Ulysses

The sun is setting on Sandymount strand. Gerty MacDowell sits with two friends watching children play near the rocks while fireworks go off from a nearby bazaar. Gerty is nineteen, pretty, and has absorbed enough romance novels to have constructed an elaborate fantasy of herself as a beautiful, spiritually significant woman awaiting the man who will recognize her. A man sits on the rocks nearby watching her. He is Bloom. They conduct a wordless exchange across the distance — she tilts back to see the fireworks and he watches, and both know what is happening and neither speaks of it. Bloom masturbates in his coat pocket. Gerty rearranges herself and walks away — and we see that she has a slight limp she has never mentioned in her lengthy self-description. Joyce writes the first half of the chapter in Gerty's idiom: the sentimental, slightly breathless prose of the women's magazines and cheap romances she has absorbed. It is affectionate and devastating simultaneously. Gerty's fantasy life has shaped her perception so thoroughly that she cannot see herself or the man watching her clearly. She thinks he is a gentleman. She is not entirely wrong. She thinks this is a meaningful romantic encounter. She is not entirely wrong about that either. After she leaves, the chapter shifts to Bloom's voice — meditative, post-coital, honest. He thinks about women's fantasies, about his own desire, about Martha Clifford, about Molly. He thinks about what has just happened without particular shame. He writes 'I. AM. A.' in the sand and then erases it. He does not finish the sentence. He is not sure how it ends. The fireworks die. Bloom dozes briefly. A bat circles overhead.