ABSTRACT
In Joyce's waking worlds, the attempts by men to envision women writing betray unmistakable limitations in the male imagination. Bloom, for instance, thinks of female letter writers as a potentially intriguing sight, as a visual lure that would easily promote the sale of commercial goods. He has recommended to Wisdom Hely, his former employer in the stationery business, an advertising gimmick featuring “a transparent showcart with two smart girls sitting inside writing letters, copybooks, envelopes, blottingpaper…. Smart girls writing something catch the eye at once. Everyone dying to know what she's writing” (U 8.131–35). The ad pretends to think female subjectivity (“Everyone dying to know what she's writing”), when in fact it only sees it as a convenient mystery to be commercially exploited; instead of thinking female subjectivity the ad actually negates it, insofar as the women have been reduced to provocative visual objects—they are “smart” only in the sense of being stylishly dressed, not mentally acute. Exactly what they are writing does not matter at all—it is clearly only the image, the simulacrum of female writing, that is needed to make the ad work. When Bloom shares this idea with Stephen in “Ithaca,” the young artist transforms it into a sexual drama that perfectly reveals the scotoma frequently afflicting his vision of the female:
What suggested scene was then constructed by Stephen?
Solitary hotel in mountain pass. Autumn. Twilight. Fire lit. In dark corner young man seated. Young woman enters. Restless. Solitary. She sits. She goes to window. She stands. She sits. Twilight. She thinks. On solitary hotel paper she writes. She thinks. She writes. She sighs. Wheels and hoofs. She hurries out. He comes from his dark corner. He seizes solitary paper. He holds it towards fire. Twilight. He reads. Solitary.
What?
In sloping, upright and backhands: Queen's Hotel, Queen's Hotel, Queen's Hotel. Queen's Ho … (U 17.611–20)
