Rejecting the offer of some new pants, Stephen tells
Mulligan, "I can't wear them if they are grey." He is rigidly
upholding an outdated Victorian convention, no doubt because
of the terrible guilt that he feels about his mother's death.
Symbolically, his somber black clothes also make him a type of
Hamlet, rejecting his world's expectations of him.
Gifford notes that “In the mid-Victorian world, the period of
a son’s deep mourning for his mother (black suit, shoes,
socks, and tie and a sharply limited social life) would have
been a year and a day. By 1904 the rules had been considerably
relaxed, but Stephen is adhering to the letter of the old
law.” We learn in Ithaca that Stephen's mother was
buried on 26 June 1903, so only a few more days remain before
the old custom will allow Stephen to enter what the Victorians
called "half-mourning," when gray clothes could substitute for
black.
To this realistic context for Stephen's behavior Joyce adds a
symbolic parallel to an important literary text, because
Hamlet too insists dressing in formal mourning attire when
others in his world recommend moving on with life. The
contrast, later in Telemachus, between Stephen's
mourning clothes and the “gay attires” of Mulligan and Haines furthers
this resemblance, since Hamlet first appears in a scene of
high court ceremony where everyone else is dressed festively
to celebrate marriage and dynastic stability, and his mother
urges him to "cast thy nighted colour off." Mulligan's mocking
rebuke—"Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother
but he can't wear grey trousers"—further allies him
with Gertrude and Claudius.
As Bloom walks down the sunny side of the street in Calypso
he thinks, "Be a warm day I fancy. Specially in
these black clothes feel it more....
But I couldn't go in that light suit. Make a picnic of it."
His scrupulous adherence to the customs of mourning (he will
be attending Paddy Dignam's
funeral later in the morning) associates him with Stephen, and
throughout the day the two men will be dressed alike. The
implicit allusion to Hamlet invests the physical
resemblance with a symbolic suggestion that both men are
outsiders, skeptical and alienated. It also contributes to the
idea that they may somehow play the roles of father and son.
