The Women of Ulysses: Milly Bloom

Part of an occasional series on the women of Ulysses.

To listen to a discussion of this topic, check out the podcast episode here.

Poor Milly Bloom. She’s the daughter of one of literature’s greatest heroes, but she’s been given short shrift. Joyce critics over the decades have largely ignored her or written her off as a “recycled” Molly or as a substandard substitute for poor little Rudy, the Blooms’ deceased infant son. There’s more to Milly than meets the eye, though. At the very least, she seems to be the only Bloom who’s enjoying her life. Let’s take another look at Milly, and perhaps we can re-evaluate her as better than a second-tier Bloom.

Milly is commonly seen as a reproduction of her mother Molly. Indeed, reproduction seems to be a recurring theme when we consider Milly’s traits. Some commentators see evidence in her name, that “Milly” and “Molly” are almost the same name, but that the “i” is slimmer than the “o,” hinting at a difference in the body type between the young girl and older woman. Milly’s budding career is a reproducible artform - photography. When she’s first surreptitiously mentioned by Buck Mulligan in “Telemachus,” she’s even referred to simply as “Photo Girl.” Leopold, for his part, describes her in “Hades” as:

“Molly. Milly. Same thing watered down. Her tomboy oaths. O jumping Jupiter! Ye gods and little fishes! Still, she’s a dear girl. Soon be a woman.”

Certainly mother and daughter share some similarities, but it does seem a little harsh to describe her as nothing but her mother “watered down.” Molly certainly sees herself reflected in her daughter, both in personality and looks. In “Penelope”, Molly paints a picture of a young girl, just turned fifteen, who’s confident, outgoing, and cognizant of her own beauty (and all too happy to receive the attention it brings). It clearly frustrates Molly as a mother, but she concedes “I was just like that myself,” and when she cringes at how men ogle her daughter, she thinks, “they all look at her like me when I was her age,” raising the issue of another kind of “reproduction.” It seems mother and daughter have a great deal in common, though Milly is hardly “watered down.” If anything, she makes Molly conscious of her own aging, such as when Molly tries to dissuade Milly from wearing make-up too young, arguing that her skin and lips are youthful and beautiful now and it’s “a pity they won’t stay that way.” It seems Molly sees herself as the watered-down version, a faded beauty whose youthful looks have re-emerged in her daughter. Molly accepts her age and maturity, but rather than giving into the fear that she is metamorphosing into a haggard old woman, she gains a glimpse of her own metempsychosis, her rebirth in this younger version of herself.

Leopold also sees himself reflected in his daughter. In “Lestrygonians”, he thinks that Milly’s interest in photography must be a “hereditary taste,” as his father also had an interest in the artform. In “Nausicaa”, he notes that her left breast is more sensitive than the right, much like his own. In “Ithaca”, we learn that both father and daughter have exhibited some form of “somnambulism,” better known as sleepwalking, though Milly’s is limited to sleep talking. Molly recalls Milly pretending to understand as Leopold explains things he read in the newspaper. Molly sees this behavior as evidence that Milly is “sly of course that comes from his side of the house.” I wonder how much of this skill Milly picked up from Molly pretending to listen to Leopold’s lectures around the house.

It’s significant, then, that Leopold refers to Milly as a “looking glass” when he composes his little bit of verse about her in “Calypso”:

“O, Milly Bloom, you are my darling.
You are my lookingglass from night to morning.”

Milly is a lookingglass for both mother and father, who see themselves reflected and reproduced in her, and most importantly, they see themselves reflected in her together. It’s too reductive to see Milly as only a paltry sequel to Molly. She’s as much Leopold as Molly, and her radiance only came into being through their shared love. She is a physical proof of Leopold and Molly’s love, now faded, and as they ponder and fret over Milly’s future, they can see themselves, united and reconciled, in her. However, since Milly never appears on the page in Ulysses, we only see her through her parents’ memories, hopes and worries. We can’t truly know Milly because she is a projection of these emotions, almost like the nymph illustration hanging over the Blooms’ bed. She is an empty vessel into which they can pour their own neuroses, so when we analyse Milly, we are really learning more about Molly and Leopold.

It’s no wonder then that Milly is cast through the lens of their sexual anxiety. Milly has just turned 15 (her birthday was June 15), and we learn in “Ithaca” that she had her first period nine months and one day prior, and in “Nausicaa” that:

“Frightened she was when her nature came on her first. Poor child! Strange moment for the mother too. Brings back her girlhood.”

Certainly this is a momentous occasion in any young woman’s life, but Milly’s menarche has driven her parents to distraction. Leopold reports in “Ithaca”:

“By the narrator a limitation of activity, mental and corporal, inasmuch as complete mental intercourse between himself and the listener had not taken place since the consummation of puberty, indicated by catamenic hemorrhage, of the female issue of narrator and listener, 15 September 1903, there remained a period of 9 months and 1 day during which, in consequence of a preestablished natural comprehension in incomprehension between the consummated females (listener and issue), complete corporal liberty of action had been circumscribed.”

It is noted in this section that Rudy’s death has disrupted the Blooms’ physical connection, as they’ve been practicing coitus interruptus ever since, fearful of their own reproduction, but Milly’s maturity seems to have disrupted them “mentally” or emotionally. It’s natural for parents to worry about their children as they grow up, but the Blooms’ reaction seems really drastic. Milly’s age is significant - a golden birthday, turning 15 on the 15th. Molly lost her virginity at age fifteen. Milly crossed a major threshold of maturity on the 15th of September. Leopold is aware of Molly’s sexual history and is worrying that his daughter has the same proclivity. As Molly herself said, “I knew more about men and life when I was 15 than they’ll all know at 50.” Bloom’s panic about Milly’s reproductive maturity is based on Molly's reproductive activities.

As mentioned in the “Ithaca” passage above, Bloom’s “corporal liberty of action [has] been circumscribed,” meaning he’d like to go and check in on Milly in Mullingar, maybe act as a chaperone, but keeps missing his opportunity. He mentions popping down to see her repeatedly throughout Ulysses, but never quite makes a concrete plan. He’s primed to think of Molly’s infidelity as he reads Milly’s letter over breakfast - it arrived at the same time as Boylan’s letter to “Mrs. Marion Bloom,” and Milly casually mentions her beau Bannon singing “Boylan’s... song about those seaside girls.” He knows popping down to snoop on his teenage daughter won’t be well-received, though:

“She mightn’t like me to come that way without letting her know. Must be careful about women. Catch them once with their pants down. Never forgive you after. Fifteen.”

There is a note of irony to this concern, as it seems it was Leopold who chose to send her away, as Molly thinks in “Penelope”:

“...now with Milly away such an idea for him to send the girl down there to take photographs on account of his grandfather…”

Screen Shot 2021-07-28 at 2.13.03 PM.png

Furthermore, it’s Milly’s absence that makes Molly’s tryst with Boylan possible. There won’t be a nosey daughter poking around while they’re busy at their “music lesson.”

As Leopold reads Milly’s letter over breakfast in “Calypso”, one seemingly innocent line from Milly’s letter tips him off that this Bannon character has designs on his daughter. She writes:

“We are going to lough Owel on Monday with a few friends to make a scrap picnic.”

If we read between the lines, we come to realize that “picnic” is Joycean code for “sex.” Consider, for example, Molly and Bloom’s picnic on Howth, where they did more than drink lemonade under the rhododendrons. There’s also the “picnic” that took place in the funeral carriage, evidenced by the crustcrumbs left on the seat. The men aren’t so terribly grossed out by little bits of bread, but by the thought that they might be sitting on semen stains. As Simon Dedalus points out, “It’s the most natural thing in the world.” Even Molly and Boylan make a picnic meal of Plumtree’s Potted Meat in the Blooms’ bed. This whole affair at Lough Owel is a big red flag for Leopold.

The text subtly implies that Milly no longer “belongs” to her father, but to Bannon. Recall that the first mention of Milly in Ulysses is as Bannon’s “Photo Girl.” When we meet Bannon in “Oxen of the Sun,” it seems Leopold’s fears are not totally unreasonable, as he is a cad who speaks in innuendo and double entendre. It’s hidden in a tangle of “Oxen of the Sun” -style fancy language, but don’t be fooled by the flowery verbiage. Bannon opines:

“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.”

His forgotten cloak is really a forgotten condom (marchand de capotes is also slang for condoms). You can imagine what those seven pouring showers really were. Bannon reports that, despite the lacking cloak and the torrential “showers” that he and his young lover were “neither of us a penny the worse.” At least according to Bannon, he and Milly “had a picnic” together, sans cloak. Bloom is justified in worrying about Milly’s potential “reproduction,” then. Another veers into creepier, Freudian territory. This is exactly the type of picnic that gets people pregnant.

Some commentators see Leopold’s preoccupation with Milly’s sexuality as evidence that he is feeling incestuous jealousy against Bannon rather than paternal protectiveness. It’s true that Leopold often thinks about Milly having a keen sexual awareness despite her young age. Consider his memory in “Calypso” of how she reacted to the lecherous Professor Goodwin:

“Poor old professor Goodwin. Dreadful old case. Still he was a courteous old chap. Oldfashioned way he used to bow Molly off the platform. And the little mirror in his silk hat. The night Milly brought it into the parlour. O, look what I found in professor Goodwin’s hat! All we laughed. Sex breaking out even then. Pert little piece she was.”

Poor old professor Goodwin was using his mirror to upskirt Molly as she left the stage, and Bloom believes that Milly’s discovery of the mirror is evidence of her sexual knowledge at a young age. In my view, it’s a bit presumptuous to assume she understood Goodwin’s game, but it does seem like the kind of self-serving reasoning of an older man preying on a young girl: “Oh, she’s so mature beyond her years; she’s asking for it.” Very creepy. On the other hand, it could be the fretting of a father worried about his daughter as she takes the first steps towards adulthood. There are many such instances throughout the novel, such as when in “Lestrygonians” he remembers her as “shapely” while bathing. If the reader believes Milly to be a reproduction of Molly, then that could be a justification for Bloom’s seemingly lustful thoughts of his daughter.

Following this logic, Bannon poses a threat to Bloom, as he is essentially cock-blocking Bloom from Milly. Milly’s first menstruation was just over nine months ago, so if Leopold had been more proactive, he could have impregnated her with his own incestuous heir. That’s the reason that he is so interested in Mina Purefoy’s birth - she would have conceived her child at the same time that he could have conceived a child with Milly, and he'd be presiding over the birth of his own heir if he had acted on his desire. Blech. One commentator sees this feeling of incestuous regret played out on the strand with Gerty McDowell, another virginal seaside girl standing in for Milly. Through his masturbation, Bloom achieves what Tilly Eggers refers to as “immaculate intercourse” with Milly via Gerty as a proxy, meaning sex without ever actual touching her or inseminating her. Barf.

I introduce this theory here not because I find it particularly credible or central to the themes or narrative of Ulysses, but to argue against it. Bloom is unable to process his anxiety about Molly’s infidelity directly, so he projects his insecurity onto Milly, but I think it’s unlikely that he wants to have sex with her, even subconsciously. Bloom is a bit of a creep, but not to that degree. He is preoccupied with his role as a father, and thus projects that paternalistic insecurity onto Milly as well, but the realization that he can’t control her is eating him up. He can’t intervene between Bannon and Milly, though it’s clear he wants to hop on a train to Mullingar and act as chaperone. In “Calypso”, he thinks:

“A soft qualm, regret, flowed down his backbone, increasing. Will happen, yes. Prevent. Useless: can’t move. Girl’s sweet light lips. Will happen too. He felt the flowing qualm spread over him. Useless to move now. Lips kissed, kissing, kissed. Full gluey woman’s lips.”

Perhaps it’s another sign that he’s an ineffectual man, unable to control a single woman in his life. Perhaps he didn’t perform his fatherly duty properly.

I read one article that described “the problems of sin, guilt, and incest… to be at the heart of the novel.” I see the sin and guilt, but I’m skeptical about the incest. It’s important to remember again that Milly never appears “on-screen” in Ulysses, only as a memory or hallucination, so whatever we “know” about her is a projection of her parents’ concerns and insecurities. The same is true for readers, both novice and expert alike. I think reading Ulysses as an essentially Oedipal narrative is a projection of the reader rather than the author’s true intention and may be born out of an assumption that a young woman’s sexual availability is the entirety of her value. Death and rebirth are also powerful themes in Ulysses, and if we look at Milly's true power within the narrative, we will see she is much more than a nubile stand-in for her mother.

Apart from provoking insecurity in her parents, what function does Milly serve in the narrative of Ulysses? A pall of death hangs over the day, whether it be the death of Stephen’s mother, Paddy Dignam or Rudy Bloom, among others. At times, the weight of death becomes unbearable, such as when Bloom is walking home from the porkbutcher, imagining his life on a model farm in Palestine. His vision shifts suddenly and darkly, casting his dream into a nightmare. A second vision pulls him out of his despair:

“Quick warm sunlight came running from Berkeley road, swiftly, in slim sandals, along the brightening footpath. Runs, she runs to meet me, a girl with gold hair on the wind.”

The girl with the golden hair is young Milly, disappearing back into the ether whence she came as Bloom regains his psychological footing. Later in “Oxen of the Sun”, Bloom sees the Promised Land of Agendath Netaim turned to ash once again:

“Agendath is a waste land, a home of screechowls and the sandblind upupa. Netaim, the golden, is no more. And on the highway of the clouds they come, muttering thunder of rebellion, the ghosts of beasts.”

And again it is a vision of Milly that breaks the spell:

“And lo, wonder of metempsychosis, it is she, the everlasting bride, harbinger of the daystar, the bride, ever virgin. It is she, Martha, thou lost one, Millicent, the young, the dear, the radiant. How serene does she now arise, a queen among the Pleiades, in the penultimate antelucan hour, shod in sandals of bright gold, coifed with a veil of what do you call it gossamer. It floats, it flows about her starborn flesh and loose it streams, emerald, sapphire, mauve and heliotrope…”

Milly, as a projection, is a tangled symbol of dangerous sexuality and Freudian pitfall. But under her own agency, Milly has the power to banish visions of death and decay. Her sexuality, her ability to reproduce and create new life, are symbols of a bright future born of love. Bloom laments that he has produced no heir, but he has a powerful, radiant heir staring him in the face, should he choose to see her. Also in “Oxen of the Sun,” Milly is invoked thus:

“Return, return, Clan Milly: forget me not, O Milesian.”

“Milly” sounds like “Molly,” yes, but her name also evokes the name “Milesius,” the mythical invader of Ireland. Milly’s roots run deep, to Ireland’s earliest ancient days, and she brings that ancestral energy into the present. With her “return,” she ushers in an equally bright and glorious future, at least as Leopold’s heir, if not for all Ireland.

Leopold has trouble seeing Milly as his true heir because he is still mourning the loss of his male heir. Even if Milly will not carry on the name Bloom to her children, she can still carry on the Bloom family’s culture and heritage. After all, Judaism is matrilineal. Even so, Bloom is desirous of a male heir. Following the example of Odysseus reuniting with Penelope through their son Telemachus, he turns to Stephen as a possible adopted son in the final episodes of Ulysses. However, the novel ends without the concrete establishment of an heir for the house of Bloom. If Leopold had only been in the library office with Stephen that afternoon, he might have learned the solution to ensuring his legacy as well as reconciling with Molly.

In “Scylla and Charybdis”, Stephen lays out his theories about Shakespeare, leaving his intellectual friends unimpressed. Stephen explains how, at the end of his life, Shakespeare was in a low place - no son, cuckolded, but that he was able to achieve peace through his daughter Susanna’s daughter:

“What was lost is given back to him: his daughter’s child.”

There can be no reconciliation through male heirs. Look at Hamlet: everyone ends up dead because King Hamlet’s heir tries to avenge his murder. Stephen believes that Shakespeare’s epiphany that reconciliation comes instead through a female heir is represented in his later plays. The qualities of those plays’ heroines are reflected in the bold young Milly Bloom. Marina of Pericles represents the sea, and Milly was fearless riding on the Erin’s King, “not a bit funky. Her pale blue scarf loose in the wind with her hair.” Perdita of Winter’s Tale presents absence, as Milly is in Mullingar at present. Finally, Miranda of The Tempest represents wonder, and Milly appears in “Circe” as “fairhaired, greenvested, slimsandalled, her blue scarf in the seawind simply swirling, breaks from the arms of her lover and calls, her young eyes wonderwide.” Focusing on The Tempest in particular, Stephen emphasizes that things worked out swimmingly for Prospero, Miranda’s father:

“If you like the epilogue look long on it: prosperous Prospero, the good man rewarded, Lizzie, grandpa’s lump of love, and nuncle Richie, the bad man taken off by poetic justice...”

Stephen’s Shakespeare theory, then, is really a message for a man who never hears it. Jean Kimball writes:

“...the bulk of the dubious biographical data which he selects, distorts, and even invents, about the man Shakespeare parallels the life situations of Leopold Bloom, about which Stephen knows nothing.”

Kimball sees this odd coincidence as evidence of a hypostasis between Stephen and Leopold, a merging of minds between the two men akin to the merging of God the Father and God the Son in the Holy Trinity. The only possibility of Bloom learning about Stephen’s Shakespeare theory, and by extension the solution to his inheritance crisis, is by cultivating a relationship with Stephen. There are some hints in the final episodes of Ulysses that Leopold can assure his succession and the reconciliation of his house by cultivating a relationship between Stephen and Milly, as well.

Just prior to his departure from Bloom’s house, Stephen sings the song of Little Harry Hughes and the Jew’s daughter, which amuses Bloom at first, but then:

“How did the father of Millicent receive this second part?
With mixed feelings. Unsmiling, he heard and saw with wonder a jew’s daughter, all dressed in green.”

It’s an antisemitic bit of verse, with the Jew’s daughter turning out to be sort of bloodthirsty, so it is not a perfect blueprint for a relationship for Stephen and Milly. Also, just given the difference of their personalities, Milly and Stephen seem like a terrible match, in my opinion. However, there are clues it may have primed Bloom to think about Milly as his successor. Bloom begins hatching his scheme to have Stephen return to teach Molly Italian, “because the way to daughter led through mother, the way to mother through daughter.” After Stephen leaves, Bloom considers the parallels of the moon and women, beginning, “Her antiquity in preceding and surviving successive tellurian generations…” Perhaps the kernel of an idea of a female heir? Shortly thereafter, Bloom also considers an insurance policy he bought for Milly, intermingled with other family documents. At least on paper, Milly is legally Bloom’s heir. He just needs to make the leap of faith to see her that way, truly. At least according to Stephen’s theory, the way to true reconciliation of their family will be through Milly’s children, Molly and Leopold’s grandchildren. Milly’s sexuality then is not a family wrecker, but instead a family builder, and the link to a hopeful future. The only question that remains is, will Stephen be the father?

The Women of Ulysses: Milly Bloom

Further Reading:

Who is the Man in the Macintosh?

Who Was the Real Reuben J. Dodd?