Ulysses

1. Ulysses James Joyce 1882-1941

2. Published in Paris in 1922 by Silvia Beach, the owner of Shakespeare & Company

3. Overview • Ulysses is set in Dublin, and the events unfold over 24 hours, beginning on the morning of Thursday, 16th June 1904. • The work has 18 chapters which correspond, often approximately and strangely, to episodes in Homer’s The Odyssey.

4. Homeric Parallels • One of the most important heroes of the Trojan War, Odysseus was presented in the two Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey as the cleverest of all the Greek heroes. • The Greeks won the war in Troy, but it took Odysseus another 10 years to return home. His adventures were many and most of them were caused by the anger of the God of the seas Poseidon who revenged him for blinding his son, the Cyclop Polyphemus.

5. Penelope/Molly • While Odysseus has been away, Penelope has been weaving a shroud for Laertes, Odysseus' father. She had stated that when she had finished she would choose between the suitors. By night, however, she undid what she had woven during the day. In book 23 of The Odyssey Penelope is awakened and informed of her husband’s return and the slaughter by her nurse Euryclea. When she meets him she refuses to believe that it is he, and proceeds to 'test' him. What finally convinces her of his identity is his knowledge of the secret of the construction and immovability of their bed, to which they then retire, "mingled in love again".

6. The “Molly Monologue” • The final episode of Ulysses takes place in the early hours of Friday, June 17, and takes the form of a monologue uttered by Molly Bloom. • The structure of the episode is intensely stream-of-consciousness, lacking punctuation and traditional sentence structure. • We're taken inside the consciousness of Molly, and to do so is "to plunge into a flowing river. If we have hitherto been exploring the waste land, here are the refreshing, life-giving waters that alone can renew it“.

7. Chapter Content • The episode begins with the word "Yes," which resonates throughout Molly's soliloquy and ends the episode as well in a stream of affirmation of life and human love. • The entire episode takes place in bed, except for a succession of moments upon the chamber-pot as Molly attends to her menstrual needs and urinates (thereby continuing the theme of herself as symbolic of the female "stream" working for renewal and regeneration of life). • Leopold has asked Molly to bring him his breakfast in bed the following morning, and this leads to a series of reflections and reminiscences concerning him. • She surmises that he must have ejaculated somewhere: "Im sure by his appetite anyway love its not or hed be off his feed thinking of her".

8. Content (continued) • Molly Bloom lies in bed, thinking about her husband, her meeting with Boylan, her past, her hopes... Among myriad other things, she suspects Bloom of having an affair, she thinks of woman's lot in the games of courting and mating, she remembers a clap of thunder (perhaps the one that disturbed Stephen and Bloom explained away in OXEN OF THE SUN), she thinks of her lovers, and longs for a glamorous life. She thinks of beauty and ugliness, and her thoughts are interrupted by a train whistle. She thinks of her past life in Gibraltar and laments the drabness of her present. She thinks about her health and her daughter, and she is interrupted again, this time by the onset of menstruation. She thinks about her visits to the doctor, and muses about Stephen. Her thoughts turn to Rudy and Bloom. She thinks of humiliating her husband, a clock strikes, and she recalls the time on Ben Howth when she and Bloom first made love.

9. James Joyce from Ulysses ... a quarter after what an unearthly hour I suppose theyre just getting up in China now combing out their pigtails for the day well soon have the nuns ringing the angelus theyve nobody coming in to spoil their sleep except an odd priest or two for his night office the alarmclock next door at cockshout clattering the brains out of itself let me see if I can doze off 1 2 3 4 5 what kind of flowersare those they invented like the stars the wallpaper in Lombard Street was much nicer the apron he gave me was like that something only I only wore it twice better lower this lamp and try again so as I can get up early Ill go to Lambes there beside Findlaters and get them to send us some flowersto put about the place in case he brings him home tomorrow today I mean no Fridays an unlucky day first I want to do the place up someway the dust grows in it I think while Im asleep then we can have music and cigarettes I can accompany him first I must clean the keys of the piano with milk whatll I wear shall I wear a white roseor those fairy cakes in Liptons I love the smell of a rich big shop at 7 1/2d a lb or the other ones with the cherries in them and the pinky sugar 11d. a couple of lbs of course a nice plant for the middle of the table Id get that cheaper in wait wheres this I saw them not long ago I love flowers Id love to have the whole place swimming in roses God of heaven theres nothing like nature the wild mountains then the sea and the waves rushing then the beautiful country with fields of oats and all kinds of things and all the fine cattle going about that would do your heart good to see rivers and lakes and flowersall sorts of shapes and smells and colours springing up even out of the ditches primrosesand violetsnature it is as for them saying theres no God I wouldnt give a snap

10. of my two fingers for all their learning why dont they go and create something I often asked him atheists or whatever they call themselves of and wash the cobbles off themselves first then go howling for the priest and they dying and why why because theyre afraid of hell on account of their bad conscience ah yes I know them well who was the first person in the universe before there was anybody that made it all who ah that they dont know neither do I so there you are they might as well try to stop the sun from rising tomorrow the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendronson Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to propose to me yes first (I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yeshe said I was a flowerof the mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yesthat was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes) and I wouldnt answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didn't know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing round his white helmet poor devil half Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop andRonda and

11. the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and the windows of the posadas glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deep down torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometime like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yesand all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardenand the jessamineand geraniumsand cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yeswhen I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusia girls used or shall I wear a red yesand how he kisses me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flowerand first I put my arm around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yesand his heart was going like mad and yesI said yes I will Yes.

12. Meaning/Form • Molly tries to fall asleep. • As her mind continues to drift, she thinks of her love for flowers-- "Id love to have this whole place swimming in roses God of heaven theres nothing like nature“. • This begins the final rush of thoughts which involve her vivid recollection of her first sexual encounter with Leopold, of the passion and affirmation of it. • She recalls, "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 going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes". • Molly's final uttered affirmation--"yes I said yes I will Yes"--reasserts her essential love for Leopold, as well as her own engagement with the natural world, of the essence of creation. • Her stream of conscious reverie is analogous to the waters which wash Odysseus home to his own wife and bed.

13. Content/Form (continued) • The household symbol for Molly's monologue is the bed, which represents a Homeric parallel of homecoming as well as the theatre for human procreation, for restoration of life's creative forces through sexual intercourse. • Molly's voice is the essence of female creative energy, with its constant recurrent "Yeses" and its stream like structure as her inner discourse flows from one subject to another, with an emphasis on her love for Leopold and all its implications the point to which it consistently returns. • The soliloquy is full of images of nature, of mountains and flowers and rivers and seas. • She is the voice of Nature herself, and judges as the Great Mother, whose function is fertility.

14. Stream of Consciousness • Literary technique that records the continuous flow of multifarious thoughts and feelings of a character without regard to logical argument or narrative sequence. • The writer attempts by the stream of consciousness to reflect all the forces, external and internal, influencing the psychology of a character at a single moment. • The phrase “stream of consciousness” to indicate the flow of inner experience was first used by William James in Principles of Psychology (1890).