Homeric Parallels in "Circe"

Homeric Parallels in Joyce’s “Circe”

                                    By: Erin Davis

       Within the chapter “Circe” there are strong Homeric parallels, but to better understand them one must know the role Circe played in Homer’s Odyssey.  Odysseus and his men go ashore on the island of Aiaia hoping to find provisions for their ship.  Odysseus sends out twenty three of his men to explore the island but only one returns.  The sole crew member to return from the expedition informs Odysseus that a group of tame wolves and loins came and greeted the men of the search party and then lured the men back to a palace.  When the men arrived at the palace they were served drinks that were really potions and were transformed into pigs by Circe.  Circe then placed the men into sties.  After hearing all of this from the crew member Odysseus sets off to rescue his men from their prison.  On the way to Circe’s palace Odysseus encounters Hermes who warns him of Circe’s magical powers and tells Odysseus to eat some moly root to protect himself from them.  When Odysseus arrives at Circe’s palace she offers him a potion and he takes it but is not affected by its magic because of the moly root.  When Circe takes out her magic wand to complete the transformation from man to beast Odysseus draws his sword on her.  Circe is so taken aback by Odysseus’s boldness that she frees all his men and returns them to their human form.  Circe also opened her palace to the crew so that they may eat and relax.  Odysseus and his crew stayed on for a year before leaving Circe’s island.  Before the men left Circe did tell Odysseus how to safely pass the Island of the Sirens as well as Skylla and Charybdis. 

            Joyce’s “Circe” chapter takes place in the red-light district of Dublin, or Nighttown as Joyce calls it.  Bloom is on a mission to find Stephen and along the way the reader is subjected to Bloom’s many bizarre hallucinations and heavy handed sexual comments made by the prostitutes on the street.  After the longest hallucination scene of the chapter (the court room) Bloom finds himself at the steps of Bella Cohen’s brothel.  It is from this point on that the parallels between Joyce’s Ulysses and Homer’s Odyssey become the most apparent. 

There are a few minor Homeric parallels before he arrives at Bella’s brothel that should be noted though. Before Bloom reaches the brothel he does encounter a dog that changes from one breed to another three times in one page.  At one point this dog is described as a “wolfdog” by Joyce.  This “wolfdog” can be easily compared to one of Circe’s tamed animals drawing Odysseus’s men closer to her palace.

When Bloom first arrives at Bella’s place of business he encounters a prostitute named Zoe.  Zoe should be seen as a parallel to Homer’s use of Hermes in his Circe piece of the Odyssey.  Zoe provides Bloom with Stephen’s whereabouts (inside the brothel) and she also informs Bloom as to the reason why Bella is operating the brothel in the first place.  Bella is running the brothel so that she can put her son through Oxford.  These two actions can be closely related to Hermes warning Odysseus of Circe’s charms and magical powers, as well as how to guard himself against them. 

The character of Bella is meant to mirror that of Homer’s Circe.   There are several instances where the two women are quite similar. Bella is a madam of a brothel in Nighttown.  Circe is an enchantress who lives on an island waiting for stranded men to come to her.  Bella uses the power of sex to lure men into her place of business to spend their money. By doing this Bella is preying on their inner carnal desire for sexual gratification.  Circe uses magic to lure men into her palace so that she may seduce them and turn them into beasts.  Bella, who transforms into “Bello” due to one of Blooms hallucinations, turns Bloom into a “perfect pig.”  Circe transforms almost all of Odysseus’s men into pigs. 

Through my research I also found that there are over thirty-three different references to pigs or pig like behavior within the “Circe” chapter.  Some of these references include:  pig crubeen, weak hams, cloven hoof, pigsticky, pigfoot, pork kidney, pigdog, porker, perfect pig, truffles, grunting, snuffling and rooting (Fitch 2).  There are also other critics that make connections between the environment that Nighttown has to offer its inhabitants and accommodations fit for swine.  John Burton stated: “The brothel functions as a sty and both the prostitutes and their patrons are chained to the sordidness of Nighttown.”

While conducting my research I also found a great deal of feminist criticism pertaining to Joyce’s treatment of women in Ulysses.  There was one critic, Lynnette Fitch, who spoke specifically about the “Circe” chapter though.  In her criticism of “Circe” Fitch stated:

Bloom, Stephen and Lynch are wallowing in the mire, like Odysseus’s men as pigs  in Circe’s sties, when they enter the stew or brothel of Bella Cohen.  Their physical desire for sexual contact with females has reduced them to this level.  Intellectually, like Odysseus’s men, they know this degrading environment is beneath them, and  yet they end up there nonetheless. Socially, they have descended as far as it is possible to do in Dublin by entering the prostitution district, just as Odysseus’s men have fallen from castle to sty under Circe’s spell.

(Fitch 2)

 In this portion of her criticism of “Circe” Fitch takes notice of the parallel between Bloom and Stephen and Odysseus’s men that were transformed into pigs.  Further into Finch’s treatment of “Circe” she stated:

         I feel that by connecting a powerful female archetype, the witch or enchantress, with prostitution, and by recasting prostitutes as the exploiters rather than the exploited, Joyce is betraying an obvious misogyny.  His parallel between Odysseus’s transformed crew and male patrons of brothels implies that the blame for men’s degraded status belongs to external female sources (such as a witch or prostitute) rather than an internal male one…

(Fitch 2)

Here Fitch simply states her position on Joyce’s treatment of women in “Circe.”  It is clear that she feels Joyce is blaming women for the men’s weaknesses.  I found this to be a very interesting criticism of the chapter and well worth mentioning.

Annotated Bibliography

Barger, Jorn.  “Homeric Correspondences in James Joyce’s Ulysses.”  Aug. 2000  

<http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/ulysses/homeric.html>.

What else is there to say about the James Joyce Portal.  This site is shrine to all things Joyce.  I would recommend this site to anyone that needs to look up anything on Joyce.

Burton, John. "ClassicNotes: Ulysses Chapters 13-15." GradeSaver.com. 5 July 2000.  GradeSaver. 4 December 2002      <http://www.gradesaver.com/ClassicNotes/Titles/ulysses/summ5.html>.

As always websites that give you a summary of a chapter are greatly appreciated.  I would say this site was just as handy as Cliffs Notes.

Fitch, Lynnette E.  “Bloom Bewitched: Fear of Female Sexuality in ‘Circe’: How Rampant Witch Allusions Reveal an Inherent Joycean Misogyny.” Summer 1999. <http://www.pulli.com/lynnette/ucd/thesis/index.html>.

This site supplied me with a well-written feminist criticism of Joyce’s treatment of women in “Circe.”  I feel that Fitch was well spoken and proved her point of view clearly.  I also found my information on all the different pig references here, which was surprising to me.  I thought I would have been able to access that information elsewhere, but I found that to be a difficult task.  All in all if you need some good grassroots feminist criticism of James Joyce Fitch is a good place to start.