Sweets of Sin

“... a volume of peccaminous pornographical tendency entitled Sweets of Sin, anonymous author a gentleman of fashion…”
“...I wonder what kind is that book he brought me Sweets of Sin by a gentleman of fashion some other Mr de Kock …”

In the tenth section of “Wandering Rocks,” the tenth episode of Ulysses, we rejoin Dublin’s Odysseus, Leopold Bloom, perusing some reading material in a bookseller’s stall in Merchants’ Arch. What ancient tome of grave import is our hero uncovering? Recall an earlier scene in “Calypso,” in which Molly was disappointed with the insufficiently smutty novel, Ruby: Pride of the Ring:

“—Did you finish it? he asked.
—Yes, she said. There’s nothing smutty in it. Is she in love with the first fellow all the time?
—Never read it. Do you want another?
—Yes. Get another of Paul de Kock’s. Nice name he has.”

Now we see Bloom completing this errand with great focus and concentration. After carefully considering several options, Bloom selects Sweets of Sin, a novel telling the story of a woman stepping out on her man with the irresistible Raoul:

“He read where his finger opened.
—All the dollarbills her husband gave her were spent in the stores on wondrous gowns and costliest frillies. For him! For Raoul!
Yes. This. Here. Try.
—Her mouth glued on his in a luscious voluptuous kiss while his hands felt for the opulent curves inside her déshabillé.
Yes. Take this. The end….”

This is the moment around which not just “Wandering Rocks,” but the entire novel pivots, the tenth section of this tenth episode. Scholar Clive Hart wrote, “Sweets of Sin was the goal of the outward journey,” explaining that from this point on, Odysseus begins his nostos, or homeward return. Thus, Sweets of Sin is not idly chosen.

The table of contents from the 1704 edition of *Aristotle’s Masterpiece*, promising “Pictures of Several Monsteus Births” (Source)

Bloom recognizes several of the books available at the book stall because he has already unsuccessfully presented them to Molly. This stall rents its books, which is reflected later in Bloom’s budget in “Ithaca,” so he is bringing books back and forth hoping to strike her fancy. One such book is Aristotle’s Masterpiece, a book that couldn’t have less to do with Aristotle. Scholar Richard Brown described it as “one of the most famous books of folkloric sex and midwifery information.” It’s notorious mainly for its gruesome illustrations, though this copy has a “crooked botched print.” Nonetheless, they evoke sympathy in Bloom:

“Plates: infants cuddled in a ball in bloodred wombs like livers of slaughtered cows. Lots of them like that at this moment all over the world. All butting with their skulls to get out of it. Child born every minute somewhere. Mrs Purefoy.”

Molly’s memory of this book is an absolute horrorshow:

“...like those babies in the Aristocrats Masterpiece he brought me another time as if we hadnt enough of that in real life without some old Aristocrat or whatever his name is disgusting you more with those rotten pictures children with two heads and no legs…”

Not a hit. Another swing and a miss is the book Fair Tyrants, which Bloom only vaguely remembers:

“Fair Tyrants by James Lovebirch. Know the kind that is. Had it? Yes.
He opened it. Thought so.”

Molly, on the other hand, can’t shake the memory:

“...and that Ruby and Fair Tyrants he brought me that twice I remember when I came to page 50 the part about where she hangs him up out of a hook with a cord flagellate sure theres nothing for a woman in that all invention made up about he drinking the champagne out of her slipper after the ball…”

While scholars have yet to turn up a real-life copy of Fair Tyrants, John Lovebirch was a prolific author of a genre of fiction called “flagellation fiction” in the Victorian era. Lovebirch’s novels typically centered around the narrative of a young girl or woman of a lower social class being beaten by a powerful older woman. They tended to be sadistic in tone, focusing on the ecstasy inspired by the cruelty of the punishment directed at the younger woman. Scholar Stephen Watt suspects Bloom’s interest would have been piqued by the illustrations accompanying the text, which overwhelmingly depicted young women bent over with their butts exposed, ready to be flogged. I’m guessing that’s what jogged his memory when he peaked inside the cover of the book.

The scenes Molly recalls in “Penelope” are not characteristic of Lovebirch’s fiction, as they focus on the sexual humiliation of a man by a woman. Luckily, scholar Tristan Power got to the bottom of this disconnect for us. Power demonstrates that the scene of the man being strung up on hooks is incredibly similar to a scene in the 1893 novel Gynecocracy, which tells the story of the forced feminization of a man named Julian. The champagne-shoe scenario appears in a story called “Disgrace at Any Price” by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, of which Joyce owned a copy.

Bloom ultimately chooses a book called Sweets of Sin, ostensibly a gift for Molly:

“He read the other title: Sweets of Sin. More in her line. Let us see.”

It becomes clear that this book is very in line with Bloom’s interests, as he starts to get turned on as he thumbs through the book:

“Mr Bloom read again: The beautiful woman.
Warmth showered gently over him, cowing his flesh. Flesh yielded amply amid rumpled clothes: whites of eyes swooning up. His nostrils arched themselves for prey.”

In “Wandering Rocks,” we witness Bloom and Boylan simultaneously buying sexually suggestive gifts for Molly – Bloom with his erotica and Boylan with his peaches and potted meat. Both gifts are purchased for her by a man lobbying for his own gratification. Both gift-givers are hoping for a return on their investment. On Bloomsday, the peaches and potted meat win out in the end. Scholar Mark Osteen wrote that when men give gifts, they are often items that confirm the man’s identity within the relationship, presenting to the receiver an objectified form of his self-identity. If the receiver accepts the gift, they are by extension accepting the man’s offered self-image. Likewise, rejecting a gift is to reject his self-image. Osteen views both Bloom and Boylan’s gifts as extensions of each man’s identity in this regard, reducing Molly from a queen to a “pawn of male desire” in their psychosexual chess game; really, Molly is reduced to a commodity for their personal consumption. Osteen elaborates that Boylan’s tasty treats “embody a carnivorous view of Molly and sex” while Bloom’s gift of erotic imagination communicates that “she is not the meat but the wrappings.” As neither particularly considers Molly’s tastes, neither is particularly generous in this light.

Bloom’s previous erotic gifts to Molly have included clothing, such as a pair of violet garters and three pairs of gloves. Sweets of Sin similarly sexualizes the woman in terms of her clothing, focusing on her “frillies,” her “wonderous gowns,” and her “sabletrimmed wrap.” This also recalls Bloom’s earlier obsessions with women’s stockings (such as the woman getting into the carriage outside the Grosvenor Hotel and his annoyance with women who wear lumpy stockings) and the way that the women’s clothing displays in Grafton St. made him swoon on his way to lunch. The sumptuous fashion descriptions in Sweets of Sin are surely part of the appeal for ol’ Bloom.

Another way to look at Bloom’s gift is as an instruction manual. Bloom is clearly turned on by the scenarios in these books, and, in this view, he is subtly communicating to Molly that he’d like to act them out in real life. If we look ahead to the events in “Circe” with Bella Cohen and Molly’s description of Fair Tyrants, it’s more likely that Bloom would like to be on the receiving end. These details contextualize the excerpt of Sweets of Sin that Bloom reads in “Wandering Rocks,” and its focus on an erotic triangle similar to his own. The wife in Sweets of Sin takes her husband’s money and spends it for the pleasure of that sexy Raoul:

“—All the dollarbills her husband gave her were spent in the stores on wondrous gowns and costliest frillies. For him! For Raoul!”

It initially seems counterintuitive that Bloom would be so aroused by a scenario so similar to his own crumbling marriage, but he unequivocally delights in the cuckold narrative. He can’t pay the phlegmy porno shop owner fast enough. This introduces the possibility that, while Molly’s infidelity with Boylan is deeply painful to Bloom, he is also aroused by the humiliation of it. He might not have a conscious or coherent understanding of his own internal dynamic, but he is willing to roll with the feeling at this moment. Many scholars have pondered Bloom’s passivity, as he knows acutely what time Boylan will be at the house and even toys with the idea of showing up when Boylan is at the house, but then avoids the entire situation. He has an emerging awareness that being cuckolded actually turns him on, so there is an activeness to his passivity. He is acting out the Sweets of Sin scenario with intentionality. This is a desire he can’t express directly to Molly, but through sheer inertia he is getting what he wants.

Sweets of Sin has never been identified as a real book, so we can’t know any more about its contents than what appears in Ulysses. Scholar Tristan Power theorizes that it is a pastiche of the work of the author Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, who was name-dropped early in the “Wandering Rocks” passage. Sacher-Masoch’s most famous work is the 1870 novel Venus in Furs, which tells the story of a young man named Severin and his immense, often religious, ecstasy at being flogged, emasculated, and cuckolded by his lover Wanda. In line with the title, Wanda wears furs as she whips and humiliates Severin. The sexual power plays described in the story are so strongly associated with the author that the term masochism is derived from Sacher-Masoch’s name. Joyce scholars William York Tindall and Richard Ellmann cited the 1870 Leopold von Sacher-Masoch novel Venus in Furs as inspiration for the Bella Cohen scene in “Circe.” Power, however, believes that Sacher-Masoch’s novel has a strong presence throughout Ulysses, not just in “Circe.”

Joyce was quite an avid fan of Sacher-Masoch and owned copies of Venus in Furs in multiple languages, so we can assume he was well-versed in its contents. Power contends that Joyce first encountered Venus in Furs on his 1909 trip to Dublin, inspiring Bloom’s discovery of Sweets of Sin. While there have been multiple English translations of the novel, the 1909 translation favored the descriptor “sweet” much more than later versions. The 1909 translation also uses terms found in Sweets of Sin, like “queenly,” “déshabillé,” and a “heaving breast,” as well as descriptions of the sabletrimmed wrap adorning Wanda.

Even the booksellers themselves in “Wandering Rocks” seem to be drawn from erotic fiction of the era, though they do not cut a terribly erotic figure in this scene. Severin also visits cheap booksellers in Venus in Furs and complains about the oniony smell of their breath, much like the Merchants’ Arch bookseller:

“Onions of his breath came across the counter out of his ruined mouth.”

This particular trait is a Jewish stereotype, so presumably the Merchants’ Arch bookseller is also coded as Jewish. This scene in “Wandering Rocks” also references the Sacher-Masoch short story “Tales of the Ghetto.” This story was originally titled “From Window to Window,” but the Italian translation was titled “Scene del Ghetto,” which was the edition owned by Joyce, so it appears under an English translation of the Italian translation in Ulysses. Hopefully that’s not too confusing. In any case, the story focuses on a masochistic relationship between a Jewish merchant and a wealthy Jewish woman. Barom the merchant is characterized as having oniony, garlicky breath in the story. Power also cites the Paul de Kock novel The Girl with the Three Pairs of Stays as inspiration for the Merchants’ Arch booksellers. This novel’s main characters are a couple who run a shop together, but the dominant wife and the shop girls constantly demean the husband.

Beyond “Wandering Rocks,” the imagery of Venus in Furs can be found most prominently in “Circe,” mainly in the scene between Bloom and Bella Cohen. In another scene, Bloom is accosted by a group of upper-class women in furs. Mrs Yelverton-Barry appears in a sabletrimmed brickquilted dolman, while Mrs Bellingham sports a seal coney mantle. Mrs. Mervyn Talboys simply carries a menacing hunting crop. Mrs Bellingham even mentions Venus in Furs by name:

“He addressed me in several handwritings with fulsome compliments as a Venus in furs…”

One can only imagine Martha Clifford received a similar letter at some point.

Molly appears later in the episode fully nude in a bathtub, or as she puts it “in her pelt” – mimicking a scene in Venus in Furs. Power interprets the use of the word “pelt” as a play on the German title of Venus in Furs – Venus im Pelz. Boylan takes Molly and tosses Bloom a sixpence for his trouble. He then generously lets Bloom watch through the keyhole:

“BLOOM: (His eyes wildly dilated, clasps himself.) Show! Hide! Show! Plough her! More! Shoot!”

Sacher-Masoch describes in his diary a memory of his wife (who he called Wanda, though that was not her birth name) having sex behind a closed door with a man named Sandor, while Sacher-Masoch watched through a keyhole. Afterwards, Sandor flung a cigarette at Sacher-Masoch for his trouble, à la Boylan’s sixpence. Though more obscure, Power argues that this scene in “Circe” is mimicking this passage from Sacher-Masoch’s diary, which was published in 1906.

Despite all this, Bloom and Severin are not necessarily equivalent characters. Severin’s desires are quite a bit more extreme and all-consuming than Bloom’s. Severin demands that Wanda beat him unconscious at multiple points in Venus in Furs, whereas Bloom enjoys sexual humiliation and playing with gender alongside comparatively light flagellation. Severin is also obsessed with the idea of martyrdom and his play with Wanda takes on religious intensity and severity, while atheistic Bloom’s interests lack this dimension entirely.

Like Bloom’s story, Severin’s also comes to a head when Wanda sleeps with a more traditionally masculine man. Wanda did not enjoy her dominant role as much as Severin and realizes that she prefers a dominant man. In response, Severin attempts to imitate a more masculine affect to regain Wanda’s attention. She sees through his empty gesture, though, and leaves him for her new lover. Likewise, Molly is clearly not that into the literature that Bloom brings home for her and is frequently perplexed by his overtures. She has been unfaithful with a more masculine rival. Power thinks the parallel to Severin and Wanda may mean that Molly will ultimately leave Bloom for Boylan. One omen of this future doom is Bloom’s demand that Molly make him eggs for breakfast on June 17. As part of Severin’s sudden manliness gambit, he also demands that Wanda cook him eggs, which she refuses. Molly’s soliloquy in “Penelope” opens with the line:

“Yes because he never did a thing like that before as ask to get his breakfast in bed with a couple of eggs since the City Arms hotel….”

If Molly sees through Bloom’s feigned dominance, just like Wanda did, it portends the end of the Blooms’ marriage. Power writes, “Such uses of Sacher-Masoch serve to unsettle the traditional interpretation of the ending of Joyce’s novel” that Molly and Leopold will rekindle their love after the events of Bloomsday.

1969 film, which only shares a title with the novel

Given the popularity of flagellation fiction and the rigid social mores of the era, it’s no surprise that there was also a decent amount of hand-wringing and pearl clutching when it came to such literature. The response to masochistic fiction was informed by cultural fears about submissive men's attraction to their own mothers, as well as the creeping terror of homosexuality, suggested by men who thrilled at the idea of submitting to a dominant woman. Joyce wrote to his friend Frank Budgen that readers ought to pick up on “an undercurrent of homosexuality in Bloom as well as his loneliness as a Jew.” Jewish men are often stereotyped as being weaker or more feminine than Gentile men, and Joyce is playing with this idea in Ulysses. It’s possible he is just conflating masochism and homosexuality as Jewish stereotypes, but Joyce identified with these characteristics himself, self-identifying as a “womanly man” as Bloom does, and having an interest in masochism. As a result, I think he wanted to explore these identities and experiences through his fictional self, Leopold Bloom.

What qualified as homosexuality in the early twentieth century was quite a bit broader than the way we view it in the twenty-first. Any interest in sexual activities outside of procreative penis-in-vagina sex could be construed as sodomy or homosexuality, even if such activties were taking place exclusively between a man and a woman. A man enjoying submission to a powerful woman fell pretty far out the norms of gender roles and thus was seen as homosexual in and of itself, even more so if it involved any butt stuff. Therefore, someone like Bloom can never express any sexual interest in men whatsoever and still be seen as kind of gay by his society. Just to be clear, a man can enjoy sexual submission without being attracted to other men or wishing to be a woman. Nor is acting as the submissive in a dom-sub relationship demonstrating inherent weakness or inferiority.

Early Joyce scholars seemed to have been absolutely baffled by the sexually subversive parts of Ulysses. Scholar Carol Siegel writes that folks like Richard Ellmann, William York Tindall, and Stanley Sultan were quite confident that Joyce’s interest in the work of Sacher-Masoch was purely literary and not at all “experiential.” Siegel catalogues how they really couldn’t quite wrap their heads around why Bloom was portrayed as he was, a man not entirely interested in conforming to their idea of what a man was. Tindall wrote that being a happy cuckold or a “womanly man” was mutually exclusive with being a husband and father, while Sultan felt that Bloom’s path to reclaiming his manhood required him to subjugate a dominant woman. Siegel comments, “...the first critics of Ulysses recognized little difference between Joyce’s interest in the things we must do because we have (gendered) bodies and the things we wish to do to express our sexual feelings.”

It is my contention that gender essentialist views were such a deep-seated part of these men’s worldviews that they were unable to see past them and comprehend that experiencing emasculation is arousing to some men. A sign of the times? A failure of imagination? Why not both? Masochism, as well as homosexuality, was still considered a sexual disorder in the early twentieth century, so it is likely that these misinformed classifications colored these scholars’ literary analysis. I think the gender essentialist viewpoints expressed in these scholars’ works, that men must do certain things to be men and so must women, is a fatal weakness in their analysis. Just as Joyce experimented with creative boundaries in other ways, he pushed with the boundaries of gender and sex in his literature. These norm-bending expressions were so far ahead of their time that their depiction was still baffling to scholars in the mid-twentieth century, decades after Joyce first put pen to paper. Nowadays, it’s widely accepted that Joyce and Bloom shared a sexual imagination. Bloom’s interest in masochism is not something that needs to be quashed or corrected in more recent scholarship, such as Power’s article, but rather understood and analysed on its own terms. An aspect of Bloom's struggle on Bloomsday is finding a way to express his sexuality and to be freer sexually. Recall that Sweets of Sin is the pivot point of the novel. It should not be dismissed as a perverted curiosity. This self-discovery is crucial to Bloom’s way forward.

And what about Jim and Nora? Joyce now famously sent Nora a series of very horny letters in 1909 that spared little detail of all the depraved things he’d like to do with her, ranging from your more run-of-the-mill spanking to some very intense scat play. Joyce was very, very focused on butts and their various products and functions. VERY focused. I think it’s safe to say that Joyce and Bloom’s interests overlapped in this regard as well. Power sees the year in which these letters were written to be quite significant. Before 1909, such as in Joyce’s 1907 poetry collection Chamber Music, he tended to describe Nora as more innocent, but after 1909, it's all flogging (“Not in play, my dear, in earnest,” he wrote), butt stuff, and desires to send Nora “a splendid set of sable furs.” Power posits this is an indication that Joyce likely first encountered Venus in Furs in Dublin in 1909 and immediately set about working to convince Nora to act out his kinky fantasies in real life. Considering that Joyce had a habit of gifting books to Nora and other women who caught his fancy, Molly’s ambivalence may be a reflection of Nora’s own confusion at this abrupt change in tone.

1909 is also the year that, while in Dublin, Joyce heard an untrue rumor that Nora had been unfaithful to him. This revelation unmoored Joyce for a time, unlocking a deep well of jealousy and betrayal that he would explore artistically in “The Dead.” Part of me thinks that while he initially reacted in horror, there may have been some thrill that crept in around the edges. I believe this in part because while Bloom is deeply pained by Molly’s infidelity, he is also clearly turned on by cuckold porn in the abstract, as shown in his arousal at Sweets of Sin and his insistence that this is the book Molly needs most urgently out of any in the shop. I think Bloom is treading through a roiling swell of emotions – deep humiliation, anguish at betrayal, and also that the whole mess is kinda hot. There was no language for “hotwifing” in Edwardian Dublin, but in a more permissive era, Bloom and Molly might have been very happy swingers.

Further Reading:

The Most Historic Spot in All Dublin