In Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus undergoes an epic journey to reclaim his throne and return to his faithful wife Penelope. The adventures and battles of the titular protagonist form the basis for philosophical discourse in the epic. Like Odysseus, Ulysses’ protagonist Leopard Bloom travels through an Ireland divided by gender, religion and colonialism. While Joyce creates a parallel with Homer’s Odyssey, Bloom’s journey is not as straightforward. Leopard Bloom is not a “conquering hero” (Joyce 477) like Odysseus. He is a fringe character, an outsider to society (Boone 8) who embodies both masculine and feminine qualities.
Joyce presents characters who fit their traditional gender roles: Blazes Boylan as the male hero with a “tremendous big red brute of a thing” (1225) and the women, the barmaids in “Sirens” and Molly Bloom. These characters conform to the traditional Beauvoirian gender binary where the man is the absolute being, while the woman is defined as the Other. The woman is “inessential” (Beauvoir 7) as she is defined in relation to the man who is in the absolute of being, hence robbing her of her agency and identity. Feminist readings of Ulysses have mentioned that Molly Bloom’s soliloquy in “Penelope” is “arraigned as artificial, a man’s vision of what a woman is and speaks” (Keith 2). The women in Ulysses have no voice of their own as they are represented not by themselves, but by male writers in a male perspective. However, considering “Circe” and “Sirens”, a feminist reading of Ulysses reveals that Bloom’s body becomes a stage for discourse. Bloom’s unique personality which contains both masculine and feminine qualities makes it possible to subvert the traditional gender binary. This essay will draw heavily on Judith Butler’s writings on performative acts constituting gender to explain how Bloom subverts the gender duality.
In The Second Sex, Beauvoir posits that the gender binary creates a relationship where man is the Subject and woman is the Object defined in relation to man:
the subject posits itself only in opposition; it asserts itself as the essential and sets up the other as inessential, as the object.
(Beauvoir 5)
Beauvoir argues that man asserts his position as an absolute Subject and centre. Through alterity, woman naturally become the Object which is a slave to her male masters, linked by a “reciprocal economic need that does not free the slave” (8). Women are dependent on men and are even represented by men in writing, preventing them from having a voice of their own. Thus, we conclude that any kind of gender binary is harmful to women. Not only does it silence their representation, it prevents them from having any meaningful discourse due to their “inessentiality”. Feminist readings of Ulysses have criticised Joyce’s male representation of the female voice. Throughout the novel, Molly Bloom is mentioned only through men’s discourse, mainly Bloom’s thoughts. Molly appears as an Object, defined in relation to Leopold Bloom, the Subject. Even the final chapter which is narrated by Molly, appears to be “of minimal consequence” (Goloubeva 2) when juxtapositioned by Bloom and Dedalus’ discourses.
Other than Molly, Joyce goes on to depict the harmful gender binary witnessed by Bloom and Dedalus all over Dublin. Male side characters like Blaze Boylan represent the hypermasculine ideal, whereas women like Molly and barmaids Douce and Kennedy embody a feminine position. In the chapter “Sirens”, Bloom and Boylan meet the barmaids at the Ormond hotel bar. “Sirens” alludes to the same episode in the Odyssey where Odysseus sails past the singing sirens:
First you will raise the island of the Sirens,
those creatures who spellbind any man alive,
whoever comes their way. Whoever draws too close,
off guard, and catches the Sirens’ voices in the air—
no sailing home for him, no wife rising to meet him,
no happy children beaming up at their father’s face.
(Homer 197)
The sirens of Greek mythology take the form of seductresses who lead men to their doom. Their musical voices threaten to bewitch Odysseus, leading him to his doom and preventing him from reuniting with his wife Penelope. Miss Kennedy and Douce loosely parallel the Sirens at the Ormond bar. When Blazes Boylan enters the bar, Lenehan comments that “the conquering hero” (Joyce 477) has arrived. In contrast, Joyce refers to Bloom as the “unconquered hero”. Boylan displays many masculine attributes. He is strong, brash and flirtatious. The adjective “conquering” alludes to his strength and confidence. True enough, Boylan inevitably “conquers” Molly by sleeping with her. Mild-mannered Bloom is referred to as “unconquered”, alluding to his passive or feminine nature. Rather than actively conquer women, he would rather be dominated by powerful women, as seen in “Circe”.
Just as the majority of Joyce’s male characters are obsessed by shows of power, force, virility, and sheer brawn, the women believe themselves to be passive, receptive, and intuitive creatures who complement their “feminine” virtue with a forgiving indulgence of “masculine” bravado. It is within this bifurcated context that Bloom must struggle to establish a sense of selfhood and sexual identity.
(Boone 4)
In “Sirens”, Joyce depicts the traditional masculine “conquering hero” of Boylan. Boylan displays many masculine traits, along with his numerous sexual conquests. Bloom’s “passive, receptive” nature puts him more in line with the female characters of Ulysses. Joyce implies that he is effeminate, a “womanly man” (Boone 6), evidenced by his reluctance to pursue women or confront Boylan, whom he knows is going to sleep with his wife that evening.
On the other hand, the barmaids at the Ormond bar exaggerate their femininity to attract the male customers. Miss Kennedy flashes her thigh at the men and snaps her garter against her thigh to seduce them (Joyce 481). Kennedy plays the role of Homer’s mythical sirens, seducing the men with her voice and body. She takes on a “passive” role by provoking the men with her body and inviting them to pursue her. Clearly this works: Boylan and Lenehan’s eyes are glued to her “smackable a woman’s warmhosed thigh”. Boylan “eyed, eyed. His spellbound eyes went after, after her gliding head as it went down the bar by mirrors”. Joyce’s repetition of the word “eyed” draws attention to the male gaze. The adjective “smackable” also demarcates a purely male perspective from the narrator. For Boylan and Lenehan, Kennedy is “designated as ‘sex’ the flesh, its delights and its dangers” (Beauvoir 213). The barmaids are quite happy to play into the fantasy of being sexual Objects, trophies to be “conquered” by their male customers. As Garvey writes, the “female characters serve as objects of the male gaze, as reflections of male desire, as means for male begetting of male heirs” (1). By playing the passive gender role of a sexual Object, Kennedy cements herself in the master-slave relationship that Beauvoir describes. Kennedy will always remain a passive Object to be desired after and fought over by men, the Subjects and actors. Thus, Joyce uses side characters like the barmaids and Boylan to depict the restrictive gender binary in sexually polarised Dublin.
Metempsychosis is an important recurring motif in Ulysses which is crucial to understanding Bloom’s sexual transformation. Molly first mentions it in “Calypso” when Bloom is bringing her breakfast in bed. She asks him the meaning of the word, to which he defines it as “the transmigration of souls” (Joyce 110). Joyce links this theme of the novel to the ancient Greek mythology of reincarnation, the belief that one’s soul will be transferred into another being after death. When Bloom is dominated by Bella Cohen in “Circe”, he undergoes metempsychosis and becomes a woman. We interpret this metempsychosis as a change of identity, a death of the old identity and rebirth of the new. I will argue that these deaths allow for metempsychosis to occur in Bloom, changing his identity continually. After the spiritual death of the masculine, Bloom’s identity is rebirthed and he is transformed. This gender fluidity challenges the destructive gender binary as seen in “Sirens”.
In “Circe”, Leopold Bloom travels to Nighttown, Dublin’s red light district. Joyce depicts nightmarish encounters in “Circe” which allows the reader to peek into Bloom’s psyche. The climax of the chapter has Bloom figuratively transformed into a woman by the prostitute Bella Cohen, revealing Bloom’s struggle to reconcile both masculine and feminine traits within himself. Joyce uses the events in “Circe” to depict the unconscious sexual conflict within Bloom’s mind, that of masculinity versus femininity. Bloom undergoes metempsychosis, changing his identity and being “rebirthed” without the woes of having to conform to society’s idea of masculinity.
The language in “Circe” constantly references domination and activity versus passivity. In the courtroom scene where Bloom is on trial for being a “wellknown cuckold” (833), Mrs Talboys emasculates him in public by claiming that he requested for her to “bestride and ride him, to give him a most vicious horsewhipping”. Her metaphor compares Bloom to a horse, a domesticated animal punished and disciplined by his master. Joyce also uses imagery in this nightmare sequence: the courthouse timepiece repeatedly chimes “Cuckoo”, reinforcing the fact that Bloom has been cuckolded by Boylan (834). Mrs Talboys goes on to claim that she is a “dominant tigress” who will “flay him alive” (833). Bloom’s only response is to “quail expectantly”, claiming that he “love the danger”. It is evident that he not only takes a passive role, but he also takes sexual pleasure in being punished. Bloom is “expectant” and welcomes the would-be spanking by the powerful Mrs Talboy. Joyce’s portrayal of Bloom’s sexual masochism, a desire to be dominated rather than to dominate others, clearly alludes to his effeminate nature. As Boone writes:
The gulf between conventional assumptions about manhood and the man that Bloom indeed is creates a narrational tension between the male-oriented Dublin society and the outcast who nonetheless desires to be accepted by those who generally reject or barely tolerate him.
(Boone 7)
Boone’s passive nature is perceived as effeminate by the masculine men of Dublin. When the men of Ulysses mock and deride Boone for his femininity, Joyce draws attention to the sexually polarised society of Dublin where Bloom must try to reconcile masculinity and femininity.
Joyce fully feminises Bloom during the Bella Cohen dream sequence in “Circe”. As Bloom visits the brothel in Nighttown, he meets Bella Cohen:
(The door opens. Bella Cohen, a massive whoremistress, enters. She is dressed in a threequarter ivory gown, fringed round the hem with tasselled selvedge, and cools herself flirting a black horn fan like Minnie Hauck in Carmen. On her left hand are
wedding and keeper rings. Her eyes are deeply carboned. She has a sprouting moustache. Her olive face is heavy, slightly sweated and fullnosed with orangetainted nostrils. She has large pendant beryl eardrops.)
(Joyce 901)
Bella Cohen’s gown made of “ivory” and her numerous jewellery allude to her rich and powerful status. Furthermore, Joyce uses the plural form in “wedding and keeper rings” to indicate that she has many sexual polygamous conquests. It is evident that Bella Cohen is no mere prostitute as the plural form of “wedding rings” shows that she is able to bend many men to her will. Her “sprouting moustache”, typically a male feature, implies that she has masculine traits and foreshadows the gender change she will undergo later in the chapter.
As Bella’s domination over Bloom solidifies, Bloom becomes increasingly weak and passive. The sadistic Bella transforms into the stereotypically masculine and active alter ego Bello. Joyce uses the change of pronoun and name from the feminine “Bella” to the masculine “Bello” to highlight the switching of gender roles. As she changes to her alter ego, Bello “grabs hair violently and drags her forward” (906). We observe the switch in gender roles where Bello is the master and Bloom is his slave. Bello’s action of pulling Bloom’s hair displays an act of masculine dominance. Bloom’s inability or unwillingness to defend himself highlights his passivity and submissiveness, hence the change of his pronouns to “her”. Joyce further feminises Bloom by having him wear women’s clothing. Bello threatens to have him “laced with cruel force into vicelike corsets of soft dove coutille” and “restrained in nettight frocks” (910). Joyce’s use of the adjectives “cruel”, “vicelike” and the verb “restrained” highlights the restricting nature of women’s clothing. He also alludes to the oppressive nature of Dublin’s sexually polarised society, where women are constrained to play a passive gender role. We understand Bloom’s wearing of women’s clothing and changing of pronouns to be a theatrical, performative act. As Judith Butler writes:
the body becomes its gender through a series of acts which are renewed, revised, and consolidated through time. From a feminist point of view, one might try to reconceive the gendered body as the legacy of sedimented acts rather than a predetermined or foreclosed structure, essence or fact, whether natural, cultural, or linguistic.
(Butler 523)
Butler’s “theatre” metaphor is clearly seen in “Circe”. Both Bella and Bloom engage in a performative “play” where they swap gender roles. Bloom becomes a woman by engaging in repetitive “acts” associated with femininity: wearing women’s clothing and “bear eight male yellow and white children” (Joyce 862). Joyce’s changing of Bloom’s pronouns to the female version rejects gender essentialism, which posits that gender is biologically determined. Bloom’s masculine traits and actions do not indicate a masculine “preexisting identity” (528). Instead, Bloom’s gender is fluid and changing. He transforms from man to woman to man again depending on theatrical “acts” which determine his gender.
Similarly, Bella Cohen’s “play” includes increasingly masculine and aggressive actions. He “thrusts out a figged fist and foul cigar”, “twists her arm” and “squeezes his mount’s testicles” (Joyce 908). These masculine “acts of gender” constitute Bello’s gender identity, which turns her into a man. Bello Cohen turns Bloom into a sexual object, that which is “sexed and carnal” (Beauvoir 213). Bello becomes the Subject who objectifies Bloom, solidifying his transformation into a man. Hence, we see that Joyce’s gender-changing play in “Circe” asserts that gender is performative rather than essentialist.
Bloom undergoes metempsychosis as the masculine dies within him and is reborn as the feminine. When Bello insults him, she calls him “impotent” and questions the existence of his “curly teapot” (916). Being unable to produce children and having no male genitalia, Bloom is stripped from his identity as a man and is reborn as a woman. Boone notes that “ale prowess, moreover, is most definitely evidenced in the production of offspring. Hence Purefoy, the ‘remarkablest progenitor’ emerges as another of society’s examples of ‘true’ manhood – in painful contrast, moreover, to the sonless Bloom.” (Boone 4). Indeed, Bello attacks one of Bloom’s greatest insecurities, his inability to make love to his wife and hence bear children. She even goes on to imply that Molly holds Boylan’s baby “in her guts” (917), further emasculating him. Bloom’s inability to have children with his wife causes “tension” with the Dubliners who perceive him as effeminate. Hence during the sequence with Bello, Bloom’s impotency kills the masculine in him as he is figuratively reborn as a woman. Bloom’s body becomes a site for discourse (Butler 236), where the feminine briefly overwhelms the masculine turning him into a woman. However, we note that Bloom’s rebirth and change of gender is not a complete one. Evidently, Bloom’s identity is constantly changing, dying and rebirthed. As Bello’s “spell” (930) is broken, Bloom reverts into his male state. Once again, Bloom establishes his male authority over Bella: “Clean your nailless middle finger first, your bully’s cold spunk is dripping from your cockscomb. Take a handful of hay and wipe yourself.” Bella relinquishes the control she had over him. Now, Bloom is the Subject who commands her to clean semen from her body. Furthermore, the imagery of her “nailless middle finger” on her hands betrays her low social status (Yates 10). Before, she was dressed lavishly with hands adorned with gemstones. Bloom’s sudden highlighting of her deformed hand emphasises that she is but a “mere dirty and soiled whore”. Bloom’s gender change back to his male form, signified by the use of the pronoun “he”, shifts authority and control back into his hands. Bloom is now the master, the Subject and the absolute.
Bloom’s transvestism and changing of gender is a constant changing of his sexual identity. Joyce uses the fluidity of Bloom’s gender to allude to a post-gender self and challenge gender dualisms. As Donna Haraway describes in “A Cyborg Manifesto”: “ my cyborg myth is about transgressed boundaries, potent fusions and dangerous possibilities which progressive people might explore as one part of needed political work.” (Haraway 295). Haraway’s cyborg is a “creature of fiction”, a post-gender feminist myth (291). As Bloom transforms from man to woman and back again, he “transgresses” the boundaries of gender. In doing so, he challenges the destructive gender binary that plagues the men and women in Ulysses. The gender dualism is “systematic to the logics and practices of domination of women” (313). Haraway posits that this distinction between men and women is harmful as it enables men to control women as their Subjects. Naturally, Bloom’s changing between male and female form blurs the boundaries of gender. Like Haraway’s cyborg, Bloom is a “mixed middling, a hermaphroditic freak of nature” (Boone 8). Bloom is a transgressive outsider who invites hostility from Dubliners because of his unconventional behaviour.
In conclusion, we see how Bloom’s metempsychosis and constant changing of identity allows him to challenge gender dualisms. Joyce depicts the polarising and destructive society caused by gender dualisms in “Sirens” and “Circe”. In “Sirens”, the barmaids are reduced to sexual objects, trophies to be fought for by the male Subjects. However, the gender binary is subverted by Bloom, the “new womanly man” (Joyce 861). In “Circe”, Bloom transforms into a woman and back again through sexual roleplay with Bella Cohen, and even becomes pregnant. Bloom changes his gender through theatrical play. Reading this from a feminist perspective, Bloom is able to do so as gender is formed through “a stylized repetition of acts” (Butler 519). These performative acts allow metempsychosis to occur: a death of the masculine and birth of the feminine. Bloom is a transgressive outsider, “a fringe member of their world” (Boone 8). As such, he challenges gender dualisms by transgressing the gender binary between man and woman.
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