Bodies of Modernism by Linett Maren;

Author:Linett, Maren; [Linett, Maren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Bloom assumes that the stains on the stripling’s coat are because he “slobbers his food” (8.1096). He compares being blind to the tragic death by fire of a thousand people, mostly women and children, on the General Slocum in 1904: “Poor fellow! Quite a boy. Terrible. Really terrible. . . . Where is the justice being born that way? All those women and children excursion beanfeast burned and drowned in New York. Holocaust” (8.1144–47; Gifford 186). He does not explicitly express a feeling of thankfulness that he himself is sighted, but this is implicit in his pity for the stripling.23 And he “fall[s] prey to the ‘amazing’ syndrome” when he says, “Look at all the things they can learn to do. Read with their fingers. Tune pianos” (8.1115–16).

But Bloom’s reactions are more complex than this. For one thing, he is making a genuine and spontaneous effort to expand his understanding of perception, to speculate about the perception of blind people rather than assuming they cannot perceive much at all. He also criticizes his own “‘amazing’ syndrome” comments: “Or we are surprised they have any brains. Why we think a deformed person or a hunchback clever if he says something we might say” (8.1116–17). This second-guessing is an afterthought, both for Bloom and for Joyce, who did not add these two sentences until after the chapter was set in placards (JJA 18:143). But it does show an awareness of ableist prejudice (avant la lettre) and an effort to correct (though not erase) it. In this effort, Joyce is far more progressive than even some recent critics. Dominic Rainsford, for example, ends his article “Pity in Joyce” this way: “And, somewhere in Dublin, Joyce’s blighted and rejected alter ego, Dedalus’s dead alias, the poor blind stripling, is still tapping dismally, foul-temperedly, along” (54). Here Rainsford far exceeds Joyce’s ableism by associating blindness with blight and rejection and using the blind character, though Joyce does not, as a metaphor for death.

Although to some extent Bloom infantilizes the stripling when he compares his hand to Milly’s, saying that it’s “like a child’s hand,” Cormier points out that this can be taken as a moment of connection: “Bloom’s infantilizing of the stripling is to be understood in the context of his Odyssean quest to reclaim his fatherhood. This context transforms a seemingly patronizing moment into one of paternal care” (207). Bloom also grants sexuality to the stripling, refusing more common discourses that desexualize people with disabilities. He muses, “The voice, temperatures: when he touches her with his fingers must almost see the lines, the curves” (8.1128–29). Here Bloom insists on sight as a metaphor for all perception (“almost see”) while at least acknowledging that the stripling is capable of sexual desire and contact. When he thinks, “And with a woman, for instance. More shameless not seeing” (8.1125), the text performs an ambivalence about heterosexuality and the male gaze.24 Shameless is one of those words that can mean opposing things: it can mean brazen, bold (qualities associated with Boylan), unable or unwilling to feel shame.

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