Crawford's caution reflects the fact, noted by Slote,
Mamigonian, and Turner, that the Archbishop of Dublin, William
Walsh, had for some time been in a "contentious relationship"
with the Freeman's Journal. As editor of the
newspaper, Crawford does not want Stephen to give further
cause for offense. And for a moment the story appears to be
moving in a chaste direction: the two women simply do not want
to soil their dresses with the grime of the viewing platform,
so they pull them up far enough that they can instead sit on
their petticoats.
But in the late Victorian and early Edwardian era, showing
even small fringes of such undergarments was regarded as
scandalous self-exposure, and twice already in the novel
petticoats have carried lewd implications––first in Telemachus
when Mulligan sings about Mary Ann "hising up her
petticoats" to pee like a man, and then in Proteus
when Stephen imagines the moving fronds of seaweed as women, "hising
up their petticoats," "upturning coy silver fronds,"
"Weary too in sight of lovers, lascivious men, a
naked woman shining in her courts." These two liftings
of petticoats both imply sexually arousing display, so when
Stephen's two vestals "pull up their skirts" and display their
petticoats, one may suppose that a similar erotic charge may
be involved.
In a personal communication, Alexander Medvedev suggests the
relevance of the ancient iconographic tradition of anasyrma,
in which a figure is depicted pulling aside garments to
display his or her private parts––perhaps most famously in the
statues of the Aphrodite Kallipygos, or Venus of the
Beatiful Buttocks, referenced in Circe. Various
explanations have been offered for the social function of such
aesthetic representations in ancient Greece. At one extreme,
simple mocking lewdness may have been involved. But there is
evidence that the display may have had religious ritual
significance: the Eleusinian mysteries associated with the
worship of Dionysus and Demeter involved lightheared lifting
of skirts by old women. There is also evidence that apotropaic
magic was involved. Various ancient, medieval, and early
modern writers (Pliny the Elder, Moses Maimonides, Jean La
Fontaine) attributed magical powers to women who exposed their
genitals: storms could be averted, crop pests dispelled, and
demons driven away.
Medvedev reflects that similar apotropaic powers have been
attributed to the medieval stone carvings known as sheela na
gigs––naked women with large vulvas that are often held gaping
open. These grotesque medieval carvings can be found on
cathedrals, castles, and other buildings in a number of
European countries, but by far the greatest number of
surviving ones are in Ireland––124, according to Jack
Roberts's The Sheela-na-gigs of Ireland, An Illustrated
Map & Guide (2009). They are often described as old
women, hags, crones. People have interpreted their signficance
quite predictably as vestiges of an ancient goddess religion,
or as fertility icons meant to help women approaching the
terror of labor, or as warnings against lust, but another
theory is that these figures were amulets against evil.
Although this explanation is less obvious, more evidence
supports it, as some of the Irish sheelas have been called
Evil Eye Stones. One of these is in a ruined abbey on the
grounds of Malahide Castle. In an 11
September 2003 article in the Irish Independent,
Hubert Murphy notes that "Eagle-eyed visitors can catch a
glimpse of the Sheela na Gig, also known as Devil Stone, the
Evil Eye stone, the Idol, the Witch or the Hag of the Castle,
high up on the North-East wall of Malahide Abbey."
Stephen's very ordinary old women were suggested by the two
he saw on Sandymount Strand. He gives them fictional names, a
Dublin address, simple appetites, and common ailments, and he
presents them as impoverished local tourists who have saved up
coins to pay the entrance fee and take in the great views from
the top of Nelson's pillar. But some symbolic significance is
attached to them when he calls them "vestals," and when
Professor MacHugh follows his lead by referring to them as "Vestal
virgins." The Vestal Virgins of ancient Rome were
priestesses of the goddess Vesta invested with unusual rights,
powers, and privileges. People regarded them with awe and
assumed that they possessed supernatural abilities. They could
free condemned men on their way to execution simply by
touching them or being seen. In his Natural History,
Pliny the Elder affirms that a certain prayer uttered by the
Vestals could "arrest the flight of runaway slaves...provided
they have not gone beyond the precincts of the City." It was
believed that, as long as their sexual barriers remained
intact, the walls of Rome would also. They held sovereign
power over themselves and even their money, answering only to
the pontifex maximus.
The symbolic presence of these guardians of Rome in Stephen's
aged virgins may well figure in the action that he has them
perform: exposing themselves to the great British admiral. One
need not assume that Florence MacCabe and Anne Kearns uncover
their genitalia in Nelson's presence, or even that they reveal
more than the bottom half of their petticoats. All that
matters is that, in their relatively scandalous state of
deshabille, they are seen "peering up at the statue of the
onehandled adulterer" while sensuously sucking on plums and
spitting out stones. In this condition of sexual
self-exposure, the traditions of anasyrma statues and
Sheela carvings may suggest, not a desire to copulate with the
conqueror, but rather a defiance of the empire he represents
and an apotropaic charm guarding Ireland against its evil
presence. Florence and Anne must probably be supposed innocent
of any such defiant intent. But in a chapter littered with
symbolic analogues for Ireland's imperial degradation,
Stephen's little tale about them may well perform that
function.
In the episode's final paragraphs Stephen explicitly links
his "Parable of the Plums" with "A Pisgah
Sight of Palestine"––a biblical vision of the
"promised land" which God has reserved for his people. Through
this linkage, it becomes clear that the most potent analogue
of Irish liberation in Aeolus––Moses's defiance of the
Egyptian Pharaoh––shares a deep symbolic connection with the
two old women exposing themselves. Looking down from a high
place, Moses, Florence, and Anne all see the nation which
could be.
