait shame” (i.e., the high degree to which she is prone to experience shame), some romanticization is likely necessary for her even to feel sexual arousal. Put simply, perhaps she can feel sexual arousal only if she does not overtly admit that she is feeling it. That does not make such denial good. But it is a mitigating factor. Indeed, one could go so far as to say that, given her upbringing and social circumstances, there is a certain degree of bravery in Gerty allowing herself to accept her own bodily desires even this much.

The ending of the Gerty section is equivocal. On the one hand, it culminates in a “blush.” On the other hand, the narrator tells us that “she wasn’t ashamed.”10 Moreover, on the one hand, she clearly does not engage in literal masturbation. On the other hand, there is a suggestion that she and Bloom both experience orgasm. Specifically, watching the bursting fireworks (an obvious representation of Bloom’s ejaculation), she repeatedly sighs “O!,” apparently feeling “O so lovely, O, soft, sweet, soft!” This is a peculiar response to fireworks. “Lovely” makes sense, but “soft” and “sweet” seem more appropriate to orgasm. Moreover, the entire section, including the sequence of “O! … O! … O! O! … O … O” is introduced by reference to “the cry of a young girl’s love, a little strangled cry, wrung from her, that cry that has rung through the ages,” which certainly seems to suggest a cry of specifically physical love. This culmination suggests that Nussbaum is to some extent right. Romanticizing appears to enable Gerty’s sexuality, and not merely to repress or distort it. On the other hand, it is the larger ideology of shame over sexuality and ordinary bodily functions that produces this need for romanticization—and that romanticization in turn helps sustain the ideology.

These last points return us to the question of just what social institutions and practices are most responsible for producing sexual shame in the first place. As already noted, the likely candidate is the Catholic Church. This is certainly suggested by Joyce’s representation of Stephen’s shame in A Portrait, particularly following the retreat. This is also suggested by Stephen’s statement about having two masters. The shame of group identity has an obvious relation to colonialism, as do the romanticizing practices of anti-colonial nationalism. That is made clear in “Cyclops.” This would seem to leave us with the Catholic Church as the source of the parallel sexual shame and romanticization treated in “Nausicaa.”

However, “Nausicaa” does not give us much reason to blame sexual shame on Catholicism. Most obviously, Father Conroy is perfectly sensible on the normalcy of Gerty’s bodily functions and only says things that should assuage rather than provoke shame. Moreover, Bloom immediately feels shame after masturbating (“What a brute he had been!”) and engages in the same sort of romanticization (“A fair unsullied soul had called to him and, wretch that he was, how had he answered?”). Though he converted to Catholicism, it is clear that Bloom’s thought has hardly been affected by Catholic teaching. Thus his shame and romanticization at least require a different explanation. Nor would a focus on Catholicism explain Molly who, though raised as a Catholic, seems largely free of shame.

Perhaps the obvious place to look for the association of shame and Catholicism is in devotion to Mary, the “Blessed Virgin.” It is a commonplace of ordinary discourse that the doctrine of the “immaculate conception” teaches all Catholics that sex is sin. But there are several problems with this idea. First, as just noted, it does not explain Bloom (who is so confused about Mary that he imagines of Catholics, “God they believe she is: or goddess”). Second, and more significantly, it misunderstands the doctrine of the immaculate conception. The immaculate conception is the conception of Mary herself without the stain of original sin. That freedom from original sin is what renders her suitable to be the mother of the savior. Moreover, though she was conceived immaculate, she was conceived through sexual relations between her parents. Her immaculate quality is not due to the absence of sex (see, for example, Holweck). The doctrine of the virgin birth says simply that God impregnated Mary without the contingencies of sexual relations. It was a direct and fully free relation between Mary and God. It says nothing about sexual relations in themselves. In addition, the Blessed Virgin does not seem to have a censorious and repressive function in Joyce’s work generally. In A Portrait, Stephen’s scrupulosity of conscience finds only relief in the compassion of Mary: “her holiness, a strange light glowing faintly upon her frail flesh, did not humiliate the sinner who approached her” (357).

Finally, and most importantly, a condemnation of devotion to Mary does not seem to fit this passage in Ulysses. There is a service in the nearby church invoking “holy Mary, holy virgin of virgins.” But the ceremony is part of a “men’s temperance retreat.” Thus it is part of an attempt to end the drunkenness that, in Gerty’s experience, gives rise to “deeds of violence” against women, prominently Gerty’s mother and perhaps Gerty herself. Thus the Catholic devotion to Mary is being used here to help protect women from male violence, which is hardly despicable. Moreover, Father Conroy’s consoling words about the natural operation of a woman’s body make direct reference to “Our Blessed Lady herself” and even to the virgin birth. Father Conroy presents Mary’s acceptance of God’s will as an exemplar for the acceptance of God’s will in precisely not feeling shame over our natural bodily functions. Finally, in keeping with this, Gerty seems to use devotion to Mary as a model for thinking about Bloom’s sexual attentions. Thus she sees him as “worshipping at her shrine.” Later, her final blush, shortly before the culminating orgasm, is not demonic, not associated with Eve and the serpent, but “divine.” Indeed, as Rose Murphy pointed out to me, if Mary is free from Original Sin and Original Sin is the origin of bodily shame, then Mary should be free from bodily shame. In this way, Gerty’s self-exposure (her “wondrous revealment,” which sounds like an apparition of the Blessed Virgin herself) is theologically in keeping with an identification between her and Mary. Of course, despite Father Conroy, these are not the ordinary uses to which Mary is put in popular Catholicism (e.g., one imagines that parents invoke the Blessed Virgin more often to enforce chastity in their daughters than freedom from debilitating shame). But the theology and associated characterization of Mary allow these effects, even if they are not strictly orthodox.

Thus the episode suggests that the most obvious account of sexual shame, the one apparently implied elsewhere in the book, may be mistaken. We are, then, left with the question of just what the source of sexual shame might be. Perhaps the key is to be found in the link between sexual shame and misogyny. But this does not solve the problem, since it is not entirely clear just what this link is. Whereas misogyny may have effects on sexual shame, one plausible account of misogyny itself is as a scapegoating response to sexual shame. This returns us to the idea that shame is fundamentally a form of social disgust that is fostered and rationalized by moral norms. Clearly, Catholicism can and does contribute to such moralism. On the other hand, the basic problem is moralism itself, not Catholicism. Here, once again, Joyce seems to be suggesting that we need to go beyond good and evil, with their pseudo-justifications of shame and consequent scapegoating.