On Mon, 16 Jun 2008, Chris Doss wrote:
> O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes
> like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda
> gardens yes and all the queer little streets and the pink and blue and
> yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and
> cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain
> yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or
> shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I
> thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to
> ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain
> flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so
> he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like
> mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
A wonderful passage, but it's remarkably how often it's interpreted exactly backwards. Many commentators say this is Molly affirming her love for Leopold in the end after spending most of her hypnogogic meanderings thinking about her past and prospective adulteries -- that's its an affirmation of ultimate loyalty. But it's exactly the opposite: this is Molly explaining why she'll be able to twist Leopold around her little finger so that she'll be able to have an affair with Stephen Daedalus when he's living in their house even as outrageous as that seems in so many ways because of the difference in age, the proximity, Bloom's feelings for the boy, the scandal since the boy can be expected to write about it later when he's a famous poet (which is one of the many things that turn her on about the idea, being immortalized). It's simple, she says: I've always been able to get Leopold to do anything just by tossing him a little sex. It intoxicates him. Especially if I indulge his weird fantasies a bit. It's been true from the very beginning -- and then follows this passage, which is about "the day I got him to propose to me" when she realized "I knew I could always get round him" and so "I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on until he said yes..." -- and it's that sentiment that this final passage is the culmination of.
All of which I realized for the first time when I reread the book a couple of years ago. I don't know what I was thinking the first time, but it wasn't that. But now it seems inescapably obvious if you read the last dozen pages at all slowly and remember the chapter before.
Michael