Words from Hamlet continue to surface in the thoughts
of Stephen and Bloom throughout the day, enforcing the
symbolic connection effected by their both wearing black
clothes. In Nausicaa Bloom recalls a memorable line:
"For this relief much thanks." The fact that he is referring
to an orgasm sums up as well as anything in the chapter his
matter-of-fact attitude toward the sexual interaction that has
just taken place.
At the beginning of Hamlet a guard shows up on the
battlements to relieve another from sentry duty. Barnardo
notes that it is midnight and says, "Get thee to bed,
Francisco." Francisco says, "For this relief much thanks. 'Tis
bitter cold, / And I am sick at heart" (7-9). The phrase
floats into Bloom's mind to fit a rather different situation.
Gerty's flirtatious looks, topped off by a brazen display of
underwear, have given him a powerful sexual charge: "Did me
good all the same. Off colour after Kiernan's, Dignam's. For
this relief much thanks. In Hamlet,
that is. Lord! It was all things combined. Excitement.
When she leaned back, felt an ache at the butt of my tongue.
Your head it simply swirls." After several miserable hours in
a hostile pub and a house of morning, fantasizing about a
beautiful young woman and achieving climax in her presence has
given him deep satisfaction.
It seems safe to say that Gerty is not feeling such simple
"relief." The prose that approximates her consciousness ends
in romantic revery: "She had to go but they would meet again,
there, and she would dream of that till then, tomorrow, of her
dream of yester eve. She drew herself up to her full height.
Their souls met in a last lingering glance and the eyes that
reached her heart, full of a strange shining, hung enraptured
on her sweet flowerlike face. She half smiled at him wanly, a
sweet forgiving smile, a smile that verged on tears, and then
they parted." Bloom's prose begins with hard assessment:
"Tight boots? No. She's lame! O! / Mr Bloom watched her as she
limped away. Poor girl! That's why she's left on the shelf and
the others did a sprint. Thought something was wrong by the
cut of her jib. Jilted beauty. A defect is ten times worse in
a woman. But makes them polite. Glad I didn't know it when she
was on show. Hot little devil all the same. I wouldn't mind."
