Previous
Episode 12: Cyclops
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Ulysses, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Alienation and the Quest for Belonging
Literature, Meaning, and Perspective
Love and Sex
Fate vs. Free Will
Religion, Atheism, and Philosophy
Irish Identity and Nationalism
Summary
Analysis
At sunset, three teenaged girls play on the rocks at Sandymount Strand. They are Cissy Caffrey, Edy Boardman, and Gerty MacDowell. Cissy’s younger twin brothers Tommy and Jacky are playing on the sand, and Edy Boardman’s infant brother is in a stroller, laughing jollily and playing with the loving, joyful Cissy. Tommy and Jacky start fighting over a sand castle, and Cissy helps them reconcile.
This episode’s tone is practically the opposite of the one in “Cyclops”—it’s naïve, sensitive, and sentimental, rather than absurdly grandiose and violent. At the same time, its subject matter is arguably far more disturbing. In the Odyssey, Nausicaa is the Phaeacian princess who finds the shipwrecked Odysseus on the shore of her island. He’s dirty and naked, and he frightens Nausicaa’s handmaidens, who run away from him. But Nausicaa nobly cleans and takes care of him instead. Here, the girls playing on Sandymount Strand signal that there’s a clear correspondence between this episode and the story of Odysseus and Nausicaa.
Themes
Meanwhile, Gerty MacDowell sits on the rocks, “lost in thought, gazing far away into the distance.” In a cutesy stream of consciousness, she reflects on her beauty, her refined manners, and the makeup tips she learned from the Princess Novelette weekly magazine. Sad and pensive, she nearly says something, but she lets out a giggle instead. She is thinking about her “lovers’ quarrel.” The Wylie boy used to ride his bicycle past her window, but he has stopped ever since his father started making him stay home to study. Gerty feels hurt, but even though the Wylies are Protestant, she is still hopeful. She is proud of her neat, stylish dress, and especially her lucky blue underwear.
Gerty MacDowell is clearly the Nausicaa figure in this episode, and she’s the first woman to get any significant space to speak in the novel. She´s in many ways a stereotypical teenage girl: she’s daydreaming about boys, she’s extremely self-conscious about her appearance, and she’s obsessed with showing off her unique individual beauty. Despite her high hopes for her romance, in reality, her connection to Reggy Wylie is extremely tenuous: they have never really spent time together, and it’s nearly impossible for Protestants and Catholics to intermarry in early 20th century Ireland.
Themes
Suddenly, Gerty feels a sense of “gnawing sorrow” and starts to wish that she could be home alone, to cry in peace. She imagines her marriage to Reggy Wylie, who once kissed her on the nose at a party, but she also imagines that she could find a manlier, more passionate husband. She imagines herself as a model housewife, cooking and caring for her tall, mature, mustachioed husband.
Gerty’s voice is quickly taking precedence in this episode, and while she’s clearly a caricature of a teenage girl, it’s not clear that Joyce really means to be ridiculing her (like he probably was with the previous episode’s narrator, for instance). Her daydreams about Reggy—a boy she’s evidently only met once—suggest her interests are limited to the rather narrow concerns of men, family, and the home. But of course, Joyce is more likely criticizing the way his contemporary Irish culture forced women into this role, rather than judging Gerty for fitting into it. After all, Gerty’s romantic fantasies are no less unrealistic than the fantasies of the novel’s older male characters—and especially Bloom, who also associates fulfillment with a happy home and family.
Themes
Tommy wants to take his ball back from Edy’s baby brother. Edy says no, but Cissy tosses Tommy the ball and starts to play with the baby to distract him. Cissy mentions the baby’s bottom. This “unladylike” word offends Gerty, and Edy complains that a gentleman standing nearby probably heard it. (Although it’s not yet obvious, this gentleman is Leopold Bloom.) But Cissy doesn’t care. Gerty thinks about Cissy’s famously boisterous, unselfconscious, brave personality.
Gerty demonstrates her strong commitment to traditional gender roles, in which femininity requires (among other things) delicacy, innocence, and shyness. She’s uncomfortable when Edy challenges these roles, but this later proves deeply ironic, as the episode soon takes a distinctively “unladylike” turn. Similarly, Joyce doesn’t reveal Bloom’s identity at first, which means it only becomes possible to fully understand this scene in retrospect (once his identity is revealed). Of course, this is a technique he constantly uses throughout the novel, in part to explore the difference in the way people experience literature and their lives.
Themes
Get the entire Ulysses LitChart as a printable PDF.
The church choir and organ sound in the background, where the church is organizing a “men’s temperance retreat.” This saddens Gerty, who thinks about her father’s alcoholism and misbehavior—like hitting Gerty’s mother. Still, Gerty loves her father despite his faults. After Dignam’s death, Gerty’s mother made a point of warning her husband about drinking. Gerty considers herself “a sterling good daughter” because she takes care of her mother and helps out in the house.
The novel’s description of the church services suggest a symbolic link between Gerty and the Virgin Mary, and these church services also underline Gerty’s preoccupation with questions about morality and propriety throughout this episode. Joyce is evidently pointing to the link between Gerty’s traditional values about gender and the church’s influence in Ireland. Moreover, the theme of temperance (abstention from alcohol) links her to Bloom, who advocated it in the last episode. Alcoholism was clearly a problem in Dublin in 1904—at least a dozen characters in this novel suffered from it and tore their families apart as a result. (They include Gerty’s father, Dignam, Simon Dedalus, Myles Crawford, Mrs. Cunningham, Bob Doran, and several others.)
Themes
The twins, Tommy and Jacky, play with the ball until Jacky kicks it into the rocks. The gentleman sitting nearby (Bloom), who is wearing all black, catches the ball and tosses it to Cissy. It rolls over to Gerty, who tries to kick it away. At first, she misses, but then she gives “a jolly good kick” and sends the ball flying down the beach. She blushes and sees the gentleman’s face, which is “the saddest she had ever seen.” She smells incense and hears prayers from the nearby church.
Bloom is still dressed for Dignam’s funeral, so Gerty assumes that he’s still in mourning. Of course, she’s grossly misinterpreting the situation—but so does everyone who projects their feelings onto others in this novel. Joyce is showing how people misinterpret situations to fit their own needs, desires, and fantasies. In fact, some critics (and Joyce himself) suggested that this misinterpretation goes further in this episode, and the cutesy voice narrating it isn’t really Gerty’s at all—rather, it’s Bloom imagining what he thinks Gerty would be feeling. Gerty’s “jolly good kick” is actually significant, because the reader will soon learn that her other leg is lame—thus, the kick is another example of misrepresentation.
Themes
The twins keep playing around. Cissy Caffrey plays peek-a-boo with the baby, then tells him to say “pa pa pa pa pa pa pa.” She folds over his wet blanket and gives him his bottle to stop his tears. Frustrated with the baby and the twins, Gerty gazes at the sea and appreciates the church music.
Although she’s constantly dreaming about finding a husband and starting a family, curiously enough, Gerty has no interest in the children. She prefers immersing herself in the faraway beauty of the sea and the church music, which reinforces the sense that her daydream is really a distant fantasy, rather than an immediate desire for marriage and children.
Themes
Gerty then notices that the nearby gentleman (Bloom) is looking at her, with his deep, “superbly expressive” eyes. She immediately thinks that he is foreign, and she again notes that he is sad and in mourning. She starts to think that he might be the husband she has been dreaming about. She doesn’t care if he’s a sinner or a Protestant: she will forgive him if he will only “embrace her gently, like a real man.” Gerty thinks she will be this man’s “refuge” and “comfortress,” which reminds her of Father Conroy comforting her and talking about the Virgin Mary in church. She thinks about making Father Conroy a teacosy as a token of gratitude, then remembers the white and gold cuckoo clock in his home.
Gerty might be right about Bloom being an unusually emotional and sensitive man, but pretty much everything else she thinks about him is completely wrong. Her desire to be the “comfortress” for a mature “real man” again shows that her entire vision of herself and her life is basically derived from the social norms she’s learned from other people and institutions like the church. Unlike Bloom and Stephen, then, she doesn’t question received knowledge or think for herself. Of course, it’s difficult to say what stance (if any) Joyce is taking about Gerty’s absolutely conventional domestic aspirations. Perhaps he’s showing how the church brainwashes young women into thinking they can never be anything more than housewives. Perhaps Gerty’s monologue is really an element of Bloom’s fantasy, and Joyce is therefore pointing out how Bloom is incapable of really imagining a woman’s experience except through stereotypes and objectification.
Themes
The twins continue to fight over the ball, which frustrates Gerty. To stop them from running into the sea, Cissy chases after them. Gerty thinks that it would be indecent if Cissy tripped and upturned her skirt, and the nearby gentleman (Bloom) noticed. Prayers to the Virgin Mary continue inside the church. The gentleman stares at Gerty’s stockings while Father Conroy looks at the Blessed Sacrament, and Gerty swings her foot back and forth to the church music.
This brief scene is structured around a tension between purity and indecency. Gerty clearly thinks of herself as a respectable and chaste virgin, but her sexual insinuations about Cissy suggest that her mind isn’t as pure as she makes it out to be. Meanwhile, Gerty’s fantasies about domestic bliss with Bloom contrast with his evidently sexual interest in her (because he’s staring at her legs).
Themes
Cissy and Edy both notice the gentleman (Bloom) and Gerty looking at each other, and Edy asks Gerty what she’s thinking. Gerty says she’s wondering about the time, and Cissy decides to run over and ask the gentleman for the time. He nervously pulls his hand out of his pocket and puts on an expression of self-control and grace. He reports that his watch has stopped, but it’s probably at least eight o’clock. While the churchgoers sing and Father O’Hanlon burns incense over the Sacrament, Gerty notices the man put his hand back in his pocket. She feels a warmth and irritation in her skin, which means that she’s about to start her period. The man looks at her, “literally worshipping at her shrine.”
It may not be obvious yet, but Bloom’s hand is in his pocket because he’s masturbating. And even though she doesn’t say it directly, Gerty knows exactly what he’s doing. Of course, there are two possible ways to interpret Bloom and Gerty’s eye contact, Cissy’s decision to talk to Bloom, and Bloom’s awkward response to her. All these things can seem completely innocent or absolutely repulsive—depending on whether the reader knows that Bloom is masturbating. In turn, the church music can either seem like a sign of the ideal, chaste romance that Gerty yearns for, or else a totally inappropriate or even obscene backdrop for Bloom’s public masturbation. (This was the scene that originally got Ulysses banned for obscenity in every single English-speaking country.) Therefore, this scene is a notable example of how Joyce writes to give his readers multiple simultaneous perspectives that allow them to examine the same situation from multiple angles.
Themes
The girls get ready to go home. Edy jokingly mentions Gerty’s heartbreak, but Gerty is hurt, because she truly does feel heartbroken. She nearly cries, but she makes a joke instead. She suddenly feels better and decides that she has no need for Reggy. Gerty notices that Edy is clearly angry and jealous about something, but she feels no sympathy for her. Edy and Cissy play with their little brothers and get them ready to leave.
Gerty’s heartbreak, friendly rivalry with Edy, and sudden burst of confidence are both completely sincere and totally cliched. Whether she’s fantasizing about Bloom, devastated at Reggy Wylie’s rejection, or proud of not needing him, her thoughts and feelings continue to revolve entirely around men.
Themes
Gerty starts to say something, but she coughs instead and pretends that the noise was really coming from the church. As the twilight fades, the church bells start to ring, and Gerty imagines painting the beautiful scene. She thinks about the sentimental books she likes to read and the poetry that she secretly writes in her journal. She reflects on the accident that led to her “one shortcoming,” and she promises that she could “make the great sacrifice” and dedicate her whole life to making the gentleman (Bloom) happy. She wonders if he’s married, and she realizes that she could not bear to become a loathsome mistress. But she could still serve him, as he could still be “the only man in all the world for her.”
Gerty’s interest in popular, emotional, but unoriginal art shows that she’s the product of a modern society. In other words, she expresses her feelings and perceptions through other people’s fiction, poetry, and paintings. Joyce is clearly criticizing this kind of mass-produced sentimental art, as he suggests that it encourages people to live unoriginal, interchangeable lives. Gerty essentially projects a mass-produced fantasy onto her own future—and onto Bloom. In the process, she avoids thinking or feeling for herself.
Themes
Just when the benediction ends in the church, fireworks start to go off. Cissy and Edy run over with their brothers to watch, but Gerty stays back because she is entranced by the passionate gaze of the gentleman (Bloom). Feeling a shudder of pleasure, Gerty leans back to look at the fireworks, exposing her legs. She knows what she’s showing off, but she’s not ashamed, since her feelings for the gentleman are romantic, not just sexual. As the fireworks continue to go off, Jacky Caffrey tells Gerty to look. A Roman candle shoots off and Gerty leans so far back that she exposes her blue knickers. Gerty lets out a moan and the rocket explodes, representing Bloom’s ejaculation. Everyone cheers and then falls silent.
Two climaxes coincide: the churchgoers take the sacrament at the same time as the fireworks go off (which is an extended metaphor for Bloom orgasming). Both represent communion (between the worshipper and Christ, and between sperm and egg). Since Gerty represents the Virgin Mary, it would be possible to view Bloom as God, enabling the virgin birth of Jesus. If Gerty’s monologue can be taken at face value, then she is happy to expose herself to Bloom because she sees serving him sexually as an expression of her romantic love. (But if this version of Gerty is really a projection of Bloom’s imagination, then he’s just inventing elaborate excuses for his creepy behavior.)
Themes
Gerty sits up and glances at the gentleman, whom the narrative confirms is Leopold Bloom. The novel briefly jumps into Bloom’s mind: he feels guilty and brutish for indulging the young girl, but he also sees her sympathy and the forgiveness in her eyes, and they both know that she won’t tell their secret. Cissy calls for Gerty to leave with them, and Gerty decides to send Bloom a message by waving around her scented handkerchief. Hoping that she and Bloom will reunite someday, she smiles at him and then starts walking down the beach. Actually, she starts limping, because she’s lame.
Bloom’s arguably inappropriate, embarrassing, and predatory thoughts about Gerty force the reader to evaluate him from a very different light than in “Cyclops” (where he looked like a noble, tolerant hero). So does Gerty’s disability, which Joyce uses to challenge his readers’ preconceptions (as well as Bloom’s). Her lame leg gives important context to her fantasies of beauty, romance, and domestic bliss: tragically, it seems that she was fantasizing about a beauty that others will not see in her and a future that she might not be able to have because of others’ prejudice.
Themes
The novel cuts to Bloom’s thoughts. He’s shocked to see Gerty limp off, but he decides that it doesn’t make him any less attracted to her. He wonders if she’s “near her monthlies” and remarks that women behave strangely when they’re menstruating. Bloom is glad that he didn’t masturbate over Martha’s letter in the morning, but waited for Gerty instead. He also thinks that this makes up for missing the woman in front of the Grosvenor Hotel during his chat with M’Coy. He thinks about how women are keen to show off their bodies, both through their fashionable clothing and without it. He imagines Gerty and her friends chatting at school, dreaming of finding the perfect man, jealously comparing their appearances.
Bloom’s monologue, which will take up the rest of this episode, stands in obvious contrast with Stephen’s monologue from “Proteus” (which was also on Sandymount Strand). In the last two episodes, the reader has encountered Bloom through other characters’ eyes (the nameless debt collector’s, and then Gerty’s). This provides a wildly different perspective on him than his interior monologue—and that’s Joyce’s point. He wants to show how the same person can seem sympathetic, pathetic, noble, or incredibly creepy, when viewed through different people’s eyes or in different contexts. Of course, he also does this by melding so many different literary styles throughout the novel.
Themes
Bloom remarks that women are “devils” during their periods, and he wonders what Gerty saw in him, a somewhat unattractive older man. He notes that Gerty showed off her hair, and he starts thinking about Molly and Boylan. He wonders if Boylan pays Molly for sex (and, if so, how much). And he realizes that his watch stopped at four thirty, which was probably the exact time that Boylan and Molly had sex.
There’s quite a bit of dramatic irony in the contrast between Gerty’s fantasy about Bloom in the first half of this episode and Bloom’s utter bafflement at what Gerty could have been thinking in the second half. Bloom essentially convinces himself that Gerty was asking for it, which disturbingly suggests that he doesn’t feel much (or any) guilt about his behavior. But, according to the description of her in the first half of this episode, Gerty was fully aware of what Bloom was doing and did encourage him. This makes it all the more important to ask whether that first section represented Gerty’s actual feelings or just the fantasy that Bloom projected onto her. Molly and Boylan’s tryst now stands as an obvious parallel to Bloom’s own voyeuristic evening with Gerty.
Themes
Bloom rearranges his shirt, which is wet from his ejaculation. His mind shifts constantly from one thing to another. He imagines Gerty going home to her normal, innocent life, and he wonders what it would have been like if he had chatted with Cissy when she came over to ask for the time. He remembers once mistaking a friend for a prostitute, and once visiting a prostitute. He imagines how difficult unpopular prostitutes’ lives must be, and he speculates that women like being with married men. He thinks about how he might seduce a woman, or manipulate her into loving him.
Bloom’s thoughts about Gerty could scarcely be more different than her thoughts about him: he became the subject of her lofty marital fantasies, while he’s curious about her everyday life and doesn’t even plan to really meet her. Molly is still the only person he ever thinks about at all romantically. In this passage, his feelings about other women involve a complex mix of sympathy and sexual objectification, as though he’s being pulled back and forth by competing instincts.
Themes
Bloom looks ahead at Gerty and her friends, who are off in the distance watching fireworks. He dwells on Cissy, criticizing her appearance and noting how lovingly she treats the baby. And while he notes that Gerty didn’t turn around to look back at him, he’s confident that she knew what he was doing. He thinks that women are more perceptive and aware than men. Molly and Milly are both that way, he muses—and his thoughts return to Gerty, who he thinks wore transparent stockings because she knew what she was getting into.
Bloom’s fixation on the baby is probably a reflection of his desire to father another child. Although his comments about women are favorable, they’re also sweeping generalizations. And they’re also self-serving, because they allow Bloom to convince himself that Gerty was genuinely interested in him. Of course, Gerty was extremely perceptive and self-conscious in the first half of this episode, but it’s unclear if she just happened to fit Bloom’s stereotype, or if the narration was actually imposing Bloom’s stereotypes on her.
Themes
Another rocket goes off, and Gerty turns around. Bloom feels like she is looking for him. He’s relieved to have let off steam by masturbating, after his stressful afternoon at the pub and Dignam’s house. He remembers hearing Gerty’s friends call her name. He also laments how girls get so few years to enjoy their youth, before they are forced to start having children. He remembers that he ought to check on Mrs. Purefoy at the hospital.
Again, Bloom feels sympathetic to women, but he still only views them in relation to himself and his own sexuality. For instance, he laments the way young women are forced to become housewives, but he’s less interested in their freedom than in their sexual availability before marriage. Bloom’s comments about visiting Dignam’s house are a reminder that not everything he does on June 16 gets included in the novel. In fact, this episode is set several hours after “Sirens,” and Bloom and Martin Cunningham’s visit to the Dignam family has been totally left out.
Themes
Bloom’s mind drifts to the question of whether good women like Mrs. Breen and Mrs. Dignam are unlucky to end up with lazy drunkards as husbands, or whether they’re partially responsible for their husbands’ misbehavior. His thoughts turn to Molly, and he ponders the bizarre coincidence that his watch stopped exactly when she was with Blazes Boylan. He sees a watch’s magnetic needle as a metaphor for the magnetism that brings men and women together. He wonders how Molly feels.
Bloom’s ideas about women and misfortune are obviously tied up with his own feelings of betrayal by Molly and guilt for failing to be a better husband. What he’s really asking is if Molly’s affair is his fault. The tenuous metaphor about watch needles implies that Bloom’s watch stopped because Molly directed her magnetic attraction away from him and towards Boylan. Even though this metaphor doesn’t make much sense, it does show how Bloom puts his faith in rational, scientific explanations of the world. (To give some contrasting examples, Gerty views the world in terms of outward beauty, love, and destiny, while Stephen views it in terms of transcendent artistic beauty, freedom, and truth.)
Themes
Bloom notices the rose-like smell of Gerty’s cheap perfume. He imagines the tiny particles blowing from her to him, and he thinks about the way women’s smells stick on their possessions. He asks where people’s odor really comes from, and if men give off different smells to attract women. He sniffs inside his waistcoat, but smells the soap he’s carried with him all day, which reminds him of the lotion he has to pick up for Molly, the money he owes the shop owner, and the three shillings that Joe Hynes owes him.
Bloom’s scientific mind examines the mechanics of how he managed to smell Gerty’s scent, rather than thinking about what message she was trying to send by waving around her perfume-covered handkerchief. His scientific, remarkably unromantic view of attraction is totally the opposite of Gerty’s sentimental daydreaming. The soap represents Bloom’s tendency to try to control emotions by sanitizing them—he explains his deepest feelings through science in order to cope with them.
Themes
Bloom notices a mysterious “nobleman” walking before him on the beach and wonders who he might be. This reminds him of the man in the brown macintosh. He notices a lighthouse flashing in the distance and thinks of other things that shine in the night, the wavelengths of different colors of light, and the sun setting over Ireland, his country. He thinks about the rock Gerty was sitting on and notes how attractive he finds girls of her age. His thoughts about Gerty mix with his memories of Molly, his desire for Martha, and his feeling of resentment towards Blazes Boylan.
Bloom’s perceptions and memories repeatedly cut off his meandering train of thought. Notably, in this passage, Bloom fixates on the sights he sees, but when Stephen visited this same beach in “Proteus,” he was entirely focused on sounds. This is an example of parallax perception: they see the same scene in entirely different ways. The sunset’s colors mix together, just like Bloom’s feelings. While Stephen walked on the beach in the morning to clarify his thoughts and plans, Bloom relaxes and lets his own contradictory thoughts coexist, without trying to necessarily resolve them. For instance, he even remembers one of the novel’s significant but minor mysteries—the identity of the man in the macintosh—but he’s only contemplating this mystery, not trying to solve it.
Themes
Bloom notices a bat flying around, realizes that the nearby church has finished its services, and starts thinking about the nature of colors again. He then starts thinking about birds flying across the ocean, sailors living unhappy lives away from their families, and the frightening fate of sailors who die at sea. A last firework goes off in the sky, and it’s nine o’clock, when the evening postman makes his rounds and everyone settles down for the night. Bloom thinks of sailors again and remembers taking a pleasure cruise with Molly and Milly—all the men got sick, and all the women were frightened. He thinks about playing with Milly in her childhood, then he starts to imagine Molly’s childhood in Gibraltar.
Bloom’s thoughts about sailors at sea point to his own correspondence with Odysseus and foreshadow his encounter with the eccentric sailor Murphy in “Eumaeus.” Just like Odysseus and the sailors he mentions, Bloom has journeyed away from home, and it’s time for him to return. (Of course, his twelve hours away from Molly so far don’t begin to compare to Odysseus’s twenty years away from Penelope.) Bloom’s memories of Molly and Milly again show that what he wants most in the world is a happy family.
Themes
Increasingly tired, Bloom asks where he should go next and reflects on his busy day. In particular, he thinks about the fight in Barney Kiernan’s bar. He supposes that the citizen and his crew didn’t have particularly bad intentions. He thinks of widows and widowers, and he marvels at the coincidence that Mrs. Breen is married to the lunatic Denis Breen, and not himself. He remembers Keyes’s ad and his plan to buy Molly a petticoat.
Bloom’s strikingly sympathetic analysis of the citizen’s attack again shows that he errs on the side of decency, tolerance, and goodwill. (In this case, he even seems to explain away the hate in a hate crime.) Even though he’s thinking about a homecoming, Bloom also isn’t sure he wants to return to Molly after her afternoon with Boylan. Still, his thoughts return to her, and specifically to ways to win her affection (and presumably get her to pick him over Boylan).
Themes
Bloom sees a piece of paper on the beach, but he can’t read it. He picks up a stick and decides to write a little message in the sand for Gerty. He writes, “I. […] AM. A.” But he runs out of space, gives up, and starts erasing the letters with his boot and throws his stick into the sand. He feels sleepy and starts losing coherence. He thinks vaguely about Molly’s tour around Ireland and remembers a scene from the novel The Sweets of Sin. When Bloom is falling asleep on the rocks, the cuckoo clock starts sounding in Father Conroy’s house. Gerty MacDowell hears it and thinks that “the foreign gentleman that was sitting on the rocks looking was / Cuckoo / Cuckoo / Cuckoo.”
Bloom’s message references the end of “Proteus,” when Stephen had an epiphany and scribbled out a poem on a piece of paper. But Bloom doesn’t manage to write anything. This failure likely symbolizes his inability to fully articulate his own identity throughout the novel. More specifically, he doesn’t want to assert his identity as an individual, like Stephen—rather, he’s looking for belonging in a community (or family). But just like he doesn’t actually want to meet Martha Clifford, it appears that he doesn’t want to establish real contact with Gerty—he prefers for her to remain a fantasy. Presumably, this is because he doesn’t want to threaten his relationship with Molly (even though she’s cheating on him). Since the word “cuckold” is a reference to the cuckoo bird, Father Conroy’s cuckoo clock is an overt symbol of Molly’s infidelity. At the same time, the cuckoo clock also implies that “the foreign gentleman […] was cuckoo,” or crazy, when he was watching Gerty.
Themes
