By Vivian Yuxin Wen /
Here comes the ultimate Homeric reference of the “Circe” chapter: located in the brothel on 82 Lower Tyrone Street, Bella/Bello Cohen represents the dark enchantress “Circe” in Book 10 of The Odyssey, the witch who casts the spell to turn Odysseus’ crew into pigs. Here in the Chapter 15 of Ulysses we witness the similar transformation between men and animals, the blending of gender, Bloom’s increasing chaotic, hallucinatory state of mind, and the highly charged sexual power dynamics as the fan says the magic word. At some point, the reality ends and the fantasy begins.
While the exchanges of genders seem to be arbitrary in the chapter, upon closer reading, it is revealed that the voice of the personified fan, in effect, mediates the transformation from the female Bella (Joyce, 430) to the male Bello (Joyce, 432), as marked by the distinct shifts in the character’s names and the address from “her” to “his.” In the interval between Bella and Bello’s voices, we hear the fan articulating the confused gender relationships in this chapter, which almost sounds like a slur of English third-person pronouns: “Is me her was you dreamed before? Was then she him you us since knew? Am all them and the same now me? (Joyce, 430)” The threefold questions not only confound the individual genders of the characters, but also toss up the power relationship entailed in the subject pronouns and object-pronouns as well as the time relationship between the present (“is,” “am”) and past (“was”). Hence, the words of the personified object can be seen as a statement (or rather, interrogative questions) where gender and time tensions culminate and intensify in “Circe.”
Theatrically, the black fan, as a staple accessory/tool of witches found in both western and a lot of eastern cultures, allows the audiences to better visualize the particular exchange between the courtesan and Bloom, however unrealistic the scene seems to be. In the stage directions, Bella/Bello performs many specific actions that involve the fan to emphasize her enchantress character: “cools herself flirting a black horn fan like Minnie Hauck in Carmen (Joyce, 429),” “her large fan winnows wind towards her heated faceneck and embonpoint (Joyce, 430),” “folded akimbo against her waist (Joyce, 430),” “points downwards slowly (Joyce, 431)” and “points downwards quickly (Joyce, 431).” More importantly, the fan speaks for Bella/Bello or one may venture to argue that the fan is Bella/Bello in transition. From “We have met. You are mine. It is fate,” “All things end. Be mine. Now,” to “You may,” “You must.” (Joyce, 430-431), the speaking black fan employs increasingly steep imperatives to give Bloom orders on behalf of Bella/Bello, as an exhibition of sexual prowess and power, as Bloom kneels down in sheepish (to extend the bestial metaphor) conformity and the theatre of sadomasochism commences on 82 Lower Tyrone Street.
Works Cited
Joyce, James. Ulysses: The Corrected Text. Ed. Gabler et al. (New York: Random House, Inc., 1986)