Bad Girls: Gerty, Cissy, and the Erotics of Unruly Speech

The playful eroticism of girls’ speech in “Nausicaa” provides an opportunity for Joyce to explore the power and the limits of both master narrative and subversive speech in the novel. Gerty and Cissy’s use of euphemism, baby talk, and transgressive erotic speech positions them in a complex relationship with social dictates for Edwardian girls and women. They both restrict their speech to allowable social norms and press against them, sometimes subtly but, especially in Cissy’s case, more often boldly. As such, the speech of these characters reveals much about narrative power and narrative resistance as it allows Joyce an opportunity to disrupt his own control within Ulysses.