Previous
Plumtree’s Potted Meat
Jingling represents sex—specifically Blazes Boylan’s affair with Molly Bloom. It also illustrates how Joyce connects music and sound to thought and memory. The jingling sound appears in two main forms. First, the quoits (brass rings) on Leopold and Molly Bloom’s bed are loose, so they jingle whenever anyone moves on the bed. Secondly, the horses who pull Boylan’s car wear bells, so his car is always jingling.
Joyce introduces the jingling bed early in the novel, during “Calypso.” Later, the novel repeatedly describes Boylan’s jingling car in “Sirens,” while he’s making his way across Dublin to visit Molly. The implication is clear: when Molly and Boylan have sex, the bed is going to jingle like crazy. Surely enough, in “Penelope,” Molly says that the bed jingled so loud that she and Boylan decided to have sex on the floor instead. Whenever the jingling sound appears, then, it’s a reference to Molly’s affair with Boylan.
Joyce’s “jogjaunty” jingle sounds also show how Bloom’s awareness of Molly’s affair is constantly haunting him. It lingers in the back of his mind, just like the jingling sound lingers throughout the “Sirens” episode. Every so often, the main storyline pauses and a line about Boylan jingles into the story. For instance, when Bloom thinks of Molly, the novel cuts to the “jingling, hoofthuds” of Boylan’s horses across town. When Father Cowley plays the piano, Bloom notices his “conductors legs too, bagstrousers, jiggedy jiggedy,” and then he thinks of Boylan: “jiggedy jingle jaunty jaunty.” In addition to showing how Joyce uses repeated sounds and unusual syntax to give this episode’s prose a musical quality, these examples show how the sounds of the Ormond Hotel bar keep reminding Bloom of Boylan’s jingling carriage (and by extension his affair with Molly).
Jingling Quotes in Ulysses
The Ulysses quotes below all refer to the symbol of Jingling. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Episode 11: Sirens
Quotes
Bronze by gold heard the hoofirons, steelyringing.
Imperthnthn thnthnthn.
Chips, picking chips off rocky thumbnail, chips.
Horrid! And gold flushed more.
A husky fifenote blew.
Blew. Blue bloom is on the.
Goldpinnacled hair.
A jumping rose on satiny breast of satin, rose of Castile.
Trilling, trilling: Idolores.
Peep! Who’s in the … peepofgold?
Tink cried to bronze in pity.
And a call, pure, long and throbbing. Longindying call.
Decoy. Soft word. But look: the bright stars fade. Notes chirruping answer.
O rose! Castile. The morn is breaking.
Jingle jingle jaunted jingling.
[…]
Done.
Begin!
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Ulysses LitChart as a printable PDF.
Jingling Symbol Timeline in Ulysses
The timeline below shows where the symbol Jingling appears in Ulysses. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Episode 4: Calypso
...she says “Mn” (“no”) and rolls over, causing the brass rings on the bedstand to jingle.
(full context)
Episode 7: Aeolus
Lenehan and MacHugh watch through the window as Bloom walks away, and Crawford jingles his keys around and proposes the newsmen go drink with Lambert and Dedalus. O’Molloy, MacHugh,...
(full context)
Episode 11: Sirens
...key motifs. This introductory section is full of imagery related to sounds, like “steelyringing,” “trilling,” “jingling,” “warbling,” and “tschink [and] tschunk.” This introduction ends, “Done. / Begin!”
(full context)
...tries to strike up a conversation with Kennedy, but she ignores him. The narration comments, “jingle jaunty jingle.”
(full context)
...triangle in The Sweets of Sin. At just that moment, four o’clock, Bloom notices a jingling carriage crossing the Essex Bridge and feels that he ought to follow it. The shopgirl...
(full context)
...Simon Dedalus comes over to chat with Dollard, who encourages Simon to keep singing. A jingling sound means that Boylan’s car is leaving. Bloom and Douce both watch, and they’re both...
(full context)
...bar. Meanwhile, Bloom continues listening to the piano, thinking of Molly, and remembering the “jiggedy jingle jaunty jaunty” of concert music.
(full context)
...Sonnambula when a woman sleepwalks to the man she desires—and, in turn, of Blazes Boylan’s “jingle jaunty.”
(full context)
...briefly cuts to Blazes Boylan, who is slowly making his way across town in his jingling carriage. Then it returns to the bar, where the men continue drinking and enjoying the...
(full context)
...he’s writing to her in the first place. At the same moment, Blazes Boylan is jingling his way past Dlugacz’s butcher shop.
(full context)
Episode 15: Circe
...Corny decides to get on with his night. He and Bloom say goodbye. While Corny jingles off in his carriage, the men communicate their pity for Stephen from a distance with...
(full context)
Episode 18: Penelope
...To avoid staining the sheets, she gets out of bed, but it makes a loud jingling sound that annoys her. In fact, in the afternoon, the bed was so loud that...
(full context)
...that Leopold is fast asleep, probably because he visited a prostitute. She complains about the jingly bed and proclaims that she and Leopold haven’t really improved their living conditions in their...
(full context)
