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MonkeyNotes-Ulysses by James Joyce
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Bloom picks Stephen up and takes him first to a coffee-stand,
then home to his own house. He tries to talk to him of the arts
and sciences, of the general ideas which interest him but
Stephen is morose and exhausted and makes little response.
Bloom begs him to spend the night with them, but Stephen
declines. He presently takes his leave. Bloom goes up, goes to
bed with Molly. He describes to her his adventures of the day
and soon drops off to sleep. But BloomÂ’s encounter with
Stephen has affected both StephenÂ’s life and the relations
between the Blooms. To have rescued and talked with Stephen
has somehow restored BloomÂ’s self-confidence. He has gotten
into the habit in the past of cooking breakfast for Molly in the
morning and bringing it to her in bed. It is the first thing we
have seen him doing at the beginning of the day. But tonight,
before he goes to sleep, he gives her to understand that he
expects her to get breakfast next morning herself and to bring it
up to him. This amazes and disconcerts Mrs. Bloom.
The rest of the book is the record of her meditations, as she lies
awake thinking over BloomÂ’s homecoming. She has been
mystified by his recent behavior. Her attitude toward him now is
at first a mixture of jealousy and resentment. She congratulates
herself upon the fact that, if Bloom neglects her nowadays, her
needs are ably supplied by Blazes Boylan. But she begins to
ruminate on the possibility of Stephen DedalusÂ’ coming home to
live with them. The idea of Blazes BoylanÂ’s coarseness
becomes intolerable to her. The thought of Stephen has made
her fastidious. She prefigures a relation between them, which is
of ambiguous but intimate character. It will be half-amorous,
half-maternal. But it is Bloom himself who has primarily been
the cause of this revolution in MollyÂ’s mind. In telling her about
Stephen, he has imposed upon her again his own values. In
staying away from the house all day and coming back very late
at night, and in asking for his breakfast in bed, he has asserted
his own will. And she goes back in her mind over her
experience of Bloom: their courtship, their married life. She
remembers how, when she had promised to marry him, it had
been his intelligence and his sympathetic nature, that touch of
imagination which distinguished him from other men, which
had influenced her in his favor. It is possible that Molly and
Bloom, as a result of BloomÂ’s meeting with Stephen, will
resume normal marital relations. But it is certain that Stephen,
as a result of this meeting, will go away and write Ulysses. Buck
Mulligan has told us that the young poet says he is going "to
write something in ten years." That was in 1904. Ulysses is
dated at the end as having been begun in 1914.
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