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5. Sexual Uncertainty in Finnegans Wake
- University of Michigan Press
- Chapter
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5 SEXUAL UNCERTAINTY IN FINNEGANSWAKE It is a truism that Finnegans Wake deals excessively with sexuality.1 It is equally obvious, however, that the text evades signi‹cation in general, and in particular signi‹cation of its own sexual talk.2 In this sense Joyce’s ‹nal book is also the last turn of the screw in his attempt to undermine the power over life. If, as Patrick A. McCarthy states, the Wake’s three main topics are the Fall, the question as to what happened in Phoenix Park, and the uncertainty of the meaning of the letter,3 the main issues of the text all converge in sexuality. Underlying this view of a book that even professional readers regard as obscure4 is that Finnegans Wake is more or less a “regular” book. Is this tenable, however, considering that often its “Englishness” is identi‹ed by hardly more than “Englishy” grammar? Polyglot, punning, portmanteau words resembling Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky lingo5 prevent any “conventional” attempt at taking at face value “what happens.” But the assumption of Finnegans Wake’s normality appears surprising only if one denies the fact that it is “normal” for texts to group clusters of meaning around ‹gures such as Stephen or the siglum HCE,6 or around motifs or thematic foci—as I have tried to show for sexual confession—and that plot, action, or meaning is a function of these elements.7 Due to the differential character of language and the intertextual depth of texts, secure or complete meaning can never be more than a temporary illusion. Hence Finnegans Wake’s prominent position in the world of literature is not primarily due to its actual difference in kind from other texts. Instead, it is remarkable for forcing the reader to experience literature’s normal, that is, antiessential, condition with an extraordinary degree of complexity and without offering any stronghold into which a simplistic reading could withdraw. Consequently, a characteristic quality of Joyce’s other books is brought to the text’s surface in Finnegans Wake: the reader or critic does not pas144 sively receive the text’s “meaning” as something given. This is precluded not only by its inter- and intralinguistic amalgamations of styles, but also by the abundance of referential narratives in the text. Assuming that Finnegans Wake squares literary normality, does the text also square the circle of truly subversive confessional writing by dealing with sex in language without itself putting it into discourse? Does it instead solely provide linguistic possibilities that the reader is left to “realize” not in the sense of the OED’s ‹rst de‹nition of the word, “to understand or grasp clearly,” but in the sense of the second, “to convert into real existence or fact”?8 We may recall that this strategy of disburdening oneself from discursive force was foreshadowed, for instance, by Molly’s use of ambiguous pronouns. The Fall: “You’ll Die When You Hear” The answer to these questions can only be found in the way the text deals with sex, particularly Earwicker’s. His attempts to divert attention from what happened are presented as indicators of his guilt. In the text his stuttering —a habit he shares not only with his avatar “Bygmester Finnegan, of the Stuttering Hand” (FW 4.18) but also with the equally fallen Lewis Carroll and Charles Stewart Parnell, and with the sixteenth-century inventor of the confessional, St. Charles Borromeo9—serves as a somatic marker of his evasive movement. Being a Protestant,10 Earwicker is not required to go to confession. Assuming the role of an “amateur psychologist,” John Gordon attributes his speech problems to the impossibility of relieving himself of the burden of his guilt in confession.11 Accordingly, the speech defect indicates that Earwicker is under as much pressure from the profane will to knowledge as any Catholic could be from confessional force. When the thunder accompanying Earwicker’s fall alliteratively imitates the stuttering voice (“bababada[. . .],” 3.15–17), sinning is elevated from the status of plot device to that of a structuring principle. Just as in the cases of Father Flynn’s paralysis or Gerty MacDowell’s lameness, Earwicker’s stuttering highlights his resistance to the power over life. It is important to note, however, that the marker is located in the sphere to which it refers—language—so that it is symbolic as well as real, obstructing confession by failing to yield de‹nite meaning. Introduced by the mention of Adam and Eve from...