When Odysseus landed on the Aeaean Island he was unsure how dangerous the inhabitants would be. He sent half the crew to check it out, and they were turned by the goddess Circe into swine – with the exception of one man who escaped and returned to tell Odysseus. Circe is attractive:
…But still
they paused at her doors, the nymph with lovely braidsCirce—and deep inside they heard her singing, lifting
her spellbinding voice as she glided back and forth
at her great immortal loom, her enchanting web
a shimmering glory only goddesses can weave.The Odyssey, Book 10, Robert Fagles Translation
With the help of the god Hermes, Odysseus resists Circe’s drugged wine and gets her to free his crew from their animal forms. Then there is bathing and feasting and going to bed and the goal of Ithaca is forgotten for a year. When Circe sends him on his way, she instructs him to visit Hades to consult the seer Tiresias.
I am reading/struggling through James Joyce’s Ulysses and wonder what the long Circe section there has to do with Homer’s Circe. Joyce has written in dramatic form, with indicated speakers and with stage directions, so the externals of who is saying this or doing that are clearer than in some of the preceding sections. Yet it reads like an extended dream sequence in which all the themes take their turn on the stage.
I am looking for Circe and find an assortment of prostitutes, as well as references to all the women previously encountered. My candidate is Bella/Bello who does indeed work changes in form, both on herself and on Leopold Bloom. Bella becomes Bello and assumes the masculine pronoun. Bloom remains Bloom but is now a female, doing Bello’s bidding. Blamires’ comment:
Thus, before the powerful figure of Bella, the latent femininity and submissiveness of Bloom emerge…. Bloom, with dulling eyes and thickening nose, becomes a humble infatuated creature, while Bella fully takes over the masculine role, becomes ‘Bello’, and orders Bloom down on all fours.
Joyce performs a switch on Homer’s story. Ulysses here, rather than avoiding enchantment and taking control of the situation, is overwhelmed and transformed in ways (feminine) that Joyce perceives as negative. Is that what powerful women do? They make you into the female they no longer are, submissive, groveling, animal like.
More, the entire Circe section is one transformation after another as characters ranging from Milly Bloom to King Edward come and go in Bloom’s disordered mind. What I do not find here is the gift of the Odyssey — the knowledge that enchantment has pleasures but also dangers. Joyce’s Ulysses experiences the dangers, but where is the joy?
Is Ulysses a good read in your opinion? I have been interested in it for a long while, but haven’t got around to reading it yet.
Whether or not Joyce’s Ulysses is a good read or not depends on your literary toughness, that is, whether you read just about anything if sufficiently motivated. I have enjoyed it in places, but on the whole I find it too long and more involved with Joyce’s literary tricks than with communicating with the reader.
Is the Circe section of your Ulysses annotated as such? Or is it one of those things that you are supposed to know before reading Joyce?
Reading your post I started by wishing that I had read the Odyssey, but then decided that it would have done me no good. It is clear that even with that grounding you still have to work at it.
Still, when I get to the Circe I should now recognise it, and I will have some idea of what to look for.
Do you think that Joyce intends to make negative statements regarding women? Or is he suggesting that this is invariably the way in which men regard women?
Sarah, I have been following your account of reading Ulysses and our problems seem to be similar. I don’t mind that it is a difficult book because I have read other difficult books and, in the end, they were worth it. I’m not sure this book is, despite all the assurances of the literati.
As to how I know it is Circe? Apparently one of the early editions of Ulysses identified the various sections by linking them to sections of the Odyssey. Then Joyce dropped the identifications, but the commentators have not forgotten. I am using a book by Blamires but sometimes he is as irritating as Joyce. See my earlier post: Getting into James Joyce’s Ulysses.
Circe is about section 15 or 16 out of 18. By the time you get this far, you might as well get credit by finishing up.
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