James Joyce's Ulysses, banned and rebanned in the U.S. until 1933, is
considered by many to be the greatest and most important work of
literature of the 20th century. Yet due to its scandalous content (much
of which is excerpted below) it had to be published in France and was
burned by the U.S. Post Office at entry harbors in 1918. Ulysses is an
enormous novel, manifold, polyglottal, spectacular, omniscient and
caustic. The passage I selected is sweet and raunchy and rivals Nabakov
for the construction of the perfect Lolita. And Joyce's, we'll remember,
came first. This scene is the perfect merger of high art and erotica,
captivating and stimulating above and below the neckline. So meet Gerty
MacDowell, a nice little Irish girl in a navy school skirt and buckled
shoes . . . -JM
* * *
From Ulysses by James Joyce
Gerty MacDowell who was seated near her companions, lost in thought, gazing far away into the
distance, was in very truth as fair a specimen of winsome Irish girlhood as one could wish to see.
She was pronounced beautiful by all who knew her . . . Her figure was slight and graceful,
inclining even to fragility . . . The waxen pallor of her face was almost spiritual in its ivorylike
purity though her rosebud mouth was a genuine Cupid's bow, Greekly perfect. Her hands were of finely
veined alabaster with tapering fingers and as white as lemon juice and queen of ointments could make
them though it was not true that she used to wear kid gloves in bed or take a mile footbath either.
. . No. Honor where honor is due. There was an innate refinement, a languid queenly hauteur
about Gerty which was unmistakably evidenced in her delicate hands and higharched instep. Had kind
fate but willed her to be born a gentlewoman of high degree in her own right and had she only
received the benefit of a good education Gerty MacDowell might easily have held her own beside an
lady in the land and have seen herself exquisitely gowned with jewels on her brow and patrician
suitors at her feet vying with one another to pay their devoirs to her. Mayhap it was this, the love
that might have been, that lent to her softly featured face at whiles a look, tense with suppressed
meaning, that imparted a strange yearning tendency to the beautiful eyes a charm few could resist.
. . But Gerty's crowning glory was her wealth of wonderful hair. It was dark brown with a natural
wave in it. She had cut it that very morning on account of the new moon and it nestled about her
pretty head in a profusion of luxuriant clusters and pared her nails too, Thursday for wealth. And
just now at Edy's words, as a telltale flush, delicate as the faintest rosebloom, crept into her
cheeks she looked so lovely in her sweet girlish shyness that of a surety God's fair land of Ireland
did not hold her equal.
Gerty was dressed simply but with the instinctive taste of a votary of Dame Fashion for she felt
that there was just a might that he might be out. A neat blouse of electric blue, selftinted by
dolly dyes . . . and a navy threequarter skirt cut to the stride showed off her slim graceful figure
to perfection. She wore a coquettish little love of a hat . . . trimmed with an underbrim of eggblue
chenille and at the side a butterfly bow to tone . . . Her shoes were the newest thing in footwear
(Edy Boardman prided herself that she was very petite but she never had a foot like Gerty
MacDowell, a five, and never would ash, oak or elm) with patent toecaps and just the smart buckle at
her higharched instep. Her wellturned ankle displayed its perfect proportions beneath her skirt and
just the proper amount and no more of her shapely limbs encased in finespun hose with highspliced
heels and wide garter tops. As for undies they were Gerty's chief care and who that knows the
fluttering hopes and fears of sweet seventeen (though Gerty would never see seventeen again) can
find it in his heart to blame her? She had four dinky sets, with awfully pretty stitchery, three
garments and nighties extra, and each set slotted with different colored ribbons, rosepink, pale
blue, mauve and peagreen and she aired them herself and blued them when they came home from the wash
and ironed them and she had a brickbat to keep the iron on because she wouldn't trust those
washerwomen as far as she'd see them scorching the things. She was wearing the blue for luck, hoping
against hope . . . The twins were now playing in the most approved brotherly fashion, till at last
Master Jacky . . . kicked the ball as hard as ever he could down towards the seaweedy rocks.
Needless to say poor Tommy was not slow to voice his dismay but luckily the gentleman in black who
was sitting there by himself came gallantly to the rescue and intercepted the ball . . .
The gentleman aimed the ball once or twice and then threw it up the strand towards Cissy Caffrey
but it rolled down the slope and stopped right under Gerty's skirt near the little pool by the rock.
The twins clamored again for it and Cissy told her to kick it away and let them fight for it so
Gerty drew back her foot but she wished their stupid ball hadn't come rolling down to her and she
gave a kick but she missed and Edy and Cissy laughed.
If you fail try again, Edy Boardman said.
Gerty smiled assent and bit her lip. A delicate pink crept into her pretty cheek but she was
determined to let them see so she just lifted her skirt a little but just enough and took good aim
and gave the ball a jolly good kick and it went ever so far and the two twins after it down toward
the shingle. Pure jealousy of course it was nothing else to draw attention on account of the
gentleman opposite looking. She felt the warm flush, a danger signal always with Gerty MacDowell,
surging and flaming into her cheeks. Till then they had only exchanged glances of the most casual
but now under the brim of her new hat she ventured a look at him and the face that met her gaze
there in the twilight, wan and strangely drawn, seemed to her the saddest she had ever seen . . .
And while she gazed her heart went pitapat. Yes, it was her he was looking at and there was meaning
in his look. His eyes burned into her as though they would search her through and through, read her
very soul. Wonderful eyes they were, superbly expressive, but could you trust them? People were so
queer. She could see at once by his dark eyes and his pale intellectual face that he was a
foreigner, the image of the photo she had of Martin Harvey, the matinée idol, only for the
mustache which she preferred . . . He was in deep mourning, she could see that, and the story of a
haunting sorrow was written on his face. She would have given worlds to know what it was. He was
looking up so intently, so still and he saw her kick the ball and perhaps he could see the bright
steel buckles of her shoes if she swung them like that thoughtfully with the toes down. She was glad
that something told her to put on the transparent stockings thinking Reggy Wylie might be out but
that was far away. Here was that of which she had so often dreamed. It was he who mattered and there
was joy on her face because she wanted him because she felt instinctively that he was like no one
else. The very heart of the girl-woman went out to him, her dreamhusband, because she knew on the
instant it was him . . .
Gerty just took off her hat for a moment to settle her hair . . . She could almost see the swift
answering flush of admiration in his eyes that set her tingling in every nerve. She put on her hat
so that she could see from underneath the brim and swung her buckled shoe faster for her breath
caught as she caught the expression in his eyes. He was eyeing her as a snake eyes its prey. Her
woman's instinct told her that she had raised the devil in him and at the thought a burning scarlet
swept from throat to brow till the lovely color of her face became a glorious rose.
So over she went and when he saw her coming she could see him take his hand out of his pocket,
getting nervous, and beginning to play with his watchchain, looking at the church. Passionate nature
though he was Gerty could see that he had enormous control over himself. One moment he had been
there, fascinated by a loveliness that made him gaze, and the next moment it was the quiet
gravefaced gentleman, self-control expressed in every line of his distinguished-looking figure.
Cissy said to excuse her would he mind telling her what was the right time and Gerty could see him
taking out his watch, listening to it and looking up and clearing his throat and he said that he was
very sorry his watch was stopped but he thought it must be after eight because the sun was set . . .
The eyes that were fastened upon her set her pulses tingling. She looked at him a moment, meeting
his glance, and a light broke in upon her. Whitehot passion was in that face, passion silent as the
grave, and it had made her his. At last they were left alone without the others to pry and pass
remarks and she knew he could be trusted to the death, steadfast, a sterling man, a man of
inflexible honor to his fingertips. His hands and face were working and a tremor went over her. She
leaned back far to look up where the fireworks were and she caught her knee in her hands so as not
to fall back looking up and there was no one to see only him and her when she revealed all her
graceful beautifully shaped legs like that, supply soft and delicately rounded, and she seemed to
hear the panting of his heart, his hoarse breathing, because she knew about the passion of men like
that . . .
She could almost feel him draw her face to his and the first quick hot touch of his handsome lips.
. . She leaned back and the garters were blue to match . . . She leaned back ever so far to see the
fireworks and something queer was flying about through the air, a soft thing to and fro, dark. And
she saw a long Roman candle going up over the trees up, up, and in the tense hush, they were all
breathless with excitement as it went higher and higher and she had to lean back more and more to
look up after it, high, high, almost out of sight, and her face was suffused with a divine, an
entrancing blush from straining back and he could see her other things too, nainsook knickers, the
fabric that caresses the skin, better than those with pettiwidth, the green, four and eleven, on
account of being white and she let him and she saw that he saw an then it went so high it went out
of sight a moment and she was trembling in every limb from being bent so far back he had a full view
high up above her knee no one ever not even on the swing or wading and she wasn't ashamed and he
wasn't either to look in that immodest way like that because he couldn't resist the sight of the
wondrous revealment half offered like those skirtdancers behaving so immodest before gentlemen
looking and he kept on looking, looking. She would fain have cried to him chokingly, held out her
snowy slender arms to him to come, to feel his lips laid on her white brow the cry of a young girl's
love, a little strangled cry, wrung from her that cry that has run through the ages. And then a
rocket sprang and bang shot blind and O! then the Roman candle burst and it was like a sigh of O!
and everyone cried O! O! in raptures and it gushed out of it a stream of rain gold hair threads and
they shed and ah! they were all greeny dewy stars falling with golden, O so lively ! O so soft,
sweet, soft!
Then all melted away dewily in the gray air: all was silent. Ah! She glanced at him as she bent
forward quickly, a pathetic little glance of piteous protest, of shy reproach under which he colored
like a girl. He was leaning back against the rock behind. Leopold Bloom (for it was he) stands
silent . . . That was their secret, only theirs, alone in the hiding twilight and there was none to
know or tell save the little bat that flew so softly through the evening to and fro . . .
