“Circe”: Stephen’s and Bloom’s Catharsis

Abstract

“Why ‘Circe’ is needed at all is, on the mere narrative plane, not evident” (118), Hugh Kenner writes in his opening chapter on the episode in his 1987 Ulysses. After all, he reasons, the detour to the brothel is unnecessary since “it would have been easy to have Bloom take Stephen in charge at Westland Row station and bring him straight back to Eccles Street” (118). But, would it? Stephen and Bloom barely know each other, and although Bloom appeared to look out for Stephen during his drunken sojourn at the maternity hospital, Stephen—earlier warned by Mulligan that “[h]e looked upon you to lust after you” (9.1210)—has no reason to trust Bloom and agree to go home with him once the party breaks up after Burke’s. Nonetheless, Kenner’s question about the narrative function of “Circe” in the plot of Ulysses is an important one, and his answer—that the episode serves “cathartic” needs for both men—has interesting implications for its narrative structure from the perspective of Possible Worlds theory. To trace the possible operation of catharsis for Stephen and Bloom in “Circe” I plan initially to separate the figures in order to trace the condition of their interior worlds prior to their arrival in Nighttown and thereby identify more precisely the conflicts that haunt them and beg for resolution during their sojourn there.