Disparate Thoughts on Sexuality and Image, to be Resolved Later

In my last post I wrote about Bloom’s discerning, almost feminine eye...

I guess that could come across as vague...

In class, we’ve briefly alluded to his obssession with sexuality, yet we haven’t discussed it thoroughly. It is a complex subject, as well as one that I don’t feel I have the life experience to really go into in depth--

However, I do know what it is to be a high school student obssessed with fashion.

Bloom reminds me of a high school student obssessed with fashion.

Perhaps the most striking example of this comes when he discourses with his ex-girlfriend. He manages to maintain a somewhat intelligent conversation with her, yet throughout it he finds hiumself occupied with the estimation of the number of years in which she has worn her dress.
And later, throughout the book, he assesses and evaluates the attire of the men and women he encounters...

I don’t want to make the assumpton that the reader assumes the visual is sexual, but I do think that this is a question I would like to explore.

Fashion showcases the body, and Bloom is aware of this.

Throughout the novel, he notices the details of attire:

“Blazes Boylan’s smart tan shoes creaked on the barfloor where he strode.”

“A hackney car, number three hundred and twentyfour, driver Barton James of number one Harmony avenue, Donnybrook, on which sat a faire, a young gentleman, stylishly dressed in an indigoblue serge suit made by George Robert Mesias, tailor and cutter, of number five Eden quay, and wearing a straw hat very dressy, bought of John Plasto of number one Great Brunswick street, hatter. Eh? This is the jingle that joggled and jingled.” 279

These are some examples of Bloom’s discerning eye that come to mind. He notices the cut of a dress, and the brand of a shoe; he notices the nuances of personal style that distinguish the women he evaluates-- the way they put themselves together.

His assessments are often read as misogynist by critics, but I think that this rings a bit hollow .

I think that, for Bloom, the image is sexual. I think that a certain aesthetic attracts him-- and I think that the look of his own wife repulses him; her weight is a point of contention with him.

“Got big then.”

He writes this in reminiscence of a concert that she missed because of her pregancy withg their son. I think that this observation is significant, in that it is singular; there is no parallel observation of a pre-natal weight gain that accompanied Milly’s birth, and so I think that this refers to a general weight gain that is unrelated to a pregnancy.

I think that Bloom’s attraction to his wife is predominantly physical, but not in a sexual way-- rather, I think that he is attached to her, but that she is more of a comfort to him than a provocation of sexual desire.

Fubsiness and Fashion in Dublin, 1904

Not too many people are fubsy anymore and if they are, it’s kind of a good thing-- implying education, a prominent artistic career in the seventies, or at least well-read vegetarianism. Windblown hair and natty wool coats have been replaced by t-shirts printed with the phrase “sexy girl” and yellow/black higlights among the truly badly dressed today.

But in Dublin in the 1920’s, fubsy conveyed something else. It conveyed poverty-- Stockings that sagged around the ankles were not a charming detail of the quirky girl in ninth grade English, but instead implied a tight budget, and a pot of porridge for too many siblings in the delapidated house with a dirty front porch floor. It conveyed an inability to maintain an appearance, and to function in the present, implied inadequacy and difficulty...

Fubsiness still exists throughout the Isles today. The frumpy girls in Belle & Sebastian lyrics come to mind, for examples.

What is fubsy? Yellowing Pendleton coats, excessive knitwear, stains, spots, tears, obvious darning, nattiness...

Bloom notices fubsiness throughout the novel. His eye for style is almost feminine in its discretion.

Scylla and Charybdis

This is a chapter about the better-read characters, who contrast with Bloom-- who is not like them, who thinks of his family, mostly, and whose most insightful reveries concern the stockings of girls and some disparate aspects of a concept from his high school physics class.

All of Stephen’s friends are eager to display their knowledge to one another, but their thoughts and theories are never realized in conversation. They speak in fits and starts, one upping eachother, but there is no realization to their ideas, the conversation doesn’t go anywhere .

The stream of consciousness in this chapter parallels their conversation. Stephen thinks of concepts from Shakespeare’s plays, but he doesn’t come to any conclusions.

Structure of a Meditation

Recently, my little sister went on a meditation retreat in Montreal. She meditated for ten days, stopping only to eat and sleep from four in the morning until sunrise. This afternoon, she called me and told me about her experiences.

She said that after awhile she began to see images. She told me that the images she saw first were of advertisements and icons of pop culture, then the images progressed to distortions of reality, and finally became pared down, sweet, and uncomplicated.

I couldn’t help but think of this novel, and began to wonder if Joyce was influenced by the experience of an intense meditation. In this chapter, there are many images of advertisements. The narratives of the next chapters will grow more complicated-- reality will be presented in a more complex way. And the book will end with a romantic scene of early romance.

In this chapter, we really see Bloom alone for the first time in the novel, with nothing to do. Earlier he had the distractions of tasks to accomplish. Here we see him looking out at the ocean-- an image often used by film directors to connote meditation on reality. In this contemplation of reality, and his thoughts, the progression of Bloom’s thoughts seem to parallel my sister’s.

Most importantly, Odysseus returns home from a war, and this could imply a meditation, or a sort of inward journey.

Tragic Hero

“When we say cliche, stereotype, trite pseudoelegant phrase, and so on, we imply, among other things, that when used for the first time in literature the phrase was original and had a vivid meaning. In fact, it became hackneyed because its meaning was at first vivid and neat, and attractive, and so the phrase was used over and over again until it became a stereotype, a cliche... Now what Joyce does here is to cause some of that dead and rotten stuff to reveal here and there its live source, its primary freshness” (Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, page 363).”

Nabokov thought this chapter was poorly balanced, but I like it for its quirkiness. I think of Joyce reading the paper and realizing that the headlines did not capture half of what really transpired in the stories its reporters attempted to cover, reductively. (I’d think Nabokov would appreciate it; he was an opponent to the language he termed “journalese.”) And I think of Bloom, going into work and silently observing the surreal nature of the mundane, represented by the headlines.

Leopold is an interesting guy whose attempts at form come across as false, and in this way he is a tragic hero. His pathos is apparent; the reader sympathizes-- we all struggle with feelings of isolation, but most of us mask it better than he does.

All of the characters in the book probably struggle with the same sense of alienation that Bloom does. So why then is Bloom so ostracized?

He is different; he is Jewish in a Catholic society. I think that when someone has some obvious and grand difference that could be perceived as a flaw by the bourgeoisie, such as ugliness or a strong difference in beliefs-- well, they tend to feel even more isolated-- almost bizarre or freakish-- and develop a heightened awareness of it, as well as a need to compensate for their difference. A certain vigilance will also be present in their demeanor. I struggle to explain the reasons for this with logic, but know that there may be a feeling of uncertainty that accompanies a pronounced quirk. And this uneasiness contributes to the reasons for their ostracizing.

Bloom is a hero because his perception glorifies the mundane, as said before. His sensuality is sort of a retreat into a sense of perfection. As he leaves Mr. Nannetti’s office, he takes a meditative stroll down the corridor, observing the actions of his coworkers with contemplative detachment. At one point, “He stayed in his walk to watch a typesetter neatly distributing type. Reads it backwards first. Quickly he does it. Must require some practice that. mangiD. kcirtaP. Poor papa with his hagadah book, reading backwards with his finger to me. Pessach. Next year in Jerusalem” (122).

This passage presents an interesting link between mechanism and spirituality. The image of a typesetter's work is juxtaposed with a remembered image of his father reading to him as a child, and the recollection of a traditional Jewish toast in the final part of the passage. It indicates the significance and holiness Leopold perceives in commonplace images.

Defense

I have a lot of homework this weekend, and so I won't be able to write very much today. I do want to say that I've changed my opinion on Leopold-- I feel that in one of my other postings I berated him for his self-satisfaction. After reading this chapter, I can better understand him. Perhaps his emphasis on sensation and dismissal of the emotionally provoking is a mechanism of comforting himself so that he is able to confront the constant hostility he faces with grace.

On Leopold's Posting

Leopold Bloom is not offended at the subtle remarks about his wife, as Stephen is when he is teased by Buck-- We learn that he knows of her infidelity, but he is not offended at that either; he rather takes it as an indication of her intellectual inferiority, seeking an affair with a more intelligent woman. It's intriguing, because Leopold is not an intellect-- he has a minor academic background, but it may have been acquired without any passion or interest, out of the bourgeois habit of acquiring enough education to find a job that does not entail labor. Yet he considers himself more intelligent than his wife, who does not have an academic background. Did Leopold post the listing in the paper out of a sense of inadequacy-- did he seek an intelligent companion with whom he could develop intellectually? Or was it out of self-satisfaction-- did he hope to find someone who might elevate his social status, someone whom he might consider superior to Molly? Leopold seems to be a self-satisfied character; he doesn't acknowledge the disrespect of the other characters-- perhaps he is not even aware of it. Confidence and pleasure seem to distinguish him, at this point in the novel-- I might argue the latter reason.