When Stephen thinks "I am here" at the beginning of Proteus,
he is standing somewhere on "Sandymount strand," the beach and
tide flats east of the suburb of Sandymount on Dublin's
eastern edge. Nausicaa takes place on the same
stretch of shoreline, and both episodes of Ulysses
invite comparison with the passage at the end of part 4 of A
Portrait of the Artist in which Stephen walks along a
beach on the north side of the Liffey, near Dollymount.
Between the end of Nestor and the beginning of Proteus,
Stephen has moved from Mr. Deasy's school in Dalkey, south of the tower at Sandycove, to Sandymount
strand northwest of the tower. The novel does not represent
that journey or give any hints as to how it may have happened.
Did Stephen walk the whole way, or take public transportation?
In James Joyce's Dublin: A Topographical Guide to the
Dublin of Ulysses (Thames & Hudson, 2004), Ian
Gunn and Clive Hart infer that Stephen must have caught the
10:00 train from Bray at Dalkey Station, at 10:10, arriving at
Westland Row Station in the city at 10:42 and then walking
east along Great Brunswick Street towards the strand (28-31).
The Sandymount strand opens onto a vast tidal flat that
becomes exposed at every ebb tide, allowing walkers to venture
far out from the land. After venturing a short distance onto
these flats, Stephen heads in the direction of the South Wall, spends some
time there, and then journeys toward Dublin, where he will
spend the rest of the day. This last action, like the passage
from Dalkey to Sandymount, is not represented in the novel. We
next meet Stephen in the newspaper office on Prince's Street
in the center of Dublin. Again, the question arises: has he
walked the whole way, or caught a tram for some part of it?
In Nausicaa, the novel returns to "the
weedgrown rocks along Sandymount shore," to find
Gerty MacDowell and her companions (and, soon, Leopold Bloom)
sitting in a spot not far from where Stephen began walking at the beginning
of Proteus. Nausicaa begins shortly after
low tide, but the characters in this episode remain close to
shore: nighttime is fast approaching, and they have young
children with them.
In part 4 of A Portrait Stephen walks near the North
or Bull Wall that juts out into the sea from Clontarf. A young
woman who is wading in the water there accepts "the worship of
his eyes" much as Gerty MacDowell accepts Bloom's. Like Gerty
her wearing of "slateblue skirts" may associate her with the
Blessed Virgin, while "the white fringes of her drawers"
excite desire. Both encounters (the one in Nausicaa
more strongly sexualized) should be read in the context of
Joyce's experience with Nora
on the Sandymount strand, an experience that Stephen
anticipates in Proteus when he thinks, "Touch me.
Soft eyes. Soft soft soft hand."
