"Heva, naked eve. She had no navel"...like WonderWoman



As a stream of conscious scene the Proteus chapter spends a lot of time in Stephen’s mind. While this chapter reveals so much about Stephen it made me a little uncomfortable. I say this because a lot of this chapter is an inner dialogue, where Stephen harshly criticizes himself. My discomfort only becomes worse when he describes his loneliness, guilt, and failure. On page 40 there is one moment where Stephen addresses all these things. He makes stabs at his own intellectual credibility when he says, “reading two pages apiece of seven books every night, eh? I was young. You bowed to yourself in the mirror, stepping forward to applause earnestly, striking face” (40). In these few sentences Stephen not only questions his academic life, but his social one two. He accuses himself of wasting time with both. If he would have stuck to study more he would have written books “with letters for titles,” thereby gaining fame (footnote 1). He even blames himself of self-exaltation. The letter books would have been “sent…to all the great libraries of the world, including Alexandria” (40). Even though no one has read these unwritten books, Stephen calls himself out for thinking they would be great. And at the same time by bringing up Alexandria we see Stephen gripping with his place in history. While making himself a part of Alexandria’s catalogue Stephen is doing two things. First he is thinking about fame, for all the fathers of Western Thought had their work in Alexandria. Simultaneously it could be read that Stephen wishes he were a contemporary of these thinkers. But what is the use? For your identity could be destroyed along with the library. And also in this chapter Stephen think about his family, i.e. his personal history.

Another thing that makes this chapter uncomfortably personal is how it reveals some of Stephen’s sexual attitudes, mostly his frustration. Throughout this chapter there are moments when Stephen will mention, or recall a woman, and bring up her undergarments or physical appearance. For example when he sees a “woman and a man,” he states, “I see her skirties. Pinned up, I bet” (46). Not only does he think about the woman, but elaborates on her specifics. It seems much more pathetic when he mentions, “I am lonely here. O, touch me soon, now….touch, touch me” (49). The interesting thing about this sexual frustration, remembering Stephen is an atheist, is how it is rooted in Christian guilt. Stephen criticizes himself for being religious when he asks, “you were awfully holy, weren’t you?” But again, out of contemplation comes more criticism. He says, “you prayed to the devil in Serpentine Avenue that the fubsy widow in front might lift her clothes still more from the wet street” (40). This remark is so purely Catholic, because he does not scold himself for sleeping with a widow, just for merely being attracted to her. And in a sense he makes this seem worse, for he is “defiling” her while in public.

Connections:
I think I’m going to start a section of my posts just highlighting references to other places in the book. I don’t even think I’ll look at the details very critically, I just think it may help to catalogue them.

Footnote 1- Ulysses is arguably Stephen’s “letter books”

Pg. 46 Stephen calls a dead dog a “poor dogsbody.” On page 6 he refers to himself a dogsbody, one who does odd jobs.

Pg. 46-47 The fox riddle returns. Even as the dog “scrapes the earth” like the fox did pgs. 26-28.

Pg. 38 Like Deseay did in the Nestor scene, Stephen contemplates about Eve, and sin.

Questions:
We see a lot of shells in this novel. It makes sense considering the continuing emphasis on the sea. But in the last chapter we saw shells stand for money (pg. 30). With this in mind, what do you make of the parts of Proteus where people walk along the beach and have shells crush under their feet?