'Looks like a drama but doesn't act like one' (Huh?)

Ah, Circe. What an odd chapter. Set in a brothel, it surpasses the supposed obscenity of Bloom masturbating over Gerty's knickers. The characters are like something out of a fairground or circus, everything that has so far gone in the books is turned completely on its head, the characters re-appear, the motifs reappear and even simple things like Bloom's bar of soap reappear, singing (naturally).

Bloom appears in a multitude of different costumes as different figures. Joyce almost seems to be parodying the characters, for example, Bloom appears with two types of offal. The chapter explores deep inside the characters' subconsciousness and contains a multitude of evidently hallucinatory episodes, so we meet not only characters from the story, but also dead characters such as Bloom's parents. 

I can only think that people got so incensed by dirty Gerty they stopped reading and skipped the parts such as the bit where we discover that Molly would like to have sex with the Bhee brothers, 'coloured coons', in fact any man who looks a bit exotic, even some black-and-white minstrel types.

Bloom seems to be on some sort of trial - trying to construct an identity to fit in but also to defend himself against to accusations of Mary Driscoll the maid, Mrs. Yelverton Barry, Mrs. Bellingham and the Honourable Mrs. Mervyn Talboys, who accuse him of crimes including making lewd comments, suggestions, recommending erotic books and sending pornographic pictures. The women seem to enjoy the thrill of being shocked. He is excited by the thought of being spanked, but the punishment escalates and he is sentenced to hanging and compared to Judas. This is followed by his swift elevation to being mayor of Dublin, then 'emperor president and king chairman.' 

He is then accused by Buck of being insane and sexually deviant. This is linked with Weininger's idea of the 'womanly man', a theme that is frequently referred to in this chapter with Bloom's apparent pregnancy, metamorphosis into a woman (along with Bella's into a man). I know that it is rather late as far as when Joyce was writing it, but it made me think of the fin de siecle fears about gender reversal, sexual perversity and the fear of the foreign. The depiction of Bloom and Bella/Bello is rather horrifying instead of the erotic soft-focus porn way that Gerty is portrayed in 'Nausicaa'.  


Stephen has equally unpleasant hallucinations, having an intellectual argument with Lynch's cap then through exploring his feelings about the death of his mother in the form of talking to her corpse, a grotesque rather than angelic figure (named 'The Mother'), who pleads on his behalf for mercy.  

Another part of this chapter I thought would've at least caused concern to the original readers was the way that religion is treated, with Bloom's ascension to being the messiah then subsequently martyred. If this wasn't shocking enough, there is a black mass later on. 


Private Carr swears lustily, Dublin burns at the end of the world and Bloom has to look after Stephen after he embarrasses himself in the brothel. All in all, a good night out I think. 


Overall, I found this chapter really impressive. Long? Complicated? Definitely. Yet I found myself continually admiring Joyce for his fearlessness in experimenting with narrative forms and ignoring societal conventions about what was right an proper in literature. I got caught up in the narrative, particularly towards the end of the chapter with the flight from the brothel.