On June 16, 1906, unknown to each other, Leopold Bloom and Molly Bloom remember the picnic on the Hill of Howth when they agreed to marry sixteen years earlier. a popular park outside of Dublin. As part of her soliloquy in which Molly recalls the day, she remembers the seedcake, but Strick is disinterested in visualizing it. Better to show the lovers embracing in the grass. After all, this is a lover’s picnic without any picnic paraphernalia.
Bloom remembers Molly transferring a chewed seedcake into Leopold’s mouth. “Yum, “Leopold says, “Softly she gave me the seedcake warm and chewed in my mouth. Mawkish pulp her mouth had mumbled sweetsour of her spittle. Joy: I ate it: joy. Young life, her lips that gave me pouting. Soft warm sticky gumjelly lips.”
Molly remembers, “The sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day,” Molly says, “I got him to propose to me yes first I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said I was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes…”
Featured Image: Milo O’Shea as Leopold Bloom and Barbara Jefford as Molly Bloom
See Joseph Strick Ulysses (1967). Screenplay by Fred Haines and Joseph Strick based on James Joyce’s novel; Sean Walsh’s Bloom (2004). Screenplay by Sean Walsh editing text from Joyce’s novel, available at Ulysses http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4300/4300-h/4300-h.htm