How ointment and asset shapes femininity in

Ulysses

Jones Richards, in the 1990 exposition on social theory, The Commodity Culture of Victorian England: Advertising and Spectacle, 1851-1914 declares: “In the mid-nineteenth 100 years the product became the living letter of the law of supply and demand. It literally came alive. “(Richards 2) The “commodity” adopts a corporeal cling to Victorian culture in the form of women body, since proposed in James Joyce’s modern legendary, Ulysses. Story techniques and representations in the human body fill in, simultaneously, for the authoritative product culture that pervades and structures Joyce’s text. As Richards’ newsletter claims, Ireland in europe, under Even victorian England’s financial influence, skilled significant adjustments in cultural values, which began to reveal a modern capitalist system. Joyce, over the course of story, fabricates an accurate depiction of Dublin through the rise of capitalism, consciously, and predominantly, unconsciously, underwritten by promoting and customer desires. The narrative is usually saturated in mercantile discourse, as Molly and Full bloom progress through the day interacting with commodities in physical and mental states. With particular emphasis on feminine hygiene goods, such as “ointment” and “lotion”, it is apparent that Joyce invented heroes that are totally immersed in commodity traditions, and is specifically concerned with making an physiological, female version to the “commodity”.

The word “commodity” entered Irish economic climate at an dramatical rate, and with that, capitalism started to permeate the industrial status from the country. In consultation with Karl Marx’s Capital: Review of Political Economy, it is also possible to contextualize objects including “ointment” and “lotion”, and the characters’ tangible and desapasionado interactions with these objects, as occurrences within “commodity culture”. “Volume 1” in the bourgeois powered work, is essentially a critical examination of capitalism as personal economy, and the role of the commodity within just it. This system is applicable to this which regulates the heroes, and the consumerist intentions and desires they will experience the whole day. In evaluating Bloom’s thoughts, particularly the ones that are topically concerned with the lotion and soap this individual purchases for Molly, it truly is apparent that such products is sensual and encourages a sex appetite in him. Though erotic thoughts are not rare for Blossom, it is significant to consider that ointment and lotion, since commodities, trigger a consistent picture of woman and a sense of beauty.

The “Nausicaa” instance formally introduces the impressionable figure of Gerty MacDowell, Joyce’s fictional manifestation of “feminine sensibility”. Gerty signifies a hyperbolically feminized ‘poster-girl’ for feminine hygiene items, as the girl with appropriately known as the “Queen of Ointments”. Her narrative is seriously imbued in mercantile terminology and consumerist desires, Gerty’s thought process can be entirely one of a kind to the new, but requires a universal mode of thinking followed by girls in 1904 Dublin. The thoughts that comprise “Nausicaa” reverberate into a slogan for “the coastline girl”, the commercial illusion for men and women, for the previous, an eroticized jingle that caters to masculine libido, and then for the latter, an emblem of female jealousy and standardized beauty. Ointments, lotions, fragrances and creams are the important components pertaining to constructing and maintaining femininity, much like Joyce’s intelligence of product culture is necessary for “writing” literary femininity. Joyce confronts the were living reality of the advertised spectacle, not just like a social space for exhibiting commodities, but also as a coercive agent for invading and structuring human intelligence. The “Nausicaa” chapter of Ulysses describes the impact of most this calculated consumption on one consumer, Gerty MacDowell.

Materialism and concerns for acquiring property appear persistently throughout the day in characters’ thoughts, Blossom, for example , lives out the working day reminding him self of certain items he or she must purchase and handling all those items that he does purchase. Consumerism is really deeply ingrained in Bloom, that inside the “Circe” event, during a hallucinatory moment, the line of cleaning soap that has lived in his pocket or purse speaks to get itself: “THE SOAP: We’re a capital couple are Bloom and I. “(Joyce 406) The capitalist relationship exists in Bloom’s mind, in conscious and subconscious levels. Marx, in concluding the first chapter of Capital’s “Volume 1”, establishes a definition to get commodities:

“A commodity looks, at first sight, a really trivial thing, and easily realized. Its examination shows that it really is, in reality, a really queer issue, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and biblical niceties. “(Marx 663)

Marx claims that the ideology that corresponds to the “commodity” capabilities to cover up and obscure that which is at work in what he phone calls “the fetishism of commodities”. Under a capitalist system, human relations are increasingly characterized by alienation, monetization, and commodification. Relationships between workers and owners, sellers and buyers are mediated through the products produced. These commodities turn into objects of fetishism, there will be a target existence info, that tragique the individual labor involved in all their production. Inside the act of exchange, the commodity acquires an inherent benefit distinct through the use worth or physical properties. This marriage is apparent between Full bloom and the drug-store shop:

“Better get that cream made up. Wherever is this? Oh yes, the past time. Sweny’s in Lincoln place. Chemists rarely maneuver. Their green and precious metal beaconjars overweight to stir¦It certainly did make her skin so delicate white like wax. “(Joyce 75-76)

The passage, taken out from Bloom’s continuous thought process while jogging errands, unearths his subconscious priority intended for feminine care products. Full bloom considers the chemist’s labor, as his mind wanders into the shop’s territory and the effects the chemicals may have on an individual who makes them for customer use. He also remembers the lotion’s past effect on Molly, provoking a picture of desire, which, because “commodity fetishism” narrates, is usually evident of Bloom’s

Marx was aware of a dichotomy that structured the concept of a item, on one hand, goods are sommable and quantifiable, but on the other, they take a cultural baggage in whose origins will be untraceable for humans due to their immediate and omniscient existence in a culture. Marx publishes articles:

A asset is for that reason a mysterious thing, mainly because in it the interpersonal character of mens labor appears to these people as an objective character stamped upon the item of that labor, because the associations of the suppliers to the final amount of their own labor is offered to them as a cultural relation, existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labor. (Marx 665)

Though Bloom is the right candidate for this skewed interpersonal relation, Joyce was probably doubly conscious of the commodification of personas, since the soap performs functions beyond regarding an lifeless object. Products becomes part of the mercantile discussion and mystifies the “commodity” further. In “Nausicaa”, Gerty MacDowell’s daydreaming reveals more than simple longings for her “dream husband”, her narrative is littered with “needs” and “wants” for beauty products, which eventually become indistinguishable. Thomas Richards’ comments within the problem of human firm in an progressively consumerist program, which is perhaps best exemplified in the physique of Gerty:

“Neatly following Marx’s accounts of the fetishism of items in the 1st volume of Capital, Gerty shows the tendency of failing to view that she actually is dealing with a interpersonal relation amongst human beings and has meant instead that she is coping with relation among things. “(Richards 218)

Richards’ criticism as well references Marx’s theory, rewarding Joyce’s authorial proximity to commodity lifestyle. Joyce, in the choice to use free indirect discourse to share Gerty’s event, demonstrates the commodity influenced thought operations of a youthful woman cast at the core of any system of which she is both an object and an agent, the vulnerable client and the “Queen of Ointments”, simultaneously.

The role of the asset varies within Joyce’s text, Bloom, Molly and Gerty physically and mentally interact with a broad range of products and goods throughout the day. By narrowing the commodity, as contextualized by Marxist theory, to female beauty items, a design begins to arise. There is a consistent connection among ointment plus the provocation of eroticism linked to the female physique. Bloom’s head is constantly going swimming with sexualized images, as he fantasizes of female hands slathered in ointment: “O wonder! Coolsoft with products her palm touched me, caressed¦”(Joyce 162) This imagination suggests a subconscious regards between product and sexuality, particularly what corresponds to the feminine body. In “The Wandering Rocks” episode, Bloom is observed at a bookstore, contemplating pornographic works of fiction for Molly:

“Mr Bloom read once again: The beautiful woman. Warmth bathed gently above him, cowing his drag. Flesh produced amply among rumpled clothes¦Melting breast products (for Him! For Raoul! )¦Feel! Press! Crushed! Young! Young! “(Joyce 226)

The commodity which in turn pertains to lotion is highly romanticized in Bloom’s mind, this individual becomes infatuated with womanly romance, distinctly, the romance of a female covered in ointments and lotions. Richards theorizes within the model to get commercial usage and the treatment that the female body undergoes in an economy dominated by men:

“Advertising were able to establish a feminine model for consumption without ceding the activity entirely to women. Advertisers defined consumption as action of the sexual division of labor enshrined inside the Victorian home. “(Richards 206)

The “female model” promotes the sexes equally as customers of particular products, lotion and erotic novels. Blossom responds to both products, he is turned on by the content material of the publication and incorporates ointment as a way to standardize “the beautiful woman”, products which are initially targeted to get female make use of. This dual utilization will also surface eventually when analyzing Joyce’s narrative technique in “Nausicaa”, in the demonstration of “woman writing”.

It is necessary to consider the intertextual symbols for women in advertisements, jingles, and romance books, alongside the representation of women in Joyce’s text. These kinds of figures happen frequently, such as that of “the seaside girl” or “the beautiful woman”, and function to market and arouse male and female consumers. Molly, and more particularly, Gerty, interact with such statistics on conscious and sometimes unconscious levels. Molly, aware of the scrutiny your woman faces in maintaining an outlook, displays rounds of jealousy and sights herself as being a singular, sexual figure to get desired simply by all men, including Bloom. Gerty, however , distributes the same want to get an appealing, outlook consciously and subconsciously. Her desires happen to be reserved “in secret”, within just her thoughts, which reference beauty products and hygiene things persistently. Richards’ diagnoses this mode of thinking in greater detail, in his part entitled, “Those Lovely Bch Girls”. He claims that

“¦this neurosis-racked female became the prototypical customer, and her traditionally female attributes were translated in a psychology of consumption and preyed after by a fresh “science, inches the psychology of advertising. “(Richards 206)

Joyce offers a psychological account of the common consumer, yet the emphasis in this instance is around the female consumer. The female version structures and maintains the building blocks for consumerism tapered to get both genders. Richards carries on his exploration of feminine advertising:

“In the early 20th century marketing became , the burkha vehicle to get condensing the detritus of consciousness to a commodity terminology. Advertisers right now became experts not only constituting discourse however in constituting selves”especially female selves”to take up positions inside commodity tradition. “(Richards 210)

Gerty’s story represents a specifically feminine experience of Victorian political economic climate, Joyce’s exposition of female consumerism is definitely inherently worried about a world of unrestricted exchanging associated generally with males. But Joyce assumes that women are already suggested as a factor as equally agents and objects within an economics of consumption. Likewise, Joyce him self, as a writer, expels a performative woman voice, one that is explicitly inserted in to the literary market in order to analyze the values and concealed suppositions of capitalism.

To move into a essential discussion of the role of commodity and its relation to building femininity, you need to focus on Gerty MacDowell and the narrative that conveys the “Nausicaa” chapter. Gerty shows up elsewhere in the novel, briefly in “Wandering Rocks”, although is officially introduced in “Nausicaa”. Joyce’s narrative is definitely garnered to a process of innately female believed, as Gerty enters the scene on Sandycove beach front:

“Her hands were of finely veined alabaster with tapering fingertips and as light as lemonjuice and full of ointments could not cause them to become though it had been not true that she once wore kid gloves in bed or perhaps take a milk footbath possibly. “(Joyce 332)

Immediately, Gerty’s body is defined, physical appearance is actually a priority in perceiving Gerty’s character. Primarily, the explanation illustrates a youthful, child-like girl, nevertheless , the insertion of “queen of ointments” suggests 2 things: firstly, Gerty is perhaps having puberty seeing that “queen” is known as a label placed on a woman entering or experiencing adulthood, and secondly, Gerty is Joyce’s deliberate “female model” in the established commodity culture from the novel. Richards’ criticism is relevant to this interpretation, as he comments on the terminology of the customer used to reflect female figures in promoting: “They sent up a huge drama on the small scale, modifying the body from an off-limits zone right into a site of voluble talk and the fortunate seat of spectacle. “(Richards 203) Simply by describing aspects of Gerty’s physique in relation to commodities, such as ointment, she is contextualized as a product herself, her body can be interpreted as being a consumable merchandise, a living, breathing advertisement.

Joyce gives a concrete portrayal of Gerty, which again, lacks man depth:

“¦as fair a specimen of winsome Irish girlhood as you could want to see¦Her determine was minor and graceful, inclining also to frailty but those iron jelloids she have been taking of late had performed her a world of good a lot better than the Widow Welch’s girl pills and she was much better of people discharges your woman used to get and that tired sense. “(Joyce 332)

By labeling Gerty as a “specimen”, her person is further labeled as a eatable object, she is a physical agent for girls and females in Ireland, and an advocate intended for the consumer attitude that prevails that society. Gerty’s character and the act of defining her as an individual are completely dependent on beauty products, Joyce is basically constructing a facet of femininity that relies upon capitalism pertaining to agency. Most of all, the narrative asks: “But who was Gerty? “(Joyce 331) Perhaps Gerty’s body just exists in commodification, because the question suggests that a physical outward exhibition of Gerty is not present. Richards’ argument is likewise relevant in providing context for the rapidly changing feminine identification:

“¦the quacks had already dug the pincers in the marketplace deeply into the drag of the customer. The body came into existence the current icon of commodity culture, and there was clearly no turning back. “(Richards 203)

The “quacks” that Richards is usually referring to are dominant males that operate the economy. He claims that girl participation inside the economic space exists in the form of the body, nevertheless , in marking the body a great “icon” maybe there is no corporeal representation, but instead, a symbolic one. Richards is aware of the importance of identifying Gerty while the “queen of ointments”, he declares:

“Although an advertisement like the “Queen of Ointments” exercises unprecedented influence over Gerty, it does not accomplish that in a vacuum but remains subject to her varying requirements and capabilities. “(Richards 224)

This point is compatible with the prior characterization of Gerty since an “object and agent” of the capitalist system. To be the “queen of ointments” both limits and liberates Gerty in an economic system, she is exemplified into a placement that restricts individuality, and also equips her with company in the system that envelops her.

Essentially, a contradiction represents the story of “Nausicaa” and the portrayal of human consciousness that may be exclusive to women. Joyce inscribes a mode of thinking that is usually associated to feminine wishes and the woman body. Though gender confusion is common throughout the text, the female voice is quite explicitly read in “Nausicaa” and “Penelope”. Gerty’s story, however , dictates the thoughts of the susceptible, impressionable resistance to the persona of Molly. Gerty, the “queen of ointments”, is additionally the literary embodiment of “the beach destination girl”, this figure looks frequently in the whole text with the novel, especially in the minds of male characters, Bloom and Blazes Boylan. The jingle, “Those women, those girls, /Those beautiful seaside ladies. “(Joyce 60) reverberates inside the various narratives, much just like a commercial motto would in thoughts of consumers. Gerty, whose body is lacking in palpability and relies on cosmetics for interesting depth, is the unrestricted advertisement that pervades the mind and women as well. Richards’ chapter, “Those Beautiful Seaside Girls”, demonstrates an analysis of function of the jingle in relation to Gerty’s goal in the story:

“Over the course of the late nineteenth century the advertising industry organized a proliferation of commodity narratives into a stable semiotic canopy for capitalist society, bestowing on this integrated universe an ontological status independent of human activity. “(Richards 11)

Richards proposes that “commodity narratives” are a type of signification in “capitalist society”, considering this, perhaps Gerty’s narrative can be Joyce’s system for signifying female id in the political and economic systems that structure his novel. Blossom muses upon “the seaside girls”, since the following passing occurs in his narrative:

“Lovely seaside young ladies. Skin tanned raw. Needs to have put on coldcream first produce it brown. Buttered toasted bread. O which lotion mustn’t forget. Fever near her mouth. Your face it simply. Locks braided over: layer with ocean weed. Why do they conceal their ears with ocean weed hair? “(Joyce 268)

Although excerpt does not possess the lusty tone that marks many of Bloom’s different mercantile thoughts, his conception of the “lovely seaside girls” requires “lotion” and “coldcream” to satisfy the image of beauty. Richards justifies the form of objectifying women in terms of consumerism:

“Because promoters assumed that girls acted because consumers just on the specific instructions of men, they were not aware of the many ways in which advertising spoke with a girl voice and contributed to the formation of a particularly female eating subjectivity. “(Richards 207)

Blossom is conscious of his appeal to girls that make use of cosmetic products plus the idealized “seaside girl”, but, he does not hold responsibility in operating the level of resistance between men and women in the monetary space. The narrative that is certainly unique to Gerty is definitely not be subject to male intake, however , Joyce, being a man author, subscribes and manipulates the female tone specific to Gerty, furthering the contradiction.

The idea of ecriture identifies everything regarding writing that could neither become subsumed in an idea neither made to match exactly to empirical fact. It encompasses the ‘textuality’ of all discourses, and Helene Cixous could be credited since responsible for task inherently exceptional to women. Preceding her seminal work in feminist psychoanalytic theory, The Laugh in the Medusa, Cixous advanced Joyce studies in writing her petulante dissertation on his collected works. According to Cixous, Joyce’s late style is perhaps the most accurate project in the English tradition to ecriture. Cixous’ ecriture female aims at manifestation the figures of beauty literally, and exploring the outcomes of that literalization. Cixous does not privilege the “female” half of an existing binary opposition between “male” and “female”, very much like her contemporary advocates of ecriture, she concerns the adequacy of stated opposition to label the complexity of cultural realities.

It becomes evident, especially in an using Cixous’ theory to Joyce’s narrative, that, an inconsistency lies essentially of Cixous’ work: her insistence within the two antagónico logics inside ecriture girly. Primarily, Cixous claims that ecriture female is seen as the clearly female parts of the body that had been overpowered, oppressed by traditional discourse, and must be expressed by the female writer. Nevertheless , she also encourages the use of ecriture feminine for both men and women. It really is perhaps appropriate to translate Cixous’ “body”, as those of any transgressive or looking for individual, it can be conceivably her interpretation of the body itself, that has been repressed. The “body” may not even certainly be a physical body, but rather figurative bodies that possess electric power or simply cannot possess power. Traditionally, power, authority, and law have got conjectured you body, but , in consideration that not any actual body is represented, both men and women would have usage of comment on your body. By publishing as if women body could possibly be asserted, Cixous’ ecriture womanly frees it from invisibility and, at the same time, does not make it in a new unit for the universal human being.

By simply interpreting Gerty’s body since that of Cixous’ theory, a body that exists figuratively to express desire in a consumer and lovemaking sense, it will be easy to understand Joyce’s narrative as a attaining of asset and its effect on consciousness. Cixous states, “woman must place herself in to the text”as in the world and into history”by her own movement. “(Cixous 1942) Gerty’s narrative includes various discourses, all perceived by Irish manhood, Bloom and in the end Joyce, as constitutive of femininity. At the same time, her discourse emerges as a veritable code of beauty, as recognized from the perspective of the male observer. Gerty is basically the object of her task, not the subject, she is made by and through this. Similarly, she is the imagination, not the fantasist, even though her thoughts contain dreams and aspirations of an appropriate romance. Because fantasy, as object, because consumer, she’s also a ethnic commodity, a product or service of societal conceptions of what a “woman” is or perhaps should be. Cixous writes:

“Write, let no-one hold you back, let nothing prevent you: not gentleman, not the imbecilic capitalist machinery, in which the publishing homes are the crafting, obsequious relayers of imperatives handed down by simply an overall economy that works against us and off the backs, certainly not yourself. Smug-faced readers, managing editors, and big bosses don’t like the true texts of women- female-sexed texts. That kind scares them. “(Cixous 1944)

The paradox of Cixous theory compliments Joyce’s technique mainly because as a man, “writing” over into a capitalist system, he can simultaneously “writing” himself into the literary economic system. By displaying an objective woman mode of thinking, completely defined simply by consumer needs, Joyce fabricates an respected stance pertaining to Gerty, for ladies, and finally for him self as a writer. Cixous ok bye the female words as repressive, however , infuses the feminine half of the binary opposition with agency in the system that oppresses the entire body initially:

“But privately, silently, deep down inside, she expands and multiplies¦she knows much more about living and about the relation involving the economy with the drives as well as the management of the ego than any man. “(Cixous 1954)

Gerty contains her wants “in secret” to respect the girly “sensibilities” that reign above the adolescent female demographic, the domestic needs of women will be examined because dramas of competitive shopping for, selling and utilizing, through which females are always at risk because objects to be purchased but also implicated as real estate agents of consumerism.

Helene Cixous’s final lines in her essay demonstrate the function of “Écriture feminine” as a setting of add-on in male-dominated spaces, such as the capitalist sphere, but as well as a mechanism for escape and female style: “This is definitely an “economy” that can not be put in monetary terms. Where ever she adores, all the aged concepts of management will be left behind. Towards the end of a approximately conscious calculation, she finds not her sum nevertheless her big difference. “(Cixous, 1959) Joyce’s exposition of woman consciousness challenges the existing ideology of production and consumption simply by relocating man value in female sexuality and desire. In doing so , he gives cognition of female economics that could serve as a modele for twentieth-century feminists, such as Helen Cixous. “Nausicaa” is at essence, an analogy attracted between the body mercantile exchanges, which the Gerty and Bloom apply fastidiously to their encounter, and the grand narrative of Capitalism, which is rigorously used on our own. They are all a manner of giving type and significance to lifestyle in the same way while narrative by itself lends towards a similar ‘fictitious’ ordering of experience. Joyce confronts the lived actuality of the promoted spectacle, not simply as a social space pertaining to displaying products, such as ointments, creams, and lotions, nevertheless also like a coercive agent for invading and structuring human awareness. The “Nausicaa” chapter of Ulysses describes the impact of all this computed consumption on a single consumer, Gerty MacDowell. Joyce also positions himself from this analogy by simply “writing” him self and the girl counterpart in the literary economic system.

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Cixous, Helene. The Laugh with the Medusa. The Norton Anthology of Theory and

Criticism. Impotence. Vincent B. Leitch. second ed. New york city: Norton, 2010. 1942-959. Produce.

Joyce, Adam. Ulysses: The 1922 Text. Ed. Jeri Johnson. New york city: Oxford UP, 1993.

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Marx, Karl. Capital, Volume level 1: Chapter 1 . Items: The Fetishism of

Commodities and the Secret Thereof. The Norton Anthology of Theory and

Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. 2nd male impotence. New York: Norton, 2010. 663-74.

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Richards, Thomas. Individuals Lovely Beach destination Girls. The Commodity Tradition of Even victorian

Great britain: Advertising and Spectacle, 1851-1914. Stanford, CALIFORNIA: