Narrative Summary
Bloom is walking down the street to the post office. He looks in a tea shop window, imagines Ceylon and the other places the teas come from, thinks of lazy tropical lands. While looking in the window he removes his hat and takes out the slip of paper that is there, puts it in his pocket. He recalls a picture of a man floating in the Dead Sea, thinks about the science behind that, that weight is really the force of gravity, the rate of bodies moving, falling per second per second . . . Thinks about the how the maid in the butcher shop would move when she carried home the sausages. . . Rolls up the newspaper and holds it in his hand, enters the post office, hands the slip of paper — a business card with an assumed named on it — to a woman behind a brass grill, and asks if there are any letters for him. She returns with a letter addressed to “Henry Flower.” He looks at pictures on the wall of the post office — pictures of groups of soldiers — and looks for his father-in-law’s regiment.
Bloom leaves the post office and is irked to meet an acquaintance, McCoy, who wants to talk to him. McCoy’s wife is a singer, and McCoy tells Bloom that she has a concert booked. Bloom is afraid McCoy is trying to borrow some luggage for the trip, and heads him off by saying that Molly will be traveling for a tour soon (and so will need the luggage). McCoy apparently has a habit of not returning good luggage to its owner. While they talk, Bloom watches a well-off couple leaving a hotel across the street, hoping to catch sight of the woman’s legs as she gets into their car. McCoy, unable to go to Dignam’s funeral, asks Bloom to write his name in the guest book, and Bloom agrees.
Continuing walking, Bloom thinks of McCoy’s wife’s voice, a “reedy, freckled soprano” not to be compared with Molly’s. He notes that McCoy was trying to equate the two, that McCoy and Bloom are “in the same boat.”
Bloom notices the program advertised at a theater he is passing, and thinks about how his father talked of the theater, which he loved. He passes some horses and reflects on the nature of their lives. He finally finds a place where he can read his letter privately. It is from a woman named Martha, and it begins “Dear Henry.” She is writing in response to his letter, calls him a naughty boy, and asks him when they can meet. At the end, she asks him what perfume his wife uses.
Bloom thinks “not having any” in response to the suggestion that the two meet; the “usual love scrimmage” would be as bad “as a row with Molly.” But he likes the correspondence, thinks he’ll go further next time. That she is “afraid of words.” He reads the letter a few more times, puts it in his breast pocket and tears up the envelope, thinking that one could tear up a check for a large sum in the same way. This leads Bloom to think about a wealthy man who once cashed a check for a million pounds at the local bank, and of the wealthy man’s brother, who was ill and feeble.
Bloom enters a church during mass. He thinks about different religions, watches some women receive the host, thinks it makes them feel happy. “There’s a big idea behind it, kind of a kingdom of God within you feel.” He surmises that it helps them all feel like they’re all one family, and “not so lonely.” He thinks about the music, and Molly, a labored sermon given once when Molly was a church soloist (“don’t keep us all night over it.”). Bloom wonders at eunuchs in the church choir, but then thinks that being a eunuch is “one way out of it.”
The mass ends and Bloom rises to leave, realizing two of his waistcoat buttons are undone. On his way to the chemist’s to have Molly’s lotion made, Bloom realizes he left the recipe at home in his other trousers, but decides the chemist can look it up from last time. He calculates that he has enough time to get a massage and bathe before the funeral, thinks about masturbating in the bath. Bloom buys a cake of soap, and as he leaves the chemist, he is holding the rolled up paper in one hand and the soap in the other.
Bloom bumps into one Bantam Lyons, who asks to see the paper because he wants to place some bets. Bloom, wanting to get away, tells Lyons “you can keep it,” but Lyons misunderstands and thinks Bloom is giving him a tip on a horse, and gives the paper back. Walking toward the baths, Bloom admires the weather, and envisions himself in the bath, his trunk, his navel, his pubic hair floating around “the limp father of thousands, a languid floating flower.”
Thoughts and Impressions
When I first read this Episode, it was not as powerful to me previous ones. I wondered if maybe I really wasn’t going to keep on with this — that it was getting a bit tedious rather than compelling. Maybe because it was a different time of day and my focus was elsewhere? Or because I had taken a small break and had stood back from the process? It worried me. I decided to read it again this morning, and found it to be richer the second time. Hmm.
It is a somewhat lazy, dreamy episode — again, not much happens, but the wealth of thoughts is extraordinary, Bloom’s mind floating from one thing to another and back again. Once again, after the second read, I felt compelled to capture my thoughts and feelings so I didn’t forget them. Here’s what I wrote:
Joyce trying to write as people think? — capture the experience of simply being in the world — it’s all a mash of thoughts about many things, where is the meaning. Is this is what it is to be human? — so many levels of consciousness operating at the same time. Is that the point? Is the book an attempt to synthesize this thing that happens in our brains? Or is there also more as well — a questioning of how we recognize the occasional bits that are important, that matter? Background noise and key experiences merging into each other, how do we know which is which.
Again, it was hard to know what to include and what to leave out of the narrative summary. Listing it all would make it unbearable both to write and to read, I think. I haven’t decided on a bright line rule to guide me about which of Bloom’s thoughts to relate, and that bothers me a bit. I try to include what I think may be important to the plot, and some of the thoughts that resonate with me. But sometimes, as I get towards the end of the summary, I just want it to be done and may leave things out for that reason alone, which is not ideal!
Bloom’s attitude towards women is becoming more apparent. In the previous episode, his carnality is clear, but now there is also some denigration for what he sees as women’s hypocrisy. As Bloom watches the woman coming out of the hotel across the street, he thinks “Women all for caste [does he mean chaste?] until you touch the spot . . . Possess her once take the starch out of her.” Similarly, when he thinks about Martha’s suggestion that they meet one Sunday after mass — that she’ll go to mass and then “do the other thing on the sly” —he labels it women’s “character” — lumping all women together as hypocrites. No wonder it occurs to him that being a eunuch is one way “out of it.”
Some synopses of Ulysses say that Martha is Bloom’s mistress, while others say she’s an erotic pen-pal, and that Bloom has no physical relationship with her. I lean towards the second view, given his reaction in this Episode to Martha’s suggestion that they meet (“not having any”). But it’s a great indication that no-one really knows for sure exactly what is going on in Ulysses!
Bloom’s reflections about Mass, that receiving the host makes people feel like they have God within them, and that it also unites them, was quite lovely, capturing so succinctly the power of religion and of the Mass ritual in particular.
I also love the image of Bloom exiting the chemist’s, a rolled up newspaper in one hand and the bar of soap in the other. One commentary offers that these are his sword and shield. I think that must be right. He is going forth to do his own kind of battle.
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