The woman in Lotus Eaters stands waiting "while the
man, husband, brother, like her," scours his pockets for a tip
for the hotel porter. Bloom notices the "roll collar" of her
coat, the "patch pockets," the heavy wool cloth, as well as
the haughty look and the "Careless stand of her." Everything
shouts money. He aggressively imagines that he could bring
this haughty creature down to his level by dominating her
sexually: "Women all for caste till you touch the spot.
Handsome is and handsome does. Reserved about to yield. The
honourable Mrs and Brutus is an honourable man. Possess her
once take the starch out of her." There can be little
doubt about which "spot" Bloom imagines touching, or of his
intent in altering the proverbial expression "Handsome is as
handsome does": this woman is handsome and she will do it.
§ The
high-society label The Honourable Mr. or Mrs. So-and-So shows
up often in Ulysses, most notably in Circe when
it is applied to one of Bloom's three outraged female
accusers. Here in Lotus Eaters, it prompts him to
remember how Marc Antony repeatedly calls Brutus an honourable
man in his funeral speech in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.
The allusion is entirely consistent with Bloom's
fantasy of gaining power through sexual conquest, because
Antony too stands on the outside looking in, feeling hostile
to Rome's new rulers. He first speaks the words "Brutus is
an honourable man" deferentially, from a position of
weakness, but the phrase gains murderous power through
sardonic repetition, inciting the crowd of plebeians to
revenge.
§ The
revery in Lestrygonians explores the strength that
Bloom sees in ascendancy women. He imagines the kind of
sentence he might read in the Irish
Field, a newspaper for the country gentry that
reported on horse races: "Lady Mountcashel has quite
recovered after her confinement and rode out with the Ward
Union staghounds at the enlargement yesterday at
Rathoath." Clearly the recently pregnant, imaginary Lady
Mountcashel is no delicate flower. "Riding astride. Sit her
horse like a man. Weightcarrying huntress. No sidesaddle
or pillion for her, not for Joe. First to the meet and in at
the death. Strong as a brood mare some of those horsey
women. Swagger around livery stables. Toss off a glass
of brandy neat while you'd say knife. That one at the
Grosvenor this morning. Up with her on the car:
wishswish. Stonewall or fivebarred gate put her mount to
it."
Remembering the woman at the Grosvenor makes him think of
another society dame, Mrs. Miriam Dandrade, who with no sign
of a blush sold him her old
underclothes, in her hotel room, "As if I was her
clotheshorse.... Want to be a bull for her. Born
courtesan. No nursery work for her, thanks." These women are
not about meekly submitting to their husbands and contentedly
sacrificing their lives to their children. They are about
personal power, and Bloom supposes that they must like power
in bed too—the power of being serviced by a "bull." But here
his fantasy of domination breaks down in "Want," because he is
no such master of the copulative art. With Molly, at least, he
has not managed even a simulacrum of it for over ten years.
This unspoken confession of incapacity, even impotency,
informs the passage in Circe in which Mrs. Yelverton
Barry, Mrs. Bellingham, and Mrs. Mervyn Talboys humiliate
Bloom in court by testifying to the unwanted attentions he has
paid them. The first two appear in exceedingly elegant urban
attire, and equestrian echoes sound only faintly in Mrs.
Yelverton Barry's diction: "He wrote me an anonymous letter in
prentice backhand when my husband was in the North Riding
of Tipperary on the Munster circuit, signed James Lovebirch."
But when "The Honourable Mrs. Talboys" appears, the horsey
woman theme blares forth:
(In amazon costume, hard hat, jackboots
cockspurred, vermilion waistcoat, fawn musketeer gauntlets
with braided drums, long train held up and hunting crop with
which she strikes her welt constantly.) Also me.
Because he saw me on the polo ground of the Phoenix park at
the match All Ireland versus the Rest of Ireland.... He
implored me to soil his letter in an unspeakable manner, to
chastise him as he richly deserves, to bestride and ride him,
to give him a most vicious horsewhipping.
She declares great willingness to horsewhip:
(Stamps her jingling spurs in a sudden paroxysm
of fury.) I will, by the God above me. I'll scourge
the pigeonlivered cur as long as I can stand over him. I'll
flay him alive.... Pigdog and always was ever since he was
pupped! To dare address me! I'll flog him black and blue in
the public streets. I'll dig my spurs in him up to the rowel.
He is a wellknown cuckold. (She swishes her huntingcrop
savagely in the air.) Take down his trousers without
loss of time. Come here, sir! Quick! Ready?
Bloom's response to the woman at the Grosvenor shows that Ulysses
remains, in Kevin Birmingham's words, a "dangerous book." The
sexual content of his fantasy, powered in this instance by
strong currents of class antagonism, can offend today's smug,
censorious, and hyper-vigilant guardians of political
correctness no less surely than it offended their Edwardian
cousins, the policers of obscenity. But Bloom is no rapist,
and Circe's transmutation of his fantasy of domination
into a fantasy of being dominated indicates a complex
psychology that fully respects, and even celebrates, female
agency.
In Nora: The Real Life of Molly Bloom, Brenda Madox
cites a relevant incident from the life of the newlywed
Joyces: "Nora took to sexual intercourse with enthusiasm and
imagination. Often she took the lead, as she had in their
courtship.... Joyce was delighted but slightly overwhelmed.
One night, naked, she straddled him like a horse, urging,
'Fuck up, love! fuck up, love!' Her behavior fulfilled
all his dreams of domination by a fierce woman, and that Nora
could release such fervor only three weeks after initiation
left him with a lasting sense of awe at the banked fires of
female desire" (57).
