Summary
All the action of the episode takes place on the rocks of Sandymount Strand, the shoreline that Stephen visited in Episode 3. A young woman, Gerty MacDowell, is seated on the rocks with her two friends, Cissy Caffrey and Edy Boardman. The girls are taking care of three children, a baby, and four-year-old twins named Tommy and Jacky. Gerty contemplates love, marriage and femininity as night falls. The reader is gradually made aware that Bloom is watching her from a distance. Gerty teases the onlooker by exposing her legs and underwear, and Bloom, in turn, masturbates. Bloom’s masturbatory climax is echoed by the fireworks at the nearby bazaar. As Gerty leaves, Bloom realises that she has a lame leg, and believes this is the reason she has been “left on the shelf”. After several mental digressions he decides to visit Mina Purefoy at the maternity hospital. It is uncertain how much of the episode is Gerty’s thoughts, and how much is Bloom’s sexual fantasy. Some believe that the episode is divided into two halves: the first half the highly romanticized viewpoint of Gerty, and the other half that of the older and more realistic Bloom.[50] Joyce himself said, however, that “nothing happened between [Gerty and Bloom]. It all took place in Bloom’s imagination”.[50] Nausicaa attracted immense notoriety while the book was being published in serial form. It has also attracted great attention from scholars of disability in literature.[51] The style of the first half of the episode borrows from (and parodies) romance magazines and novelettes. Bloom’s contemplation of Gerty parodies Dedalus’s vision of the wading girl at the seashore in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.[52][53]
Odyssey Allusion
In the Odyssey…
Characters
- This Characters - did this
Episode Notes
This occurred
- Wherein…
- Then this
Analysis
- Some themes
- And more themes