In hopes to better understand the chapter, I vote we all masturbate in class

This chapter deals with attraction. Even thought this theme relates to topics as strange as magnetism, the chapter revolves around Gerty’s attraction to Bloom and Bloom’s to Gerty. This attraction reaches its climax, literally, when Gerty exposes herself to Bloom and Bloom ejaculates. In a way we get to see Mr. Bloom having his affair. After the climax the narrator mentions the lovers’ “secret, only theirs, alone in the hiding twilight and there was none to know or tell” (367). Like Sweets of Sin the infidels are now left with a secret between them. There is a sense of spiritual connection in the line “their souls met in a last lingering glance and the eyes that reached her heart, full of strange shining, hung enraptured on her sweet flowerlike face” (367). This sort of lovingness is then shattered when Bloom notices how this seemingly perfect, delicate lady is lame. And as the romantic style fades Bloom is left alone, clammy, cold and wet.
One of most interesting things about encounter is it look like a confession. Throughout the whole scene the narration flows in and out of focusing on the religious ceremony. In on of these descriptions Canon O’Halon “looked almost a saint at his confession box was so quiet and so clean and dark and his hands were just like white wax” (358). In this line one could make connections between Canon’s darkness and Bloom’s, also Canon’s white hands and Gerty’s white legs. Also Gerty recalls a time when she was confessing about menstruating. The priest’s response to her was “in this life that that was no sin because that came from the nature of woman instituted by God” (358). In considering the weight of this line in response to the rest of the sexual “confession,” it seems like Joyce is the nature of sexuality, and whether it is base. Gerty is called pure hearted many times, but is also made to seem vain, in how she contemplates tossing aside Mr. Reggy. And again she seems prideful of her beauty when her “skirt cut to the stride showed off her slim graceful figure to perfection” (350). But at the same time Bloom is “thankful for small mercies,” meaning Gerty’s willingness to show him her all.
Like a lot parts in this book, I find a strong connections back to Deseay’s rant in chapter two. The darkness of Bloom’s eyes is what Deseay says to be a trait of the Jew, and this is what attracts Gerty (361). It is strange how in most chapters evidence of Bloom’s Jewishness serves as a form of alienation. But here, it serves to attract a woman. The second connection to Deseay is how woman is a thing of sin. And in this chapter sin is found in Gerty’s sense of guilt towards menstruation, the religious service, and the fact that Bloom does something scandalous. Deseay also mentions how Helen caused catastrophe for many men. Gerty seems like Helen when Joyce states if she were of a higher class there would be “suitors at her feet vying with one another to pay their devoirs to her” (348). I have found this relationship of women and sin many times in this novel, and will probably write my paper on it.

Questions:

It has been some time since Bloom has mentioned his soap, but on 375 we see it again. For the first time since buying it Bloom recalls how he is still in debt for it. Do you think this could be read as Bloom needing some type of cleansing, like a confession? Or do you think it holds other symbolic significance? The soap is also mention on 100, 123, and 85.

Does Gerty seem like the female Boylan? I saw similarities in their beauty and the rosiness of their complexion.