The Shift of the Cultural Battlefield and its Heroes

Leopold Bloom is a man struggling with the burdens of his time, just as his Homeric parallel fought the challenges of his own. As society developed from pre-Hellenic Greece through to turn-of-the-century Dublin, the burdens facing men evolved dramatically. Where Odysseus used his cunning for glory, victory, and survival against the cruelty of nature, Bloom uses his cunning to cope with grief, sexual frustration, and the stresses of a complex and repressive society. Where it can often be challenging to see Bloom as a hero, Joyce’s parodic structure insists on that consideration. There are times where that portrayal is used for humor. How can a hero love to eat kidneys tasting of urine or masturbate on a public beach? But this characterization isn’t just humor for the sake of a light read, it is satire, that great Irish tool for cultural critique. A major criticism Joyce offers is that the challenges facing an Irishman, the systemic failures in need of heroic vanquishment, are so absurd that they require a somewhat unsavory person to overcome. Ireland is no longer a land concerned with honor and glory, art and philosophy like Ancient Greece, it has been degraded to more base concerns. Within this context, any obstacle or interaction that Bloom overcomes must be considered a contextually “heroic” deed, as those foes and problems stand in for the ills of his society.

In chapter five of Ulysses, The Lotus-Eaters, Bloom checks his correspondence with his long-distance mistress, Martha Clifford. The revelation that he has a persistent erotic connection outside of his marriage comes as a bit of a shock. In the previous chapter, Bloom’s relationship with his wife Molly is portrayed somewhat tragically. She is blatantly plotting to sleep with somebody else while he is relegated to serving as a cuckolded house-servant, making meals and bringing her whatever she wants. But now, as soon as he has left the house, he takes a modicum of control over his own sexuality. His remote discourse with Martha seems to be a long standing affair, exchanging letters and flirting with the idea of an in-person interaction that has not yet come to pass. Bloom uses a pseudonym with her, calling himself Henry Flower, Esq., playing with his own surname and setting a symbolic tone for the interaction early.

The entire dynamic between Bloom and his pen pal is laden with floral imagery, a clear correlation to the fifth book of the Odyssey, Lotus Eaters. Attached to the letter is a “yellow flower with flattened petals” with “almost no smell” (Ulysses 75-76). This prompts Bloom to reflect on the language of flowers in a passage filled with types of flowers and their meanings. “Angry tulips with you darling manflower punish your cactus if you don’t please poor forgetmenot how I long violets to dear roses when we soon anemone meet all naughty nightstalk wife Martha’s perfume” (U. 76). Excluding the manflower pun, there are seven different flowers named in his interpretation of Martha’s letter, each filled with implications in the language of flowers. This form of doubletalk acts as a cipher for her intentions in Bloom’s petal-filled mind. The use of this Victorian-era codified symbology signifies a societal fixation on flowers so widespread that Bloom uses them fluently in his internal monologue. But if flowers as messages are comparable to the Odyssean lotuses, this flower effects Bloom only for a moment before he pockets it, just as the Ithacan resisted the effects that lured in members of his crew. “As they ate it / they lost the will to come back and bring news / to me. They wanted only to stay there / feeding on lotus with the Lotus-Eaters” (Homer 9.92-95). For the flower Martha sends him hardly exemplifies the multi-sensory appeal of an alluring bloom: it is flattened by the mail and has almost no scent. At a postal distance, this is the best Martha can do, so she asks Bloom to tell her what perfume his wife wears (U. 76). That appeal is an attempt to further link herself to him in a sensual way, but Bloom does not seem inclined to follow that path, asking himself “could you make out a thing like that?” (U. 76).

This supposedly intoxicating relationship, Joyce’s version of the Lotus-Eaters’ island, seems to diminish quickly for Bloom as he finishes reading the letter. It appears to be more of a mental exercise in seduction, he calls it a “Usual love scrimmage” and ponders what his next move will be: “Go further next time… why not? Try it anyhow. A bit at a time” (U. 76). These aren’t the internal ponderings of an enamored soul, they’re almost tactical. Change the word “love” to the word “chess” and Bloom would simply be playing a game by mail. He examines the pin that attached the flower to the letter and “threw it on the road” as he grumbles that women always have so many pins on themselves. “No roses without thorns” he thinks as he ponders that Martha must be on her period as she writes (U. 76). This feels like a dramatic shift for a man who’s receiving so little romantic, neither sexual nor emotional, attention at home. Why wouldn’t he pursue this gratification, limited though it may be? Like Odysseus, he remains loyal to his Penelope, although in both cases that loyalty is twisted and pushed to limits that seem concerning to a modern perspective. Like all men, Bloom wants to be wanted. The dance of subtextual flirtation with Martha satisfies this emotional desire without pushing towards a boundary that Bloom seems unwilling to cross – physical intimacy. In the eleven years since his infant son died, he appears to have steadfastly kept to that commitment. Of course, this does not stop his internal and personal lewdness. To maintain his marriage in its limited dimensions, Bloom seems determined to hoard a cornucopia of sources for self-satisfaction, as it were. He ruminates on the sexual potential of nearly every woman he sees, has become a connoisseur of pornography (an expertise he shares with his wife), and keeps this correspondence with Martha.

While the first two are entirely internal practices, writing those erotic missives requires that Bloom maintain a human connection with someone else. Even if that connection is under false pretenses, it is still an emotional process, and a level of emotional investment is inevitable. But facing that sort of connection and communication head-on is not a skill that Leopold Bloom possesses. If it were, perhaps he and his wife would not have gone over a decade without physical intimacy. So Bloom has to walk a challenging balance beam: on one side, he needs to feel emotionally attractive. On the other, he needs to remain distanced from facing any emotion head on, as well as to protect himself from any ramifications of carrying on a relationship outside of his marriage seemingly more intimate than any of the brief, primarily physical affairs Molly carries on.

This is where his Odyssean cunning comes in. Much later in Ulysses, we learn that Bloom began his flirtatious correspondence “by inserting an advertisement in the Irish Times” to which Martha responded (Gifford 85). The advertisement was not something from the song Escape by Rupert Holmes, instead Bloom claimed to be “a gentleman in literary work” seeking a typist to help him in his work. He received forty-four responses. To take a job application and escalate the rhetoric from professional qualifications to a seductive repartee would require a remarkable amount of work and cleverness, and Bloom seems to have reached an extreme level of success with Martha. Phrases like “I think of you so often you have no idea” and “you naughty boy” seem to shock him to the point of repulsion (U. 76). After reading the letter twice over, he “took out the envelope, tore it swiftly in shreds and scattered them towards the road” (U. 77). The implications of this side project seem to rattle him, so he tries to shake them off, thinking to himself “Henry Flower. You could tear up a cheque for a hundred pounds in the same way. Simple bit of paper” (U. 77). Bloom wants to deny the reality of this relationship, and in a way he can. Because he had the cleverness to conduct it over mail and under a pseudonym, it would not take much for him to abandon the project entirely and walk away. He can simply never respond, let the unanswered letters collect dust or throw them away until Martha gives up hope, and then he can move on unfettered by any tangible connection to her. As cruel and unfeeling as that could be, Bloom seems to have created the exact perfect set of circumstances to have his cake-by-mail and eat it too.

            Where Odysseus rescued his men with relative ease from the land of the Lotus-Eaters, not falling prey to the guiles himself, Bloom’s comparable act of “heroism” seems to be his willingness to jettison Martha, his bewitching flower. Yet this is a circumstance he has placed himself in through deliberate labor, not an accident of sailing mythical seas. There has been intentional action throughout the process. Joyce’s portrayal of Irish heroism, then, is not the escape from treacherous misfortune, but the creation and control of opportunities for gratification. Bloom is an incorrigibly sexual man living in an era of societal sexual repression with a sexless marriage to boot. He must find outlets for his own undeniable needs within the strict parameters of his time and place, and because of the combination of circumstances within and out of his control, he must be creative. Although gentlemen’s clubs are common and sexual gratification is readily available at those establishments throughout the city, Bloom only attends a whorehouse later to take care of Stephen. Leopold Bloom will not cross the line of extramarital physical intimacy, even as he pushes the boundary zone at every turn. He will find every possible way to operate within his self-defined zone of decency that maximizes his potential for pleasure and satisfaction.

            Is that heroic? In abstraction, yes. Change the sphere of life where Bloom struggles, or reduce it to an abstract plot, and the tenor of his story seems noble. “A man incapable of properly expressing his love for his wife and mother of his children and prohibited from expressing himself freely does his best to find ways forward in a society bent on preventing his goals from being achieved.” Removed from the physical reality, that is a story as old as democracy and older. In fact, it’s the story of Odysseus, a man who can’t get home to his wife or sail where he likes. The dramatic reframing that Joyce chooses to make in Ulysses creates the fundamental comedy of the work, certainly, but what commentary lies in that shift?

The pursuits of individuals reflect the structure of their entire civilization, and the limitations imposed on them reflect its founding principles and flaws. The goals of a man living on the Aegean Sea in 3,000 BC were simple, especially for a man of high status. Build your kingdom, protect your people, honor the gods. Have sex when you like and take that by force if need be. Rape is permissible, the gods do it too. Defend your kingdom and your allies through skillful but brutal battle. The gap between animalistic urges and the latest developments of civilization was not very wide, and that simplicity (or primitivity, depending on your point of view) dramatically limited the problems and possibilities facing humanity. The great flaw of that era was the rampant systemic violence fundamental to the “civilizations” of Greece and Troy. Odysseus’ heroics are powered by his proficiency as a tactician on and off the battlefield, and his final goal and triumph is finally bringing peace to Ithaca.

The complexities of modern civilization make it far more difficult to determine a standard goal in Joyce’s Ireland. Irish independence and self-determination have faded into the background as the superimposed English culture erases it slowly and steadily. Economic prosperity and romantic success are the only common aspirations, and in the context of Bloom’s sections of Ulysses, economic concerns fade into the background in favor of his sexual escapades. The limitations of Dubliner society are clear: sexual repression is rampant, tragic premature death occurs regularly (Bloom’s son died shortly after birth in a city at the forefront of maternal medicine), and direct emotional communication is nonexistent. Bloom’s heroism manifests in the form of his navigation through that restrictive society. Dedicated to his wife, he refuses to physically violate their relationship, even as he allows and in fact administrates her own sexual exploits. Needing his own satisfaction, he finds every possible way to supply himself with erotic and emotional titillation while continuing to maintain his own somewhat twisted moral code.

A hero is a person who exemplifies the virtues and overcomes the challenges of their time, place, and standing. Odysseus is a hero because his cunning before the Trojan War ensures that Achilles fights, because his cunning during the war ensures equine victory for the Greeks, because his cunning afterwards keeps him alive through his long journey home. He is not a perfect man, in fact accomplishing what he does despite his flaws makes the Ithacan all the more heroic. Far better for a hero to sweat and stumble on their way to the finish line than to breeze through it. Nothing is gained by an easy win. A great hero does not just capture the loftiest parts of their society, they show their humanity, the cracks in their mettle. Remember that in the Iliupersis, the lost fifth volume of the Epic Cycle, Odysseus kills Hector’s infant son Astyanax by throwing him from the walls of Troy. In the end of the Odyssey, he brutalizes his own people to achieve a form of justice that hardly ends neatly resolved. There is an ugly side to the greatest hero, a richly deep shadow created by their multi-dimensionality.

            Joyce makes Leopold Bloom’s depth of character clear immediately. He establishes the gruesomeness of the character from his first appearance, when Bloom ruminates on his love for urine-tasting meats and has a thorough internal monologue about the quality of his bowel movements. The reader learns about this unpleasant, overly physical side of Bloom before we know about his struggling marriage or the loss of his son. Joyce set himself a challenge with Bloom: could he create a character simultaneously vile and tragic, yet loving and kind enough to be redeemed in the eyes of the reader? Perhaps there is an inevitable bit of Stockholm Syndrome involved, since to truly read Ulysses calls for a remarkable commitment of time and energy, but Joyce seems to have succeeded. In Book 14, Oxen of the Sun, Joyce declares his dominion over the entirety of Anglophone prose by demonstrating his mastery of every style from past to present. It is a microphone drop of a chapter, proving his skill with a sentence backwards and forwards. Leopold Bloom is a similar endeavor undertaken across the full arc of the novel, proving Joyce’s authorial talent through characterization.

            Both Odysseus and Bloom find their power in the flaws of their respective societies, and there’s compelling evidence in both works that solutions rooted in the systems they attempt to repair are not guaranteed to succeed. After Odysseus finally makes it home, slaughters the suitors and cleans the blood out of his ancestral home, he has little time to rest and enjoy his success before the residents of Ithaca, grieving the slaughter of their sons, come to Odysseus’ keep in arms, seeking retribution. Odysseus leads his father and son into battle against his own citizenry, and Athena is forced to intervene. When she does, “her voice / struck them with pale green fear and made them [the citizens] drop / their weapons… and they turned back towards the city. / Unwavering Odysseus let out / a dreadful roar, then crouched and swooped upon them” (Wilson 24.535). Athena compels him to yield and treat with his own people under threat of retribution from Zeus. After eleven years of violence, Odysseus does not recognize that he can solve a problem without it. Similarly, Bloom is so fully enveloped in his psycho-sexual pursuits that his powers of cunning are solely used for that purpose. Both men are trapped within the restraints of their time and society, and though they do their best to affect change and accomplish great deeds, operation within the system ensures that systemic change is impossible. For no matter how far they push the boundaries of their field, they remain trapped upon them.