Part of me feels as if it is possible that James Joyce was one of the first people ever to synchronize the explosion of fireworks with male ejaculation so maybe it was a new concept. However reading this now when anyone writing or putting into a film, the explosions of fireworks to describe the climax of sex for a man would be called unimaginative, it seems sort of funny to me.
But onto something not so funny: public masturbation. What is not so funny about this is how we begin the section from a distance until we zoom into Gerty's head where we aware of Bloom, but she only slowly and without knowing him, begins to feel important in his eyes. Oddly enough I think that Gery is the granddaughter of the citizen from the cyclops episode. This sort of importance, the fact the they do not touch and barely look into each other's eyes makes this interaction, a physical one for Bloom, a completely non-physical process. It poses the question of where passion, desire, and arousal lay in the realm of human experience.
Gery is aroused by the idea of being something in this man's eyes that neither of her girlfriends are. More so she is turned on by the thought of him having been sinned against, or even having sinned, and her having the opportunity to play the virgin Mary as we see on 358 where she "just yearned to know all, to forgive all if she could make him fall in love with her, make him forget the memory the past." This right before the overheard mass asks the virgin mary "Ora Pro nobis. Well it has been said that whosoever prays to her with faith and constancy can never be lost or cast away: and fitly she is too a haven of refuge for the afflicted..." Here Gerty makes Bloom's base act into one of pray, as if in his alienation from the culture around him his way of praying to a figure that portrays themselves and is portrayed as the virgin Mary is to masturbate.
Perhaps in someway this is in a way divine conception. The roman candle scene, right before Bloom is done, we hear the imagined taking of virginity, "to feel his lips laid on her white brow the cry of a young girl's love, a little strangled cry, wrung from her, that cry that has rung through the ages. And then a rocket sprang and bang shot blind and O! then the Roman candle burst and it was like a sigh of O!" (366-367) From here it is as if Gerty is showered in the seed of the candle or Bloom.
Directly after this we see Bloom's guilt at being a brute, and yet some of his most machismo thoughts. However, it all ties back into his thoughts on the stars and then animals and we see again the split between physicality and ideals which is exemplified in the action of the section and then elucidated upon by Bloom's extended inner monolgoue.
2 comments:
Another unfunny thing: total identification with religious figures. I think you're exactly right when you say Gerty fantasizes about being the Virgin Mary as the mass is taking place. I also think this is the ideal presented in the romance novels Joyce is borrowing from. It's ironic, because a romance novel is really just about sex (and the fantasy comes just as the "fireworks" are "exploding").
Gerty's affections could be seen as a pastiche of Catholic sentimentality and hypocrisy, especially in light of her sexuality which seems to be forced into her subconscious. As in an (old fashioned) romance novel, she thinks of sexuality without speaking of it directly. Catholicism, with its bizarre and sometimes erotic imagery, does the same.
Post a Comment