Chapter 13: Nausicaa
Summary:
Nausicaa takes place several hours after "The Cyclops," and ends with the clock striking nine. In the interim between the chapters, Bloom has visited the Dignam widow to discuss Paddy's insurance policy and in this chapter he is walking along Sandymount strand, the same beach where Stephen strolled during "Proteus." There is a group of young people on the beach including a young woman named Cissy Caffrey who is watching Tommy and Jacky Caffrey and a smaller baby. Alongside Cissy is her friend Gertrude "Gerty" MacDowell. Gerty's mostly thinks about her previous boyfriend and later she considers thoughts of marriage. In her conversation with Caffrey, MacDowell hides the emotional disappointment that she has suffered. Even as she maintains a rigid and impassive exterior, MacDowell is deep in thought, considering (apparently, for the first time) that she may not be able to find a boyfriend whom she might convince or seduce into marriage.
Midway through her thoughts, Gerty notices the voyeur, Bloom. Leopold Bloom is still dressed in all black on account of Dignamıs funeral and he is a somber contrast to the white sand of the beach. MacDowell can easily detect that Bloom is watching her though he continues his failed attempts to conceal his furtive staring. Cissy Caffrey suspects that something is awry when MacDowell appears to be distracted and focused in the direction of the dark stranger. MacDowell then decides to use Caffrey in a ploy to get a better look at Bloom who is sitting in the distance. Knowing the Caffrey did not have a timepiece with her, MacDowell asks her for the time and when Cissy replies that she does not know, MacDowell ventures over to Bloom, an "uncle" of hers, so that she might find out.
Upon returning to her original seat with Caffrey, MacDowell feels sympathy for Bloom, who she decides must be the saddest man alive. In place of her thoughts on her boyfriend, Reggie Wylie, MacDowell suggests to herself that Bloom might be a character worth saving, as only she could truly understand him. It is not long before MacDowell notices that Bloom is again engaged in furtive behavior, masturbating himself with a hand cloaked in his pocket. After a brief consideration, Gerty decides to "loves" him back, teasing Bloom by displaying her garters as he masturbates. Soon after this, MacDowell and the Caffreys depart from the beach, having stayed for the display of the nearby Bazaarıs fireworks. After MacDowellıs flirtatious departure, Bloom's considers his wife Molly and at the end of "Nausicaa," our hero confesses that his nauseous post-orgasmic lassitude is a sure sign that he is aging.
Analysis:
MacDowell's Nausicaa-like qualities also include her clothes washing duties and the connection that Bloom makes between MacDowell and "nausea" which sounds like "Nausicaa." Gerty's imaginations of her "lover" as a tale-bearing stranger fit Bloom as squarely within the "ancient mariner" motif as her beachside display reveals her own "sea-maiden" qualities. While Joyce constructs numerous minor parallels between this chapter and the Homeric episode, the most recurring parallel is the thematic one. When greeted by Nausicaa, both Ulysses are in need of relief and aid. While the image of the young woman offers Bloom a vehicle for sexual relief, the copious references to the "stormtossed heart of man" suggests that Bloom is need of both spiritual and physical comfort. This argument is reaffirmed in Gerty's numerous overtures, expressing a merciful and sympathetic desire to love Bloom and offer a salve for his visible pain.
"Nausicaa" opens with an exposition of Gerty MacDowell's thoughts and instead of writing the chapter as MacDowell's interior monologue, Joyce opts for an omniscient third-person narrator whose voice is a parody of the heavily sentimental "romantic" novels made popular by the likes of Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte. Much of Joyce's affected "female" hyperbole is lost in the shift from the "marmalady" style that comes with a return to Bloom. The hyperbole of the narrative prose is echoed in the hyperbole of the beach activity. MacDowell utters trite metaphors, the images of a church procession are juxtaposed with the scene of Bloom's masturbation. The bright fireworks that are shot from nearby Bazaar district explode across the dark sky at the same time that Bloom experiences the ejaculatory climax of his furtive masturbation.
Despite the "marmalady" style of "Nausicaa," Joyce provides enough depth in MacDowell's character to establish her as one of the more memorable Dubliners crossing Bloom's path. While MacDowell's sentimentality is satirized, her hopes for an opportunity to "share love" are as desperate as the pleadings of the Dedalus girls for grocery money. Additionally, MacDowell's sentimentality is not completely blinding and she is able to accurately identify Bloom as a fumbling and unattractive older man at the same time that she is able to present the romanticized notion of Bloom's face as the "saddest she had ever seen." Fusing MacDowell's portrait of Bloom with the musings of the narrator of the previous chapter produces an evening view of the tired Leopold Bloom.
The novel's return to Sandymount strand provides for a comparison and contrast between Stephen and Bloom. Stephen's morning thoughts in "Proteus" concentrated on the concepts of "form" and "sight." Bloom is similarly fascinated by Gerty's transparent stockings, which "had neither shape nor form." Bloom's voyeuristic masturbation provides another corollary to Stephen's ideas as Bloom's vision of MacDowell is distorted and his masturbatory act is only the hollow approximation of sex. Stephen's physical release is not an ejaculation but urination and both men consider literary ventures in connection with their "releases." Finally, the rocks of the beachside are unquestionably a testament to the loneliness of both characters. Joyce will bring these characters together in the next chapter, having fully indicated their spiritual congruities.
Just as Bloom's actions suggest that Stephen Dedalus is his younger counterpart, Gerty MacDowell's sentimental thoughts foreshadow the exposition of Molly Bloom's thoughts, presented in the final chapter of Ulysses, "Penelope." The focus on Gerty's undergarments and her domestic duties as a washerwoman presents the image of MacDowell as a young woman whose cleanliness jars with our memory of the dirty underwear strewn about sleeping Molly's bedroom. The Woods' washerwoman (the Woods are Bloom's neighbors) and the image of Dedalus girls boiling their laundry, complete the motif. But the simple dichotomy between "clean" youth and "dirty" age is complicated when Molly reveals her earliest sexual memories, the first of which occurred when she masturbated a man into her handkerchief, (dirtying it). And in "Nausicaa," Bloom must dirty himself while his Nausicaa waves her own clean handkerchief at Bloom upon exiting Sandymount Strand.
Unquestionably, MacDowell's capacity and desire for love bring her closest connection to the revelations of "Penelope." In her own considerations of romance, the young woman both foreshadows Molly's response to Bloom and engages one of Joyce's major themes. In her reflection on Reggie Wylie, a recent ex-boyfriend, MacDowell regrets that she may never marry and she confesses that "she had loved him better than he knew." Gerty considers the personal relationships that are produced by the traditions of the Roman Catholic Church and she concludes that "there ought to be women priests" so that Irish women might have a soul in whom they may comfortably confide." While these two statements have nearly identical counterparts in "Penelope," MacDowell's other crucial admission is a somewhat damning commentary on the Blooms' marriage: "love laughs at locksmiths." While Gerty only means to express her unflagging desire to eclipse the barriers that separate human souls, her laughing at locksmiths turns Ulysses' key motif on its head, suggested that the preoccupying tedium of key and tower is evidence of love's absence. The cuckoo clock is equally damning in regards to Bloom. The chapter ends as the clock strikes nine and the bird sings three triplets of "Cuckoo." This seemingly unimportant occurrence is colored by Joycean references to "cuckolding" and Peter's tripled denial of Christ.
Gerty's concept of love faults Bloom for his pretense and furtiveness and as a voyeur, Bloom is unsuccessful. Earlier in the day, Mulligan caught Bloom furtively staring at the rear ends of ancient statues and MacDowell can easily discern that Bloom is staring at her while masturbating. Gerty plays on Bloom's ineffective pretenses by displaying her undergarments "accidentally on purpose," and in this regard, "love" becomes a "game." The consequences of pretense are rather steep and Joyce recalls Hamlet's thematic treatment of pretense. The King Claudius is a royal pretender; the Queen, Gertrude, presents a false façade of devotion; Prince Hamlet presents a play in an attempt to replicate the true murder of his father and coax a confession from the King, and Hamlet later feigns madness. Similarly, Polonius eavesdrops behind a curtain and the unsuccessful snoop is murdered. Bloom's actions confess the inevitable futility of these "games" and at the end of "Nausicaa," Bloom realizes that he and Gerty must separate. In this relationship-just as with Martha Clifford-nothing real has been shared. At the chapter's end, Bloom suggests that these games are part of a larger attempt to "see ourselves as others see us" and Bloom evokes the "form" and "sight" theme of Stephen's Sandymount stroll. Bloom's exit from Sandymount corresponds with the novels official entry into the "Night" episodes of the novel and a final reference to "Proteus" occurs when Bloom notes that it is dark and difficult to see. Bloom plays with the idea concluding that Irish Home Rule is similarly a "Mirage." In love and life, Bloom argues, what appears on the horizon is not necessarily what is.
It is interesting that "Nausicaa" captures the transition from dusk to night even though it ends at 9 pm. The darkening of the day foreshadows a shift in the mood of the novel, but the winding of the day refers to Bloom's comparative age in relation to Stephen, who strolled the beaches of Sandymount earlier in the day. Bloom's fascination with young girls is heightened by his flagging energy. After masturbating, he considers the effects of MacDowell's "temptation" referring to himself in the third-person plural: "drained all the manhood out of em...my youth." While Dedalus hopes for a grey-eyed muse, Bloom is Gerty's grey-haired lover. Like Stephen, Gerty is considered as the "future" of Ireland and her "winsome Irish girlhood" is a fusion of sexual allure, childlike purity and maternal instincts. She is a "sterling good daughter... just like a second mother" and within her chest beats "the very heart of a girlwoman."
Just as Stephen is considered to be "consubstantial" of several men, Gerty MacDowell is alternately temptress and patron. The overriding "relief" and "rescue" themes of "Nausicaa" limit the parallels to MacDowell's namesake, Gertrude of Hamlet, but Joyce clearly suggests that MacDowell's affected displays are attempts to "corrupt" Bloom, though the desire to tempt Bloom is only one of several minor motives. Gerty's chief motive comes from her emulation of the Virgin Mary and Gerty's beachside "Virgin Mary" bears a striking resemblance to the fourth chapter of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, where a beachside "Virgin Mary" inspires Stephen Dedalus' crucial epiphany. The opening lines of "Nausicaa" invoke the blessings of "Mary, star of the sea" and MacDowell's "eggblue" garments give her a chromatic resemblance to the traditional depictions of the Virgin Mary. Additionally, Gerty wears a badge identifying her as a "Child of Mary."
MacDowell considers Bloom as a dark and lonely stranger and the narrator suggest that "even if he [Bloom] was a Protestant or Methodist she [MacDowell] could convert him easily if he truly loved her." Ironically, Bloom is a Jew who is far beyond the pale of MacDowell's religious preferences. Even though MacDowell is unaware of Bloom's Jewish heritage, her expression of benevolence as an avatar of the Virgin is the closest that Christianity comes to including Bloom within its fold. The motif of the Virgin Mary is complicated by the simultaneous references to Sandymount's church tower, the Martello tower and Mary's beacon-like strength. These phallic symbols of strength are intermittent in Bloom's display of his flagging potency and Mary becomes a tower that is also female, offering "pure radiance, a beacon ever to the stormtossed heart of man, Mary, star of the sea." As Mary, MacDowell offers the traditional female succor to a hero in need while asserting towered strength and power over the emasculated and elderly Bloom. MacDowell's invocation to the "holy virgin of virgins" is ironic given Gerty's sexually corrupt behavior and preference for phallic imagery. As a beacon-like virgin who saps Bloom's masculinity and youth, MacDowell foreshadows Bella/Bello who appears as "Circe" in a Nighttown brothel, but the sincerity of MacDowell's love and concern for Bloom allows her to successful apply her Christian idea of "Mary, the refuge of sinners," to the Jewish stranger.
The power of MacDowell's "love" for Bloom is supported by the refrain of his love song: "Tell me, Mary, how to woo thee." Mary appears in Bloom's musical register despite his ignorance of Christian themes and his immediate reference to "those lovely seaside girls" supports the idea that Bloom is not consciously aware of Gerty's somewhat deliberate transition into an avatar of the Virgin Mary. While Bloom's previous references to love songs inevitably focused on his wife's betraying act of adultery, Bloom's wooed "Mary" and the "lovely seaside girls" smother Bloom's thoughts of adultery to a mere flicker. While Bloom does briefly consider his relationship with Molly, his paced and ordered thoughts have conspicuously lost the agitated preoccupation and distress that marked his earlier feelings of exclusion. "Mary" and the "lovely seaside girls," even in Bloom's contrived musical form, express Joyce's argument for love as the facilitator and preserver of human relationships.
A few direct allusions to Dante's Divine Comedy appear in "Nausicaa" and these may be Joyce's method of confirming the chapter's unmistakable thematic reliance upon the final cantos of Paradiso, which are commonly referred to as an Ode to Love. In Dante's "Ode," the Virgin's offering of love and mercy matches an explosion of music starry lights. Joyce includes these elements in the fireworks, beacon-lights, hymns and love songs of "Nausicaa," the last of Ulysses' numerous seaside chapters. As night ends and Bloom prepares to return to Dublin's urban locales, the image of the merciful Virgin seems especially apt. MacDowell offers Bloom the one interlude of respite between the terrors of Kiernan's pub in "The Cyclops" and Bloom's taxing guardianship of Stephen during the chronology of the next three chapters. As Joyce's prototypical young Irish woman, MacDowell's efforts as a "refuge of sinners" and "comfortress of the afflicted" propels the theme of love while suggesting that maternity, "Irishness" and "Catholicism" are indeed, "consubstantial." In "Nausicaa," Joyce's typically heated satire of the church has cooled and MacDowell is permitted her Catholic symbols and religious piety. Gerty can perform religious healing on a human level even as Joyce questions the Catholic Church's legitimacy. The potency of "Mary" should remind the reader of Stephen's Sandymount memories of his mother, Mary Dedalus as the sum of the thematic debate again corroborates the comparative strength of maternal love as opposed to the paternal. Even as Bloom prepares for his paternal mission, he is only sustained on account of MacDowell's maternal intervention and the sincerity of Bloom's desire for a son is undercut by his unproductive spilling of his seed.