Talk:Outline of Chapter Contents

Link to chapter sections?

I added a link from 'Mutt and Jute' to Page 16, where their dialogue begins. Thought it would be helpful though I'll admit I don't know how scalable the idea is! Nklatt 12:31, 9 Apr 2007 (EDT)

what happens in 1.8

i think we should start discussing what happens in each chapter and try to agree on the action. trying to establish the symbolic action is very hard but the literal action i think can be definitively established. i've done a summary of 1.8 with textual quotations to support my claims thus making it a bit long. in the future i'll do a shorter synopsis without textual quotations as a brief run-through. if you find anything in my synopsis that you think is wrong, please comment because i have on many occasions proven myself wrong on my reading of the wake.

this chapter is a dialogue between two women washing clothes, talking about anna livia plurabelle, alp. in joyce's manuscript it is impossible to be absolutely certain which one is talking but in general one is asking questions, hungry for knowledge, also occasionally drops a few comments the other is answering, no-nonsense, firm, and bossy. when the answerer asks a question it can be difficult to be sure it's her. we learn at first that the two are washing clothes, at times even hce's clothes: "Wash quit and don't be dabbling. Look at the shirt of him! Look at the dirt of it! My wrists are wrusty rubbing the mouldaw stains. And the dneepers of wet and the gangres of sin in it!" the first reference to the main story ocurrs when the answerer tells us that what he did in phoenix park was published, or at least distorted: " Or whatever it was they threed to make out he thried to two in the Fiendish park. He's an awful old reppe," rep being a man of loose character. further down it is stated more explicity that his crimes made the papers: " It was put in the newses what he did," an oblique reference to his crime is made: " Minxing marrage and making loof," which slightly conveys incest. before the crime we learn that he was well-respected, like duke wellington, who was irish born: " How he used to hold his head as high as a howeth, the famous eld duke alien." the first new information we learn of hce and alp is that apparently he raped her home: "when he raped her home in a parakeet's cage, by dredgerous lands." there are also more allusions to his foreigness: "In a gabbard he barqued it, the boat of life. with his runagate bowmpriss he roade and borst her bar." runagate here can read either renegade or runagate which is an apostate or traitor, bowmpriss is a fabric used for a flag. "borst her bar," i think would imply the bar in an ocean or on water, as alp is everywhere associated with rivers and waters. further evidence of his foreigness lies in his usage of a "gran Phenician rover." what next follows is a touching scene of their homelife together. hce was stuck in quite a depression: "old Humber was as glommen as grampus, with the tares at his thor hungerstriking all alone and holding doomsdag over hunselv. He had been belching for severn years." two allusions to being a foreigners lie in humber, the ancient hun who attacked britain in 1000bc and the word hunselve. alp would try to cook him dinner: "And there she was, Anna Livia, she darent catch a winkle of sleep, for to ishim bonzour to her dear dubber Dan. And an odd time she'd cook him up blooms of fisk and lay to his heartsfoot her meddery eygs, yayis, and staynish beacons on toasc." dan tying hce to the danes again. hce rather than appreciate this gesture responds with: "he'd kast them frome him, with a stour of scorn." her next ploy was to sing for him: "And then she'd esk to vistule a hymn, The Heart Bowed Down or The Rakes of Mallow." but that also failed: "And not a magx out of Hum no more than out of the mangle weight," mag meaning word. anne, undeterred would then dress up in the fanciest of gowns and try another tune: "anner frostivying tresses dasht with virevlies,-- while the prom beauties sreeked nith their bearers' skins!--in a period gown of changeable jade. And brahming to him down the feedchute the poother [powder] rambling off her nose: Vuggybarney, Wickerymandy! Hello, ducky, please don't die!" we next learn that alp and hce, aside from being unfaithful to each other, alp would even assist him satisfy his sexual appetites by bringing in whores off the road to please him: "And didn't she stand in her douro, and every shirvant siligirl or wensum farmerette walking the pilend roads, usedn't she sign to slip inside? a - Calling them in, one by one to show them how to bring to mind the gladdest garments out of sight and all the way of a maid with a man. Throwing all the neiss little whores in the world at him!" even more shocking is that these prosititutes were men as well: "To inny captured wench you wish of no matter what sex to hug and hab haven in Humpy's apron!" we next learn of the rima she made. she complains that her petty affair is worn out and that she's waiting for hce to wake himself from his winter slumber: "I badly went e brandnew banksid For the putty affair I have is wore out waiting for my old Dane hodder dodderer, my life in death companion to wake himself out of his winter's doze and bore me down like he used to." note the reference to hce's danish roots, hodder-dodder means cuckold. the next part is somewhat unexpected she longs for a knight we would think for amorous reasons, but it appears that she is in need of money, or "horsebrose and milk," and is offering to wash his socks: "Is there irwell a lord of the manor or a knight of the shire at strike that'd dip me a dace or two in cash for washing and his worshipful socks for him now we're run out of horsebrose and milk?"

	we are then supplied with a few tidbits of information: how many children she had: "How many aleveens had she in tool? a - Some say she had three figures to fill and confined herself to a hundred eleven. But it's quite on the cards she'll shed more and merrier, twills and trills, sparefours and spoilfives, nordsihkes and sudsevers and ayes and neins to a litter," aleveen being a newly hatched salmon.  we almost get some information about her paramours before hce but the answerer doesn't really answer the question: "She must have been a gadabount in her day.  a - Shoal she was, gidgad. She had a flewmen of her owen.  q - Tell me, tell me, how cam she camlin through all her fellows, the neckar she was, the diveline?" gadabout meaning someone who likes to wander around, necker being someone fond of caress.  but the answer to the above questions is not very clear: "Casting her perils before our swains from Fonte-in-Monte to Tidingtown and from Tidingtown tilhavet. Linking one and knocking the next, tapting a flank and tipting a jutty and palling in and pietaring out and clyding by on her eastway."

after this we learn of how alp lost her virginity. it was with a priest by the name of michael arklow. the event takes place in luggelaw which is where saint kevin had his hermitage. this is a very subtle insinuation that it was shaun himself who is often associated with kevin: "She was just a young thin pale soft shy slim slip of a thing then, and he was a heavy trudging lurching lieabroad of a Curraghman. She thought she's sankh neathe the ground with nymphant shame when he gave her the tigris eye! It was ages behind that in county Wickenlow, garden of Erin, before she ever dreamt she'd lave Kilbride and go foaming under Horsepass bridge, and lie with a landleaper. You know the dinkel dale of Luggelaw? Well, there once dwelt a local heremite, Michael Arklow was his riverend name, and one venersderg in junojuly, oso sweet and so cool and so limber she looked, Nance the Nixie, Nanon L'Escaut, in the silence, of the sycomores, all listening, the kindling curves you simply can't stop feeling." Manon Lescaut is a novel by prevost where a girl seduces a boy Manon Lescaut who is studying for the priesthood, which further amplifies the theme of a priest having sex with a woman. also saint kevin is known to have resisted a woman trying to seduce him by he throwing her in the water, here the story is much different: "he plunged both of his newly anointed hands, the core of his cushlas, in her singimari saffron strumans of hair, parting them and soothing her and mingling it." "her enamelled eyes indergoading him on to the vierge violetian," vierge violetian meaning virgin violation informs us that it was indeed anna's first time. the monk was overcome with desire and lost control: "He cuddle not help himself, thurso that hot on him, he had to forget the monk in the man so, rubbing her up and smoothing her down, he baised his lippes in smiling mood, kiss akiss after kisokushk." however this was not the first time anna had intercourse: "Two lads in scoutsch breeches went through her before that, Barefoot Burn and Wallowme Wade." apparently before she reached puberty: "before she had a hint of a hair at her fanny to hide or a bossom to tempt a birch canoedler," canoodler meaning one who indulges in caress. but we then learn of another incident before that for: "she was licked by a hound, Chirripa-Chirruta, while poing her pee, pure and simple." but even that turns out not to be the very first: "but first of all, worst of all, the wiggly livvly, she sideslipped out by a gap in the Devil's glen while Sally her nurse was sound asleep in a sloot and, feefee fiefie, fell over a spillway before she found her stride," then comes the critical detail which is too obscure to yield any concrete information: "and lay and wriggled in all the stagnant black pools of rainy under a fallow coo and she laughed innocefree with her limbs aloft and a whole drove of maiden hawthorns blushing and looking askance upon her." we then switch subjects and learn of how alp reacted after hce's exposure and fall from grace. "after it was put in the Mericy Cordial Mendicants' Sitter-dag-Zindeh-Munaday Wakeschrift even the snee that snowdon his hoaring hair had a skunner against him," wakeschrift being a variation of the german zeitschrift, newspaper. everywhere you encountered his icon it was turned upside down, and boys were hitting him on the head: "Everywhere erriff you went and every bung you arver dropped into, in cit or suburb you found his ikom etsched tipside down or the cornerboys cammocking his guy And the mauldrin rabble around him in areopage, fracassing a great bingkan cagnan with their timpan crowders," cammocking being a field hockey stick. she then vows revenge: "She swore she's be level with all the snags of them yet. Par the Vulnerable Virgin's Mary del Dame! So she said to herself she'd frame a plan to fake a shine, the mischiefmaker, the like of it you niever heard." she hides a mailsack, consults her chapbook and makes herself entitled to join in a mascerade: "she bergened a zakbag, a shammy mailsack, with the lend of a loan of the light of his lampion, off one of her swapsons, Shaun the Post, and then she went and consulted her chapboucqs, old Mot Moore, Casey's Euclid and the Fashion Display and made herself tidal to join in the mascarete," bergen meaning to conceal in german. the answerer then refuses to go on but the questioner implores her: "O gig goggle of gigguels. I can't tell you how! It's too screaming to rizo. q - O but you must, you must really! Make my hear it gurgle gurgle, like the farest gargle gargle in the dusky dirgle dargle!" the answerer finally relents: "Well, have it your own way, so. Here, sit down and do as you're bid. Take my stroke and bend to your bow." she then describes an elaborate set of actions alp does in order to get herself ready, i'll just provide three of them here so as to get a general sense of them: "First she let her hair fal and down it flussed to her feet its teviots winding coils. Then, mothernaked, she sampood herself with galawater. Next she greesed the groove of her keel with antifouling butterscatch and turfentide and serpenthyme." the next scene seems to apply that alp and hce live a sort of artistocratic lifestyle, for she orders her maid to ask hce if she can leave for a minute: "and she sendred her boudeloire maids to His Affluence, and a request might she passe of him for a minnikin. She said she wouldn't be half her length away. Then, then, as soon as the lump his back was turned, with her mealiebag slang over her shulder, Anna Livia, oysterface, forth of her bassein came." the questioner wasn't satisfied with that description of anna and asks for yet more details of what she was wearing, four of them i'll supply here though the actual list describes seventeen: "She wore a ploughboy's nailstudded clogs, a pair of ploughfields in themselves: a sugarloaf hat with a gaudyquiviry peak and a band of gorse for an arnoment and a hundred streamers dancing off it and a guildered pin to pierce it: owlglassy bicycles boggled her eyes: and a fishnetzeveil for the sun not to spoil the wrinklings of her hydeaspects: potatorings boucled the loose laubes of her laudsnarers." the public reaction to her spectacle is mixed, on the one hand: "Everyone that saw her said the dowce little delia looked a bit queer." on the other hand: "they crowned her their chariton queen, all the maids." as in most dreams one scene leads into another quite illogically. joyce seems to have forgotten the thread of alp's plan to get revenge on the town for their treatment of hce and now the story focuses on the gifts she will give to her children: "she pattered and swung and sidled, making chattahoochee all to her ain chichiu, like Santa Claus at the cree of the pale and puny, her arms encircling Isolabella, then bathing Dirty Hans' spatters with spittle, the birthday gifts they dreamt they gabe her." note that after the mention of isolabella we encounter hans, the german variation of john or shaun, shem the less favored child, is not mentioned. "The rivulets ran aflod to see. And they all about her, juvenile leads and ingenuinas. she'd neb in her culdee sacco of wabbash she raabed and reach out her maundy meerschaundize, her furzeborn sons and dribblederry daughters, a thousand and one of them, and wickerpotluck for each of them." we again encounter another long list. she gives a whole host of gifts to her children, i'll just list a few here: "A tinker's bann and a barrow to boil his billy for Gipsy Lee; a cartridge of cockaleekie soup for Chummy the Guardsman; for sulky Pender's acid nephew deltoid drops, curiously strong; a cough and a rattle and wildrose cheeks for poor Piccolina Petite MacFarlane." as the chapter closes the questioner wants to know more: "I could listen to maure and moravar again." the answerer however wants to leave. she gives us the first hint that she is turning into a tree: "My branches lofty are taking root." she does relent to answer one question: "Wharnow are alle her childer, say? In kingdome gone or power to come or gloria be to them farther? a - Some here, more no more, more again lost alla stranger. I've heard tell that same brooch of the Shannons was married into a family in Spain. And all the Dunders de Dunnes in Markland's Vineland beyond Brendan's herring pool takes number nine in yangsee's hats. And one of Biddy's beads went bobbing till she rounded up lost histereve with a marigold and a cobbler's candle in a side strain of a main drain of a manzinahurries off Bachelor's Walk." but after this concession she says she's leaving: "Forgivemequick, I'm going! Bubye! And you, pluck your watch, forgetmenot. Your evenlode. So save to jurna's end! I sow home slowly now by own way, moyvalley way." to end the chapter the one turns into a stone and the other an elm: "I feel as old as yonder elm. Night! Night! My ho head halls. I feel as heavy as yonder stone. Tell me, tell me, tell me, elm! Telmetale of stem or stone."