From the moment he reenters his house and sees a letter
addressed to "Mrs Marion Bloom," Bloom becomes relegated (and
relegates himself) to the position of a servant. Rather than
being acknowledged (and acknowledging himself) as the master
of his house, he is shunted into a subordinate role. An
Homeric logic plays through this degradation, highlighting
Molly's role as Calypso and recreating the usurpation that
Stephen experiences in Telemachus.
According to a social convention that held through most of
the 20th century, the letter should be addressed to Mrs.
Leopold Bloom, reflecting her husband's masculine primacy as
owner of the family name. Boylan's deliberate violation of
this convention implies that Bloom's ownership of his wife's
body means nothing to him, and Bloom certainly registers the
insult: "His quickened heart slowed at once. Bold
hand. Mrs Marion."
This new subjection is immediately subsumed in the quotidian
servitude of Bloom's domestic routines. His wife shouts
"Poldy!," demanding to know what has come in the mail, and
there follows what appears to be a long-accustomed dance of
female demands and male acquiescence. Bloom asks "Do you want
the blind up?" and begins raising it without waiting for a
reply. "— That do? he asked, turning." She orders him on
to his next task: "— Hurry up with that tea, she said.
I'm parched." Before attending to the tea he picks up the
dirty clothes that she has carelessly tossed onto the floor
the night before, but that intimate service does not spare him
from further directions: "As he went down the kitchen stairs
she called: / — Poldy! / — What? / — Scald the
teapot." He does it. When he reappears some minutes later,
bearing a full teatray that he has obsessively made sure has
"Everything on it," her response is not thanks: "— What a
time you were, she said." And so on.
"Mrs Marion" remains in Bloom's thoughts
throughout the day, signifying his subordinate relation to
Molly in the household and Boylan's supplanting of him in her
sexual affections. The first condition corresponds to Calypso's enslavement of Odysseus,
enforced in Joyce's Calypso by the picture of the nymph over the
bed, Bloom's comparison of
Molly to the nymph, Molly braiding
her hair, and associations of food
smells and female warmth. The second evokes the suitors'
intrusion into the royal palace on Ithaca as they seek to
replace Odysseus in Penelope's bed. Joyce has already alluded
to this usurpation in
Stephen's first chapter, and he brings it back with Boylan's
letter.
In The Economy of Ulysses Mark Osteen observes that
"Bloom's feeling of security is fragile, in part because, like Stephen, albeit more
willingly, he is a servant in his household (his service of
breakfast in bed is apparently habitual). Given the typical
domestic roles of the time, this seems unusual, if not exactly
sinister.... What is most important is not the actual
condition but the perceived one: Bloom believes that the nomoi
(rules) of his oikos (home) are out of balance. In
the etymological sense, the "economy" of his household is
disrupted, if not by Molly's power, then by the author of the
letter addressed to 'Mrs Marion [not Leopold] Bloom,' as if
Bloom were dead. Like Stephen, Bloom is threatened by
usurpers" (81). The fact that he willingly participates in
this subordination does not in any way lessen his need to
overcome it.
In Circe, the subjection is expressed even more
strongly in fantasy. When Molly first appears
Bloom declares himself "At your service" and she haughtily
rebukes his familiar use of her nickname: "Mrs Marion from
this out, my dear man, when you speak to me."
When Boylan comes to Eccles Street he is ushered into the
house by a liveried servant Bloom who lacks the distinction of
ever having been married to Molly: "Thank you, sir. Yes, sir.
Madam Tweedy is in her bath, sir."
