The Language of Flowers

“P. S. Do tell me what kind of perfume does your wife use. I want to know.” - Ulysses, p. 78

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

Mr. Leopold Bloom is predisposed to skulk. “Lotus Eaters” is a particularly skulky episode, during which Bloom kills an hour in Dublin’s Westland Row before the funeral of his friend Paddy Dignam at eleven. Conveniently, Westland Row Post Office is where one Henry Flower, Esq. receives mail. Of course, this Flower is really a Bloom, and he is picking up a flirtatious letter from Martha Clifford, object of a very half-hearted epistolary affair. Having found an alleyway out of sight of all but a wise, sphinx-like tabby, Bloom is finally able to indulge in Martha’s correspondence.

Martha’s letter creates a parallel with the preceding episode “Calypso”, as both include letters that we, the readers, are able to read in full. The contents of the letters, one from Bloom’s daughter Milly and one from his saucy pen pal, reveal intimate connections between Bloom and women in his life, albeit in very different ways. Each letter captures the art and “technic” of its respective episode.

The technic of “Calypso” is narrative, as we see in Milly’s direct narration of the events of her life in Mullingar, described in the breezy slang a teen girl away from home for the first time. The page can barely contain Milly’s gusto for her life and surroundings:

“We are going to lough Owel on Monday with a few friends to make a scrap picnic. Give my love to mummy and to yourself a big kiss and thanks. I hear them at the piano downstairs.”

There may even be the excitement of new romance on the horizon (much to the chagrin of Bloom):

“There is a young student comes here some evenings named Bannon his cousins or something are big swells…”

Worse than that, Milly even refers to the man responsible for vigor in Molly’s life:

“...he sings Boylan's (I was on the pop of writing Blazes Boylan's) song about those seaside girls. Tell him silly Milly sends my best respects.”

Likewise, the art of “Calypso” is economy, and it’s work that brought Milly to Mullingar in the first place, where she is developing her skills as a photographic assistant:

“I am getting on swimming in the photo business now. Mr Coghlan took one of me and Mrs. Will send when developed. We did great biz yesterday.”

Martha’s letter, by contrast, is stuffed with “stale air and innuendo,” as Richard Ellmann put it. The emotionality of Martha’s letter is scattered, and she is anything but breezy and easygoing. She’s all business, though in a different manner than Milly:

“I got your last letter to me and thank you very much for it. I am sorry you did not like my last letter. Why did you enclose the stamps?”

No one would accuse Martha over being overly saccharine or lovey. She focuses instead on some ambiguous transgression:

“I am awfully angry with you. I do wish I could punish you for that. I called you naughty boy because I do not like that other world. Please tell me what is the real meaning of that word? Are you not happy in your home you poor little naughty boy?”

Though her letter is suggestive, it’s not particularly lusty or passionate. Her language is direct and clear but not particularly evocative. It’s also strangely polite and formal, while also betraying a desperation for his affection. She uses “please” a lot more often than one would expect in a smutty letter:

“I do wish I could do something for you. Please tell me what you think of poor me. I often think of the beautiful name you have. Dear Henry, when will we meet? I think of you so often you have no idea. I have never felt myself so much drawn to a man as you. I feel so bad about.”

Martha’s tone slides between dominant and submissive:

“Please write me a long letter and tell me more. Remember if you do not I will punish you. So now you know what I will do to you, you naughty boy, if you do not wrote. O how I long to meet you. Henry dear, do not deny my request before my patience are exhausted. Then I will tell you all. Goodbye now, naughty darling, I have such a bad headache. today. ”

Martha’s mood is hard to pin down. For Bloom, it’s enough that she’s responded at all because it means she hasn’t written him off entirely. He thinks prior to reading her letter:

“A flower. I think it's a. A yellow flower with flattened petals. Not annoyed then?”

Bloom is less concerned with the quality of her prose than with sustaining her attention. Martha’s letter and Bloom’s reaction are in keeping with this episode’s technic: narcissism. At most, Martha’s letter inspires self-gratification in Bloom, who makes plans to masturbate in the Turkish bath in Lincoln Place (though ultimately fails to do so). He doesn’t really seem to care about how his actions affect Martha’s emotions. He certainly doesn’t care about the patrons or workers at the Turkish bath who may encounter the aftermath of his narcissistic emission (which again, thankfully he does not accomplish). As with most aspects of Bloom’s love life, he is spinning his tires here. If “Calypso” is fueled by stimulants, “Lotus Eaters” is bogged down by narcotics.

Martha’s letter is shrouded in mysteries. We’ve discussed Martha’s secret identity and the code Bloom uses to encrypt her address in a previous post. For someone who presumably met Bloom through a phoney job posting for a typist, Martha seems conspicuously lacking as a writer. Some commentators believe that Martha’s letter is a pastiche of letters that Nora Barnacle wrote to James Joyce, as Nora’s grammar was far from perfect. There’s also a clue in Bloom’s teasing, “Wonder did she wrote it herself.” Joyce once received an uncharacteristically poetic letter from Nora. When he pressed her about it, she revealed she had copied it from a book.

Joyce’s best known letters are the erotic letters he wrote to Nora, which range from mild flogging to a cornucopia of scatalogical horrors. Martha’s kittenish threats to punish Bloom for his alleged transgressions recall the tone and cadence of Joyce’s milder letters to Nora. Bloom’s penchant for dirty letters likely arose from the author’s own letter-writing. In real life, only Joyce’s letters are preserved while Nora’s are lost. In “Lotus Eaters,” on the other hand, we are privy only to Martha’s letter, though we do have clues that Bloom has pushed boundaries much further than she has.

Assuming that Martha’s responses are enthusiastically consensual, she could be purposely littering her letters with errors as part of a kinky power play. Perhaps they are the punishment that she’s threatening, as they mar the clean, clear copy a “gentleman in literary work” might require from a “smart lady typist.” Too many, often-but-not-always male, commentators assume Martha has failed as a typist because she is inferior in some way - too little education, too low class. I submit that she may instead be very skilled at writing provocative letters, an interest shared by her creator. She can provoke Henry with her errors and get his attention, which she clearly desires. Has he threatened her with erotic punishment in his letters as well? Within the confines of Ulysses, it’s never revealed. He may have tried his hand at this approach in earlier letters, as a way to play the role of a dominant, masculine man, in contrast to his true identity as a cuckold. Based on his hallucinations in “Circe”, however, I suspect he’d still rather be the floggee than the flogger. Feminine Leo loves to be spanked, but Masculine Henry does the spanking.

Martha’s identity as an eager kinkster is my own idea, but there may be other hints to her character in her errors. We’ve discussed previously that this may be a clue that Martha is not a native English speaker. Joyce worked for years in continental Europe as an English as a second language teacher, so it seems possible that he could have been inspired by the writing of his students during those years to plant some peculiar errors in Martha’s letter.

One particularly striking error is Martha’s declaration that she “does not like that other world.” We can easily assume that she meant “word” (and in some editions of Ulysses, a hapless editor has changed it to “word”), but knowing that Martha has a connection to the otherworld gives her presence in Ulysses a mythic, metaphysical quality. It even subtly links Martha to Stephen’s final showdown with his mother’s spectre in “Circe,” who tells Stephen, “I pray for you in my other world.”

Though Martha is not a corpse-chewing ghoul (as far as we know), the only time she appears “on-screen” in Ulysses is in Bloom’s hallucinations in “Circe,” in which she is none too happy with him. Martha desperately wants to meet Bloom in the material world (“O how I long to meet you. Henry dear, do not deny my request before my patience are exhausted.”), but he is happy to keep her tucked away in the otherworld - in his personal fantasies. Bloom’s relationship with a woman in the material realm (Molly) is currently filling him with misery (“Are you not happy in your home you poor little naughty boy?”), so perhaps a fantasy woman is more appealing.

Bloom’s affair with Martha is just as he wants it- purely hypothetical, existing only in the ether, pure self-indulgence and narcissism, in keeping with the technic of this episode. If stringing Martha along is keeping her interested in Henry, then Henry’s work is done. Martha may not be playing games at all and is just being used by Bloom, functioning as a balm for his bruised ego as he passively allows his wife to make him a cuckold.

Martha’s interest in Henry exists entirely in that ethereal other world. Meeting in person would break the spell. Martha, however, doesn’t like being kept in her box. She makes this clear enough in her letter, but there’s not much action she can take. When Bloom enters the otherworld of “Circe,” he is now on Martha’s playing field where she can confront him:

“MARTHA (Sobbing behind her veil.) Breach of promise. My real name is Peggy Griffin. He wrote to me that he was miserable. I'll tell my brother, the Bective rugger fullback, on you, heartless flirt.”

When Martha learns Bloom isn’t the least bit like her gallant-yet-vulgar Henry, she’s likely to react badly. Bloom doesn’t take her frustration with his alter ego personally, but if it were Leo Bloom that she hated, it might actually sting.

Setting aside Martha’s etheric otherworld, let’s think more literally about what the “other word” might be. It must have been something crude, since Bloom thought there might have been a chance that she would cut him off over it:

“A flower. I think it's a. A yellow flower with flattened petals. Not annoyed then?”

It also has to be a word that Martha doesn’t recognize, as she politely demands:

“I called you naughty boy because I do not like that other world. Please tell me what is the real meaning of that word?”

Apart from the awkward syntax of that question, Martha’s perplexity lends to the theory that she is an English language learner. Either Martha doesn’t know this word due to her own naivete or due to lack of familiarity with vulgarities or slang. In either case, this seems to be Bloom’s routine with women. Molly notes in “Penelope” that Bloom tried the same trick on her:

“...then he wrote me that letter with all those words in it how could he have the face to any woman after his company manners making it so awkward after when we met asking me have I offended you...”

We see the same M.O. - he uses crude language to push boundaries and sees where it takes him. Molly let it slide. Martha seems to have been offended but comes back for more nonetheless. Maybe her offense is an act? Maybe, maybe not. It’s not uncommon for someone to allow their boundaries to be pushed beyond their limit if they want something enough from the offender, in this case I’m guessing attention. Or perhaps she’s still holding out for that job as a typist?

So, what is the offending word? John Gordon believes that it is “cunt,” a word that also sounds harsh by today’s standards. Gordon’s hypothesis is based on Molly’s commentary in “Penelope”:

“...if I knew what it meant of course I had to say no for form sake dont understand you I said and wasnt it natural so it is of course it used to be written up with a picture of a womans on that wall in Gibraltar with that word I couldnt find anywhere…”

Molly, woman of the world though she may be, pretended not to know the word for propriety’s sake. Martha’s feigned ignorance, if it is indeed feigned, may be part of the same dance. Gordon finds the evidence for cunt being the “other word” in this passage, noting Molly’s memory of “a picture of a womans on that wall” coupled with the word “couldnt,” which is an anagram of “old cunt.” Bloom’s tactic seems to have worked in Molly’s case, or at the very least didn’t scare her off. Martha also responded to his letter despite his crude language. Bloom takes this as an invitation for escalation, thinking:

“Doing the indignant: a girl of good family like me, respectable character. Could meet one Sunday after the rosary. Thank you: not having any. Usual love scrimmage…. Go further next time. Naughty boy: punish: afraid of words, of course. Brutal, why not? Try it anyhow. A bit at a time.”

As Bloom re-reads Martha’s letter to Henry Flower, he encodes it into the language of flowers. Despite Henry and Martha’s somewhat libertinous correspondence, they live in a very buttoned-down, conservative era, in which it was considered improper to speak openly about sexuality. Feelings that couldn’t be expressed openly, perhaps because they were too risque or the writer was simply too shy, could be hidden in plain sight, however, by using code, in this case, the language of flowers. As Bloom puts it, “Language of flowers. They like it because no-one can hear.”

478px-(1869)_Flora_symbolica_(15811960981).jpg

In the actually-not-so-secret language of flowers, each bud and bloom was endowed with meaning. Popular floral dictionaries, such as Flora Symbolica from the 1860’s and Language of Flowers from the 1880’s could be consulted on which flowers corresponded to which meanings, though interpretations varied. For instance, both Flora Symbolica and Language of Flowers, list the lotus as symbolizing eloquence, though Language of Flowers goes a bit further, listing the lotus flower as meaning estranged love and a lotus leaf as meaning recantation. Joyce didn’t list a specific floral dictionary he referenced for Bloom’s parody in this section, so the exact meanings are open to interpretation. My breakdown here is based on the work of Jacqueline Eastman, who referenced Flora Symbolica.

Translated into flower language by Henry Flower, Martha’s letter reads like this:

“Angry tulips with you darling manflower punish your cactus if you don't please poor forgetmenot how I long violets to dear roses when we soon anemone meet all naughty nightstalk wife Martha's perfume.”

Transforming Martha’s letter into the language of flowers allows Bloom to obscure the meaning, yes, but it also allows him to project his own deeper symbolic meaning into her word choices. Let’s take a look:

“Angry tulips with you…”

Tulips symbolize a declaration of love, though here they are paired with anger. Since “tulips” is pluralized, it could be a pun on “two lips”, referring either to Martha’s mouth or (in my mind, more likely) her vagina. An angry vagina would align with whatever sexual punishment Bloom might be fantasizing about.

“... darling manflower punish your cactus if you don't…”

Naked Man Orchid, orchis italica — Naked Man Orchid, *orchis italica*

In an episode whose correspondent organ is the genitals and correspondent art is biology, “two lips” and “manflowers” are suitable symbols. Unsurprisingly, Flora Symbolica doesn’t mention a “manflower,” though as the final line of “Lotus Eaters” finds Bloom describing his flaccid penis in the bath as a “limp floating flower”, we can guess his meaning. “Manflower” can also symbolize Bloom in his totality, as he is a feminine man in many ways, or a “new womanly man” as he’s described in “Circe.”

Cactus also didn’t make it into the floral dictionaries, but I think it can be interpreted as a pricklier phallic symbol as well. There’s a Molly connection here as well, as she recalls cactuses in Gibraltar. Interestingly, this line was originally “punish your lianas” which are a type of woody vine. Though also suitably phallic, the lianas moved to the opening page of “Lotus Eaters” and the cactus appears twice:

“The far east. Lovely spot it must be: the garden of the world, big lazy leaves to float about on, cactuses, flowery meads, snaky lianas they call them.”

Eastman points out the similarity of “cactus” with the Latin phrase “coactus volui” (which appears in “Circe”) meaning, “Having been compelled, I was willing.” While it certainly doesn’t hold to 21st century ideas of consent, I think it reinforces Bloom's plan to continue using aggressively sexual language in his letters. If Martha’s such a shrinking violet, he’ll need to convince her that she wants his sexual attention, likely just in letters but still crossing a line. I think he might carry some guilt since their exchange started as a job posting, and he needs to feel like she’s totally on board so that he can prove to himself he isn’t a complete creep.

“...please poor forgetmenot …”

Bloom knows Martha is worried that he’s losing interest since he hasn’t agreed to meet her in person yet. Her desperation in her non-flowerized letter shows in that section.

“...how I long violets to dear roses…”

Violets symbolize modesty, so perhaps Bloom is reflecting on her apparent naivete, possibly around “that word.”

Roses symbolize love, but Bloom recognizes the danger hidden in a thorny rose bush - “No roses without thorns.” Pain coexists alongside sexual pleasure in Bloom’s mind. Bloom references roses once more while reflecting on Martha, thinking, “Such a bad headache. Has her roses probably.” “Her roses,” a Joycean coinage for menstruation, are to blame for Martha’s suffering, Bloom decides. Of course he has no evidence other than his personal speculation, but he is convinced pain and sex comingle in women as well.

“...when we soon anemone meet...”

The anemone symbolizes withered hopes. Bloom knows he will never meet Martha, as much as she wants him to.

“...all naughty nightstalk wife Martha's perfume.”

Nightstalk is another one that didn’t make the dictionaries. It seems to be a pun on “nightstock”, which Joyce indicated in his notes meant “woman.” Here we see the real danger inherent in Bloom’s dalliance with Martha - what if Molly finds out?

With such high stakes on the line, it might seem ridiculous for Bloom to potentially turn Molly against him for good by carrying on a relationship he never intends to consummate. Bloom still loves Molly, despite their currently distant relationship. However, seeing the letter addressed to “Mrs. Marion Bloom” that morning has thrown him into an emotional tailspin that he does his best to repress. Various refrains pop into Bloom’s head throughout the day, including “your wife’s perfume,” as expressions of the hurt and anger he feels knowing that showboat Boylan is alone with his wife. Molly’s affair has left him feeling gelded like the horses he passes while skulking towards a quiet spot in which to read Martha’s letter, “Poor jugginses!... Might be happier all the same that way.”

There is no especially compelling reason that Bloom would choose this point in the narrative to retrieve Martha’s letter other than he has an hour to kill. Narratively speaking, the introduction of Martha’s letter might seem a bit pointless, defying the maxim of Chekhov’s gun. Though this loaded weapon - a clear path to revenge against an unfaithful spouse - presents itself to Bloom, he will never pull the trigger. The knowledge that he could allows him to grope for power and a reclaimed masculinity. He even leaves the letters in an unlocked drawer for Molly to find. Bloom’s not a confrontational person, but maybe he hopes that if he’s found out, he can finally exorcise all those terrible feelings he’s been penning up inside. He may be hoping to force Molly’s hand, and Martha is a bullet left in the chamber, just in case.

Further Reading:

Decoding Bloom: The Lotus Eaters Sutra

The Secret Life of Martha Clifford