Abstract
Ulysses offers a significantly different image of adulterous betrayal to Exiles. I show how Joyce uses Bloom’s experience of cuckoldry to ask probing questions about the boundaries of betrayal: At what point does an act of betrayal become an act of betrayal? In the act or in the conception/imagination? The role of sex as the ultimate synecdoche for betrayal is challenged and abandoned, while the traditional role of cuckold breaks down even as Bloom appears to embody it.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
Seinfeld, episode no. 164, first broadcast 20 November 1997 by NBC. Directed by Andy Ackerman and written by Peter Mehlman and David Mandel.
- 2.
One may wish to think of Joyce’s depiction of betrayal as having three levels: material, ontological, and epistemological. One may, alternatively, wish to do away with the ontological level altogether in favour of the epistemological. Indeed, my own discussion of Exiles stresses the central importance of doubt and the impossibility of true and complete knowledge of the other and the other’s nature. This is, I argue, the fundamental theoretical driving force (the central question) behind the play. But, since the problem is really “how can I know the ontological status of an other?” I have simplified the question here. Accepting the central problem of knowledge implicit in any Joycean relationship, the question remains, Am I and my significant other fundamentally different in consequence of the act of betrayal? This move away from epistemology, though by no means total and by all means qualified, is, I will show, a major part of the move Joyce makes between Exiles and Ulysses.
- 3.
Of course, Joyce was eager to investigate this idea, particularly in his Triestine non-fiction where he says of Parnell, “The sadness that devastated his soul was, perhaps, the profound conviction that, in his hour of need, one of the disciples who had dipped his hand into the bowl with him was about to betray him. To have fought until the very end with this desolating certainty in his soul is his first and greatest claim to nobility.” In his life and in his fiction, this vision of Parnell as nobly resigned to martyrdom is consciously utilized to justify Joyce’s exilic lifestyle and in his fiction as a way to justify Stephen’s standoffishness.
- 4.
- 5.
Obviously, everything is a construction of the text, but the distinction here between a semi-naturalistic, semi-realistic textual practice and the one I am outlining is important.
- 6.
Other examples include: Bloom remembering past discussions with Owen Goldberg and Cecil Turnbull (U, 17.48) and the “Halcyon Days” of which they formed a part (U, 15.3325–9); the scheme for a hydroelectric plant at Poulaphouca (U, 17.713) and its appearance as a waterfall (U, 15.3299). In neither case is there any acknowledgement of the events of “Circe” affecting the way they appear in “Ithaca.”
- 7.
- 8.
Hall, “Joyce’s Use of Da Ponte and Mozart’s Don Giovanni,” 79.
- 9.
Of course, Bloom plays many other roles in “Circe” and elsewhere—not least a parody of Parnell. But while I am giving this particular allusion artificial importance here, it is because it represents a fair example of Joyce’s practice in Ulysses of working over betrayal (here, adultery) from all sides.
- 10.
Djuna Barnes, Nightwood (New York: New Directions, 1946), 87–8. (Barnes 1964)
- 11.
Margot Norris has questioned some of these characterizations, suggesting that the text is predisposed towards presenting a skewed and incomplete image of Boylan—Blazes rather than Boylan. I agree with this argument on several points but my point here is specifically about how Boylan presents himself to Bloom and how Bloom understands Boylan in comparison to himself. “Don’t Call Him Blazes,” JJQ 48.2 (2011): 229–49. (Margot 2011)
- 12.
This model of behaviour is well described by Freud’s description of his grandchild’s “fort” “da” game. The child makes play out of a toy disappearing and reappearing, thereby modelling the distressing disappearance and reappearance of the mother. In controlling these disappearances and reappearances, the child enacts a form of empowerment that, by analogy, lessens the stress of parental absence. Bloom’s method is much more direct than Freud’s example and this is by no means an exact comparison, but the structural logic is similar.
References
Attridge, Derek. 2013. “Pararealism” in “Circe.” In European Joyce Studies 22: Joycean Unions; Post Millenial Essays from East to West, ed. R. Brandon Kershner and Tekla Mecsnóber, 119–125. New York: Rodopi.
Barnes, Djuna. 1946. Nightwood. Intro. T. S. Eliot. New York: New Directions.
Hall, Vernon. 1951. Joyce’s Use of Da Ponte and Mozart’s Don Giovanni. PMLA 66.2: 78–84.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Fraser, J.A. (2016). Betraying Bloom. In: Joyce & Betrayal. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59588-1_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59588-1_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-59587-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-59588-1
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)