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This webpage presents the (ambiguous) evidence for a hidden plotpoint of Ulysses-- the possibility that Bloom gives the condom he habitually carries to Alec Bannon at the end of ch14 (Oxen), either with or without realizing it's intended for use with Bloom's own daughter Milly.
References to condoms in Ulysses:
9.1065: "Buck Mulligan flaunted his slip and panama. --Monsieur Moore, he said, lecturer on French letters to the youth of Ireland."
(sets up later reference in ch14)
13.877: "French letter still in my pocketbook. Cause of half the trouble. But might happen sometime, I don't think."
14 Oxen of the Sun
Joyce to Budgen: "Am working hard at Oxen of the Sun, the idea being the crime committed against fecundity by sterilizing the act of coition." [cite]
14.363: "Go thou and do likewise. Thus, or words to that effect, saith Zarathustra, sometime regius professor of French letters to the university of Oxtail nor breathed there ever that man to whom mankind was more beholden."
Stephen on Beaumont and Fletcher's sharing a 'wife'
14.460: "...for that foul plague Allpox and the monsters they cared not for them for Preservative had given them a stout shield of oxengut and, third, that they might take no hurt neither from Offspring that was that wicked devil by virtue of this same shield which was named Killchild."
14.651: "Our worthy acquaintance Mr Malachi Mulligan now appeared in the doorway as the students were finishing their apologue accompanied with a friend whom he had just rencountered, a young gentleman, his name Alec Bannon, who had late come to town, it being his intention to buy a colour or a cornetcy in the fencibles and list for the wars. Mr Mulligan was civil enough to express some relish of it all the more as it jumped with a project of his own for the cure of the very evil that had been touched on."
this is the first bridge to be crossed: Bannon is certainly not enlisting, nor would enlisting have anything to do with Mulligan's fertilisation scheme, so perhaps Joyce is using a variant on 'rhyming slang' where 'colour' and 'cornetcy' have the same first-two-letters as 'condom'.
Problematically, though, early drafts of this chapter used 'Seymour' for 'Bannon' here, and Seymour was already named at the end of ch1 as going into the army.
14.776: "Maledicity! he exclaimed in anguish. Would to God that foresight had but remembered me to take my cloak along! I could weep to think of it. Then, though it had poured seven showers, we were neither of us a penny the worse. But beshrew me, he cried, clapping hand to his forehead, tomorrow will be a new day and, thousand thunders, I know of a marchand de capotes, Monsieur Poyntz, from whom I can have for a livre as snug a cloak of the French fashion as ever kept a lady from wetting. Tut, tut! cries Le Fecondateur, tripping in, my friend Monsieur Moore, that most accomplished traveller (I have just cracked a half bottle avec lui in a circle of the best wits of the town), is my authority that in Cape Horn, ventre biche, they have a rain that will wet through any, even the stoutest cloak..."
here it's made quite explicit that Bannon is looking for a condom, for use with Milly
14.1442: "Any brollies or gumboots in the fambly?"
we don't know who asks this (or whom he's asking) but Bannon is likeliest
130k analysis of this closing section of Oxen
14.1480: "Sir? Spud again the rheumatiz? All poppycock, you'll scuse me saying. For the hoi polloi. I vear thee beest a gert vool."
why else would Bloom be emptying his pockets here, except retrieving the condom?
14.1494: "Every cove to his gentry mort. Venus Pandemos. Les petites femmes. Bold bad girl from the town of Mullingar. Tell her I was axing at her. Hauding Sara by the wame. On the road to Malahide. Me? If she who seduced me had left but the name. What do you want for ninepence? Machree, Macruiskeen. Smutty Moll for a mattress jig. And a pull alltogether. Ex!"
Milly is the bold bad girl
14.1523: "Cornfide. Wha gev ye thon colt? Pal to pal. Jannock. Of John Thomas, her spouse. No fake, old man Leo. S'elp me, honest injun. Shiver my timbers if I had. There's a great big holy friar. Vyfor you no me tell? Vel, I ses, if that aint a sheeny nachez, vel, I vil get misha mishinnah. Through yerd our lord, Amen."
the obvious interpretation of 'Wha gev ye thon colt?' is that that someone (probably the Scotsman Crotthers) is asking Lyons who tipped him on Throwaway. But the hidden meaning may be another 'co-' code for 'condom'
The yiddish dialect is probably Mulligan, and makes no sense applied to the racetip.
14.1534: "Rome boose for the Bloom toff. I hear you say onions? Bloo? Cadges ads? Photo's papli, by all that's gorgeous. Play low, pardner. Slide. Bonsoir la compagnie. And snares of the poxfiend. Where's the buck and Namby Amby? Skunked? Leg bail. Aweel, ye maun e'en gang yer gates."
it's only here that Bannon realises who Bloom is.
15.1740: "THEODORE PUREFOY (In fishingcap and oilskin jacket) He employs a mechanical device to frustrate the sacred ends of nature."
Bloom may only gradually realise during ch15 that by giving the condom to Bannon he has (virtually) 'killed' his own grandchild, symbolised at the end of the chapter by his vision of Rudy
15.2348: "BLOOM (regretfully) When you come out without your gun."
everyone has assumed this means he's been made impotent by his recent masturbation, but it's been about 3.5 hours, and lacking his condom (for the first time in ages) fits as well or better
cf also "If you have a gun on stage in act one, the audience will expect it to go off by act three."--Anton Chekov [cite]
18.1234: "Ill knock him off that little habit tomorrow first Ill look at his shirt to see or Ill see if he has that French letter still in his pocketbook I suppose he thinks I dont know deceitful men all their 20 pockets arent enough for their lies"
pix and history
etymology of 'French letters'
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