Marian Encryptions in "Nausicaa"

Joyce's legendary love of wordplay and embedded games is still yielding fresh critical discoveries. We can only speculate how many word-secrets remain in Ulysses. Have we uncovered all the correspondences between the Telemachia and "Calypso"?¹ Is there a finite list of peristaltic metaphors in "Lestrygonians"? Is "U.P: up" family code derived from Nora's sexual need?² This note focuses on the Gerty MacDowell/Virgin Mary pairings in the "Nausicaa" episode of Ulysses. I examine seventy-six encryptions (there may be more), primarily in Gerty's narrative, that semantically echo words spoken by the Virgin Mary in Luke's gospel.

Joyce's first noted his use of "Mariolatry" in "Nausicaa" in a letter to Frank Budgen,³ and he makes specific reference to the Virgin symbol in the Gilbert schema.⁴ Thereafter, virtually every major non-genetic study of Ulysses—Gilbert, Tindall, Budgen, Sultan, Goldberg, Ellmann, Schwaber, and Kieberd,⁵ to cite just a handful—has touched on one or more of the approximately 200 Virgin allusions in the episode's 16,765 words. Scholars have typically identified prominent Marian parallels, ranging from Gerty's "ivory" countenance to the several blue shades in the colors of her clothing.⁶ The root of Joyce's more elusive and deeply encoded pairing is found in the King James Bible at Luke 1:34.⁷ At the moment of the Annunciation, Mary asks (emphasis added): "How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?" The sentence uses forms of three verbs—to be, to see, to know—plus a negation. Joyce uses these identical verbs and the negation in briefly introducing Gerty in "Wandering Rocks"(U 10.1206): "Gerty MacDowell, carrying the Catesby's cork lino letters for her father who was laid up, knew by the style it was the lord and lady lieutenant but she couldn't see . . ." (emphasis added). Fritz Senn, whose work on word patterns in "Nausicaa" pioneers this note, describes Joyce's introduction of Gerty as "a perverse twist" on the words of the Virgin Mary at the annunciation.⁸ However, Joyce's subtle inscription of Mary's question to the Angel Gabriel does not end with our first, fleeting glimpse of Gerty. The Marian verbal patterns consistently infuse the words of the Gerty narrator in "Nausicaa," as Joyce creates dazzling variations on these correspondences. Through the extended use of this encrypted device, Joyce illustrates Gerty's all-consuming devotion to Mary, while at the same time underscoring her conflicted longing for the dark stranger down the strand. In asserting her purity, Gerty struggles to negate her desire to be in a sexual love relationship, to see fully and clearly the object of her desire, and to know him carnally. Joyce represents this conflict in other Marian associations, particularly in the contested symbol of Gerty's undies, which honor the Virgin in their ribbon color yet deliberately arouse Bloom in their wondrous display.⁹

The most active organ in the mutual voyeurism of "Nausicaa" is the "eye," and Joyce assigns it to the Gerty portion of the chapter in his Linati schema. Of the episode's 1,306 lines, 770 reflect her viewpoint, and of the 76 embedded echoes of Mary's words, 72 occur in the Gerty section. This preponderance strongly suggests that the couched and argumentative Marian allusions are a deliberate and ironic subtext in the episode. As Joyce observed in a moment of understatement: "I want the reader to always understand thru suggestion rather than direct statement" (Budgen 21). The compilation of passages that follow echo the combination of verb forms of Luke 1:34, revealing how the pattern of the Virgin Mary's words functions as a subliminal presence in Gerty's consciousness and how insistently Joyce offers it for the attentive reader's discovery.

Virgin Mary-Annunciation Correspondences in "Nausicaa"

Luke 1:34: "How shall this be, seeing I know not a man."

Key

To be: The letter b refers to all forms of the verb "to be" plus words implying existence. To see: The letter s refers to all forms of "to see" plus synonyms and words...