Their marriage disintegrating, Leopold and Molly Bloom remember when they were in love and picnicked on Howth Head. They vividly remember Molly feeding Bloom a seedcake. (Joyce considered this sensual, but the visual image is of a bird feeding its young.)
Bloom and Molly (née Marian Tweedy) picnic on Howth Head. Bloom recollects they were in the grass amidst wild ferns kissing and fondling one another. During an open-mouth kiss, Molly transfers a chewed seedcake into Leopold’s mouth: “Yum,” says Leopold, “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.” He takes the seedcake like a tame parrot.
Molly also remembers the seedcake. But her recollection is more romantic as she describes how she leads Leopold until he proposes marriage to her. “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…” Here is a mix of memories. She is an experienced woman whose belief it is that before “the end of the world let us have a bit of fun first.”
* Howth Head (pronounced Ho-th) is a popular picnicking location on the Bay of Dublin northeast of the city. Bloom remembers the day in “Lystrygonians” and Molly in “Penelope.”
Featured Image: Stephen Rae as Leopold Bloom and Angeline Ball as Molly Bloom in Sean Walsh’s Ulysses (2004).
See James Joyce. Ulysses at Gutenberg.org; Sean Walsh’s Bloom (2004). Screenplay by Sean Walsh using and editing text from Joyce’s Ulysses; Joseph Strick Ulysses (1967). Screenplay by Fred Haines and Joseph Strick based on James Joyce’s novel