In a realist novel, following an everyday object like a bar of soap may serve as a tool to ground the reader in reality. But in Ulysses this interpretation is complicated as the soap degrades and becomes sticky while shaping itself to Bloom’s body, instead causing discomfort for Bloom and the reader (McCracken, 2015). In Circe the veil of mundane appearances is finally removed, and instead of offering a comfortable perspective on the familiar, the bar of lemon soap exposes the sinister but concealed nature of unassuming commodities.
After being confronted by Mrs. Marion, Bloom becomes apologetic and remembers that he forgot to buy her lotion earlier in the day. To amend for his absent-mindedness, he promises to visit Sweny, the chemist, next morning. Subsequently, tomorrow’s sun rises in the form of a lemon soap which cryptically reveals that they’re a “capital couple” and that “[Bloom] brightens the earth”while it “polish[es]” the sky (Joyce, 360). Bloom’s visit to the chemists materializes as Sweny appears in the “disc of the soapsun” requesting “three and a penny” (Joyce, 360). Out of the twenty-five animated objects in this episode, only the lemon soap possesses both an individual identity and the capacity for self-generated speech (Moshenberg, 1988). Therefore, this peculiar sentence merits further analysis.
Moshenberg argues that the presentation of the Soap mirrors the three stages of Marx’s account of commodity fetishism in Capital. First, commodities are fabricated and appear to have their own independent will. Next, contrasts the act of seeing—a physical relation between physical things in which light is transmitted from one object to another—to the character of commodities. The physical form of an object which is also a commodity has no connection to its commodity-form under capitalism. Instead, the commodity-form is a specific historical social relation of production between people which is naturalized under capitalism. Finally, he claims that a better analogy can be made with religion, where “the products of the human brain appears as autonomous figures endowed with a life of their own, which enter into relations both with each other and with the human race”. In this sense, products of labor are fetishized as soon as they are commodified.
In Circe, the soap commodity is produced when Bloom “points to the south, then the east” and a “cake of new lemon soap arises, diffusing light and perfume”. It is thus mystified and seen as an independent being which can speak (although ironically, it admits that Bloom is in a capitalist social relation with it). Furthermore, Marx’s faulty sun analogy is echoed by the fact that Bloom does not emit light and the sky can’t be polished. The process is completed with the religious image of the provider, Sweny, appearing in disk of the soapsun(god) and stating the price of the object—reminding the reader of the concealed character of social relations of production (Moshenberg, 1988).
—Manu Alcalá
Works Cited
Joyce, James. Ulysses: The Corrected Text. Ed. Gabler et al. (New York: Random House, Inc., 1986)
Scott McCracken. “Anything but a Clean Relationship: Modernism and the Everyday.” The Bloomsbury Companion to Modernist Literature, 2018.
Moshenberg, Daniel. "The Capital Couple: Speculating on" Ulysses"." James Joyce Quarterly 25.3 (1988): 333-347.
Karl Marx. “The Fetishism of Commodities”. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, 1867.
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