Shakespeare is much on Stephen's mind on June 16—he thinks of
Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, and Antony and Cleopatra
in Proteus, and is readying himself to reference
dozens of the Bard's works in Scylla and Charybdis—so
it is hard not to hear allusions to Twelfth Night
when he associates the unnamed young woman whom he saw through
Hodges Figgis' window
with "kickshaws" and "yellow stockings." Both details imply
dislike.
"Kickshaws" is a mocking English rendition
of the French quelque choses, "certain things." Sir
Toby Belch uses the word when the foolish Sir Andrew Aguecheek
confesses that "I delight in masques and revels sometimes
altogether." Toby responds, "Art thou good at these
kickshawses, knight?" (1.3). The word came into English at
about the time of Shakespeare's play, according to the OED,
meaning either a fancy cookery dish ("with contemptuous
force"), or "something dainty or elegant, but insubstantial or
comparatively valueless." Such elegant but trivial French
inventions, encountered not only on the dinner table but on
the stage as well, elicit disdain from right-thinking
Englishmen.
"Yellow stockings," cross-gartered, are
another such pretentious innovation, despised by the
no-nonsense Lady Olivia but unfortunately adopted by her
steward, Malvolio, in a misguided attempt to win her favor. In
the context of Stephen's thoughts, they imply sexual
unattractiveness—an exotic anaphrodisiac to accompany the more
mundane "lumpy wool" and "those curse of God stays
suspenders," a corset with garters that invites God's curse,
Gifford supposes, because it may function as a chastity belt.
As Maria says to Sir Toby, relishing her brilliant joke, "He
will come to her in yellow stockings, and ’tis a color she
abhors, and cross-gartered, a fashion she detests" (2.5).
Putting these pieces together, one may assume that the
literary Stephen is finding reasons to second-guess his
attraction to the virgin at the window, by despising her upper-class affectations.
Bloom will experience a similar moment of distaste when he
sees a young woman chatting up George Russell: "Her
stockings are loose over her ankles. I detest that: so
tasteless. Those literary etherial people they are all.
Dreamy, cloudy, symbolistic. Esthetes they are."
