Ulysses Quotidian Micro-Spectacles
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QUOTIDIAN MICRO-SPECTACLES: ULYSSES AND FASHION PING-TA KU A thesis Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of University College London Department of English Language and Literature University College London September 2014 1 I, PING-TA KU, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. The 5th of September, 2014 2 Abstract Quotidian Micro-Spectacles: Ulysses and Fashion wishes to make a contribution to Joycean studies in the research area that has been known as cultural studies. Over nearly three decades, there have been seminal works in this research area, such as Cheryl Herr’s Joyce’s Anatomy of Culture, R. Brandon Kershner’s The Culture of Joyce’s Ulysses, Garry Leonard’s Advertising and Commodity Culture in Joyce, and articles featured in James Joyce Quarterly Volume 30 (Fall 1992-Summer/Fall 1993); this thesis focuses on one specific aspect of commodity culture––that is, fashion items––in Ulysses, believing that a microscopic scrutiny at the details of these fashion items would reveal how Joyce’s innovative language and narrative in Ulysses are rooted in and interlaced with technologies that have inconspicuously yet greatly changed people’s daily life during the period of time when Joyce was writing Ulysses. Through the microscopic gaze, this thesis identifies a colonial phenomenon that is ubiquitous amongst Ulysses’s mist of language-game, that is, the omnipresence of English fashion: Stephen Dedalus’s adherence to mourning dress, Leopold Bloom’s meticulousness about dress codes, Gerty MacDowell’s obsession with dame fashion, the Circean mise-en-scène of millinery spectacles, and Molly Bloom’s desire for Edwardian lingerie. Whereas many of Joyce’s Dubliners demonstrate a non-serviam stance against the British Empire, they seem pretty much unconscious of the fact that they are hopelessly colonised by miscellaneous English commodities. Therefore, the ultimate aim of this thesis is to read Ulysses into a testimony to the modern life trapped in the global capitalism: once subaltern Dubliners become assimilated into this Anglicising spectacle, there is no way out. They cannot help but exploit themselves to be fashionable. 3 For my parents 4 Woman’s character depends on things they wear. ––James Joyce 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS THE GREAT EXHIBITION OF MICRO-SPECTACLES 10 1.1 THE CULTURAL LOGIC OF MICRO-SPECTACLES 17 1.2 LA MODERNITÉ À LA MODE 41 1.3 A THESIS MAP 66 DUBLIN DANDIES IN SECULARISING SPECTACLES 70 2.1 ‘ÉLITE. CRÊPE DE LA CRÊPE ’ 76 2.2 PODOPHILIAC POLDY AND SHOES 99 2.3 ‘RELIGIONS PAY’ 110 THE VOYEURISTIC MICRO-SPECTACLE IN ‘NAUSICAA’ 111 3.1 GAZING THROUGH THE MUTOSCOPE 113 3.2 FASHIONABLE EROTICA 119 3.3 A FETISHISTIC FADEOUT 128 THE PHANTASMAGORIC FASHION SHOW IN ‘CIRCE’ 131 4.1 REVISITING ULYSSES IN NIGHTTOWN 135 4.2 RE-THEATRICALISING ‘CIRCE’ 142 4.3 PHANTASMAGORIC ‘CIRCE’ 149 4.3.i ‘PEPPER’S GHOST IDEA’ 151 4.3.ii THE FASHION SHOW IN ‘CIRCE’ 166 4.4 ‘THAT NIGHTMARE GAVE YOU A BACK KICK’ 175 MOLLY’S CORPS ÉCRIVANT BENEATH EDWARDIAN UNDIES 181 5.1 MOLLY’S ANTI-OEDIPAL LAPSUS CALAMI? 184 5.2 BLOOMING BODY WRITING 195 5.3 LINGERIE: FROM LACY TO RACY 209 THE TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS 219 BIBLIOGRAPHY 223 6 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Fig. 1.1––‘The Dispersion of the Works of All Nations from the Great Exhibition’ 10 Fig. 1.2––Advertisement for Pears’ Soap, 1890 15 Fig. 1.3––Advertisement for Pears’ Soap, 1899 17 Fig. 1.4––A comparison between the corseted silhouette and the ‘S-bend’ silhouette 41 Fig. 1.5––Advertisement for Edwardian ladies’ wigs 47 Fig. 1.6––Edwardian ladies’ gigantic hats 48 Fig. 1.7––Advertisement for Pocock Brothers 53 Fig. 3.1––The interior of the mutoscope 112 Fig. 3.2––‘Summer Fashions’ in Lady’s Pictorial 119 Fig. 4.1––Playbill for Ulysses in Nighttown 134 Fig. 4.2––A contemporary illustration of Robertson’s ‘Fantasmagorie’ 161 Fig. 4.3––Lily Elsie in the Merry Widow hat, 1907 170 Fig. 4.4––Spirit photograph by Edouard Buguet 174 Fig. 5.1––The title page of Aristotle’s Masterpiece 192 Fig. 5.2––Advertisement for Warner’s Rustproof Corsets 203 Fig. 5.3––‘La Nouvelle Tentation de Saint Antoine ou le Triomphe de la Lingerie’ 212 7 Acknowledgements First of many thanks are due to Michael Sayeau, my supervisor at University College London, who has not merely read immature drafts and redrafts of chapters but also provided me with valuable insights. The embryogenesis of this project has also been nourished by Beci Dobbin, Charlotte Mitchell, Rachel Bowlby and Peter Swaab. I have benefited from the financial support of the Ministry of Education of Taiwan, and a fellowship for doctoral candidates at the Institute of European and American Studies, Academia Sinica enabled me to concentrate on ‘writing up’. Thanks to the staff of the Rare Books Reading Room at the British Library, the Colindale Newspaper Library, and the National Art Library. I am grateful to Michael Allen and Pam Barkentin Ehrenburg for their wonderful firsthand accounts of the Off-Broadway production of Ulysses in Nighttown. It is Finn Fordham, my dissertation supervisor at Royal Holloway, that first introduced me to Joyce, and I wouldn’t have conceived the project on Ulysses and fashion without his ingenious teaching. Tim Armstrong has always been very caring and supportive; without his encouragement and help, I wouldn’t have pursued a PhD at University College London. I (though pretty much like a silent ghost) was greatly inspired by Andrew Gibson, Robert Hampson, John Wyse Jackson and other members of the Charles Peake Research Seminar on Ulysses. Vincent J. Cheng and Brian Caraher’s encouraging feedback on an early version of my ‘Nausicaa’ chapter gave me the confidence to publish it on the NTU Studies of in Languages and Literatures. My thesis examiners, Katherine Mullin and Hugh Stevens, suggested many ideas and directions for the future revision and publication of the thesis. Personal debts are too numerous to list. Without my writing-up supervisor at Academia Sinica, Yuen-wen Chi, and my undergraduate mentors at National Taiwan University––Li-ling Tseng, Ya-feng Wu, Tai-fen Chiang, Ling-hua Chen, Chun-pai Hsieh and Hsiao-hung Chang––I wouldn’t have been able to go this far. Brilliant Taiwanese Joyceans of my generation––Hsin-yu Hung, Yvonne Lai and George Hsieh––helped me keep on track. My friends at University College London––Lucy Powell, Mercedes Aguirre, Nancy Chen, Yi-hsin Hsu and Ta-ching Shih––helped me stay calm and enjoy life. My sweetheart Jenying immerses me in love and joy. This thesis is dedicated to my parents, Shih-fang Ku and Hui-yun Chou, in gratitude for their unconditional love. 8 NOTES ON TEXT OF ULYSSES All quotations are taken from Ulysses, ed. Hans Walter Cabler with Wolfhard Steppe and Claus Melchior, afterword by Michael Groden (London: Bodley Head, 1986) and are referred to by chapter and line number within the text. ABBREVIATIONS Quotations from the following works are cited in the text through these abbreviations: CW Joyce, James, The Critical Writings of James Joyce, ed. Ellsworth Mason and Richard Ellmann (London: Faber and Faber, 1959). D Joyce, James, Dubliners: Texts, Criticism, and Notes, ed. Robert Scholes and A. Walton Litz (New York: Viking, 1969). E Joyce, James, Exiles: A Play in Three Acts (London: Jonathan Cape, 1952). FW Joyce, James, Finnegans Wake (London: Faber and Faber, 1939). JJ Ellmand, Richard, James Joyce, 1st edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959). JJII Ellmand, Richard, James Joyce, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982). LettersI, II, III Joyce, James, Letters of James Joyce, vol. I, ed. Stuart Gilbert (London: Faber and Faber, 1957); vols. II and III, ed. Richard Ellmann (London: Faber and Faber, 1966). 9 10 | THE GREAT EXHIBITION OF MICRO-SPECTACLES! CHAPTER 1 ‘THE CRYSTAL PALACE OF THE CREATOR’: THE GREAT EXHIBITION OF MICRO-SPECTACLES [...] A specially prepared or arranged display of a more or less public nature (esp. one on a large scale), forming an impressive or interesting show or entertainment for those viewing it. [...] A sight, show, or exhibition of a specified character or description. [...] A means of seeing; something made of glass; a window or mirror. Obs. ––OED, ‘spectacle, n.1’ [...] Of the nature of a spectacle or show; striking or imposing as a display. [...] absol. That which appeals to the eye. [...] Pertaining to, characteristic of, spectacles or shows. [...] Addicted to, fond of, spectacles. [...] As n. A spectacular display; also spec. A radio or television programme, entertainment, etc., produced on a lavish or spectacular scale. ––OED, ‘spectacular, adj. and n.’ [...] 1862 Catal. Internat. Exhib., Brit. II. No. 2899, Concave, convex, and meniscus spectacle lenses. ––OED, ‘spectacle lens, n.’ According to the definition of spectacle in the Oxford English Dictionary, Ulysses is begotten through the spectacle: James Joyce with his poor eyesight had been writing Ulysses with the aid of a pair of spectacles, here meaning, obviously, a pair of corrective lenses that helped Joyce to fight against his eyesight-dimming myopia and iritis. In other words, Ulysses was born through the midwifery of Joyce’s spectacle, here meaning, in its obsolete definition, a means of seeing and something made of glass. When referring to spectacles as eyeglasses, the OED lists a series of citations under the entry of a pair of spectacles dating back to 1423: ‘De xxs receptis pro pare de spectakeles de argento et deaurato’; ‘A peyre spectaclys of syluir and ouyr gylt’; ‘as a paire of spectacles shold stand a blinde freer’; et cetera.