Touch is an equally important sense for this sensual man, and Joyce in the chapter frequently depicts Bloom’s response to and need for warm objects and people. Bloom quickly notices the bright, pleasant sun, reasoning that it will be a warm day and that he will be uncomfortable in the black suit that he must wear for the funeral. When distressed, he yearns for the warm flesh of Molly, and he imputes the same desire to the cat when, instead of going out of the door as Bloom had thought she might, the animal chooses to go “in soft bounds” up to sleep on Molly’s bed, to “curl up in a ball,” fetally—perhaps as Bloom might wish to do himself.
Bloom’s encounter, from a distance as usual, with the Woods’ serving girl in Dlugacz’s shop describes a warmth of a different kind: Bloom’s sexual awareness, though now lodged in his imagination and physically dormant, will be aroused through Gerty MacDowell in “Nausicaa.” In Dlugacz’s shop, “blood” becomes the metaphor for sexual life as Bloom’s thoughts range from the pig’s blood to the tired blood of the Woods couple to the new, vital blood of the maid (and, by extension, to the menstrual blood of Milly and Molly, an important motif in Ulysses). Bloom enjoys his slightly voyeuristic memory of the Woods’ serving girl whacking a carpet on the clothesline. He apparently likes hefty women, such as his own wife and (possibly) his daughter, and he hopes (but fails) to follow the thick-wristed maid out of Dlugacz’s, to walk behind her “moving hams” (another pun on food in this chapter).
In addition, Bloom’s trip to the outhouse epitomizes his delight in the physical as he (and Joyce) raise defecation to an art. Although the outhouse episode is probably one of the sections of Ulysses that Virginia Woolf found vulgar and disgusting, one must realize that in describing Bloom’s modulating his stool, Joyce is offering in reality a bit of praise to humanity and is saying, at the same time, that salvation comes about only through an acceptance of the total self. Much of Joyce’s work is balanced between scatology (the study of excrement) and eschatology (the study of mankind striving upward towards salvation).
Bloom, then, is portrayed in “Calypso” as accepting and accommodating, the nurturer of life who coordinates the meals and provides sustenance while Molly sleeps. However, this picture of the thirty-eight-year-old Bloom of 1904 is not the only one presented in the novel, and a careful reading of Ulysses reveals the tremendous changes that have overtaken the protagonist in recent years. At one time, Bloom was very outspoken—a socialist, a Parnellite, and an ultimate Irish nationalist; he was so outspoken, in fact, that his politics and his personality cost him his employment. And there is a suggestion at the end of Ulysses that “Poldy” will regain some of his “spunk”; in fact, Joyce implies in the last chapter, in “Penelope,” that Molly will go along with Bloom’s demand that she bring him breakfast in bed.
But in “Calypso,” it is the uxorious, or submissive, side of Bloom that emerges. Bloom, for instance, takes pains to prepare Molly’s breakfast exactly as she likes it: she insists on four pieces of toast, which must be thin, and the plate must not be full. He acquiesces to her order that he must hurry with the tea. He crawls around, picking up her dirty underwear, to find the risquŽ book, Ruby: the Pride of the Ring, which he finally locates against the orange chamber pot (another instance of creativity being associated with defecation). And he promises to get her another book by Paul de Kock; eventually, he rents Sweets of Sin, but neither this book nor Ruby is by de Kock: “Nice name he has.”
Bloom’s streak of fatalism, we realize, may cause a problem for his daughter; he sees in the fifteen-year-old girl the same budding sexuality that Molly possessed at the same age. She fell in love, for the first time, with Lieutenant Harry Mulvey in Gibraltar. Bloom thinks that Milly may lose her virginity to Bannon (she does not); nor did Molly to Mulvey, but he says simply: “Prevent. Useless.” On the other hand, Bloom’s accommodating, kindly, and permissive nature is revealed in his thoughts of poor Paddy Dignam that end the chapter.
Behind the seemingly clear battle lines of “Calypso,” behind the clearly differentiated portraits of Molly and Poldy, a great deal is happening, and Joyce, by cleverly using selective details, suggests the complexities that underlie the surface status quo. This chapter contains many “hidden” activities. For example, Bloom’s card bearing the pseudonymous name of Henry Flower is hidden under the hatband of the hat that he bought from John Plasto, the hatter; he will use the card in the next episode to pick up the letter from his pen pal lover, Martha Clifford (undoubtedly a pseudonym, also). In addition, neither Bloom nor Molly wants to acknowledge the letter that she has received from Blazes Boylan; she tries to hide it under the pillow, but its visible torn edge deeply troubles Bloom. On a more humorous level, Bloom slips the kidney from Dlugacz’s into a sidepocket, thus hiding it.
Much of the hidden meaning in “Calypso” stems from the upcoming affair between Boylan and Molly. The jingling brass quoits of the bedstead recur throughout Ulysses, and they shall be even more ruthlessly tried later in the afternoon. The two lovers will sing “Love’s Old Sweet Song” during the upcoming concert tour, but they will practice it at 7 Eccles Street beforehand. It is ironic that Bloom has sent Milly to Mullingar to study photography primarily to get her away from home during his wife’s incipient affair with Boylan, since Milly alludes to Blazes in her letter: “Tell him silly Milly sends my best respects.”
The implications about the unusual relationship between Molly and Bloom are objectified by Joyce through sexual imagery. Ruby, the book that Molly has been reading while sitting on the chamber pot, is about a naked woman who is abused by a sadistic male, suggesting masochistic tendencies in Molly that critics frequently ignore. And one must not forget that Molly likes the Bath of the Nymph picture over the bed; the bath, one might note, is taken by naked girls. Bloom, for his part, seems to be defining an aspect of his own nature when he wonders why mice do not squeal when eaten by cats; perhaps, he muses, they like it. Many of these ideas will be further developed in Bella Cohen’s brothel scene in “Circe.”
