In 1916, while staying with Frieda and D. H. Lawrence in Cornwall, Katherine Mansfield was privy to one of their frequent and horrifying domestic disputes. The spark of the argument was a comment Frieda made about Shelley, which sent Lawrence into an uncontrollable and protracted rage. According to Mansfield, “He beat her—he beat her to death—her head and face and breast and pulled out her hair [ … ]” (Maddox 226). In 1918, Frank Budgen had to comfort a distraught Nora Barnacle because James Joyce had asked her to “go with other men so that he would have something to write about” (Budgen 188). Undoubtedly, both Lawrence and Joyce were masters of their craft, but from an outsider’s perspective, they were challenging partners. Yet their relationships were far more complex than these biographical slivers reveal. Nora and James enjoyed reading the works of the erotic writer Leopold von Sacher-Masoch together and indulging in bondage fantasies. Brenda Maddox argues that there was a theatricality about the Lawrences’ public fights, which bordered on histrionics and were usually followed by a saccharine reconciliation (225). Frieda was not always the victim and on one occasion broke a plate on Lawrence’s head (Maddox 158). Clearly, both couples lived their relationships with a passionate intensity that defied legacies of Victorian propriety.

Lawrence perhaps best expounds such a version of love in his aptly titled 1918 essay “Love,” which resonates not only in his own work but also in Joyce’s: “love is a travelling, a motion, a speed of coming together. Love is the force of creation. But all force, spiritual or physical, has its polarity, its positive and its negative” (1P 151). Lawrence approaches love as embracing and demanding a set of extreme emotional binaries. Love cannot be roses and smiles without being thorns and tears. A similar polarity is visible when a despondent Jim asks Nora in a letter, “Are you too, then, like me, one moment high as the stars, the next lower than the lowest wretches?” (Letters II 243). This turmoil in their own lives (p.176) is often visible in their fictional characters. True, turbulent and troubled relationships are common in modernist texts, but Lawrence and Joyce are all the more shocking because their characters relish recalcitrance and find pleasure in pain. Yet, rather than signifying a divergence from a healthy relationship, the intense conflicts between characters are normalized and treated as central to any relational power dynamic. As a result, we contend that Lawrence’s and Joyce’s work was responding to contemporaneous discussions about masochism by sexologists. Particularly, they are critically responding to a very narrow definition of masochism current among sexologists who treated it as a perversion. Instead, they see the submissive and performative nature of masochism as constitutive of everyday interactions between successful couples. This representation of what we identify as “everyday masochism” in a happy marriage is particularly well developed in The Rainbow and Ulysses.

This argument extends and amplifies a longer genealogy of scholarship about sexuality in Lawrence and Joyce. Within this tradition, the proclivity for pleasure through pain in modernist writing has generally been explored through the lens of “sadomasochism.” To this end, “sadomasochism” has often been used as an all-inclusive term to describe what we contend are two distinct behavioral and relational mechanisms: sadism and masochism. The concept “sadomasochism” elides the specific and complex power dynamics at play in any given relationship and therefore sacrifices heuristic precision for categorical breadth. Lawrentian and Joycean scholarship is not an exception to this tendency, especially with respect to The Rainbow and Ulysses.¹ Here, the concepts of sadism and masochism tend to be placed, as complements, under the umbrella of sadomasochism. Yet, such broad categorization erases the complexities of masochism as its own dynamic.

As a means of reappraising the tradition of sexuality scholarship on Joyce and Lawrence, we consider masochism a category distinct from sadomasochism. Both authors were deeply interested in the way that masochistic relationships pervaded everyday relationships. In particular, the protagonists of both The Rainbow and Ulysses define the success of their relationships through their mutual submission. This interpretation opens up a new critical space for dialogue about representations of sexuality in Lawrence and Joyce, particularly because it demonstrates that these texts were in conversation with one another, despite the mutual disdain of the authors.

This argument is presented in three distinct sections. The first section refines the analytical term “masochism” by disarticulating it from “sadomasochism.” The second section on Lawrence examines the second generation of (p.177) Brangwen marriages in The Rainbow to locate Lawrence’s doctrine of ordinary masochisms. Finally, we show how the masochistic Leopold Bloom creates the means of his own torture by inciting Molly to cheat on him. Ultimately, this essay suggests that the duality inherent in Lawrence’s and Joyce’s own relationships is tied to the perhaps surprising theoretical overlap in their works.

Theories of Masochism

When sexology was an emerging field in the middle of the nineteenth century, it found much of its inspiration in literature. It is therefore no surprise that the term “sadomasochism” was inspired by the notorious works of the Marquis de Sade and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Despite the distinctly literary projects of these authors, early sexologists like Richard von Krafft-Ebing grouped sadism and masochism together, suggesting that they ostensibly stem from similar sensations—some combination of humiliation, debasement, pain, and pleasure. Thus for Krafft-Ebing, “sadism is the experience of sexual, pleasurable sensations (including orgasm) produced by acts of cruelty, bodily punishment [ … ] an innate desire to humiliate, hurt, wound or even destroy others,” while masochism is “the association of passively endured cruelty and violence with lust” (152, 159). The two are therefore the inverse of one another. Other sexual theorists like Wilhelm Stekel, Havelock Ellis, and Sigmund Freud made relatively similar arguments (Ellis 199; Stekel 14; Freud 24). That is not to say that there were not important nuances among the theories but rather that they all saw these behaviors as part of an overarching sadomasochistic complex. Primarily, sadistic impulses in men were excused as an exaggeration of traditional, sexualized masculinity, while masochistic impulses in women were treated as an intrinsic part of their biological and social makeup (Ellis 88; Bonaparte 170–71).

In Coldness and Cruelty, Gilles Deleuze significantly departs from this sexological tradition by explicitly bifurcating sadomasochism into its constituent terms. He does so by recovering their spiritual grandfathers, Sacher-Masoch and Sade. Deleuze argues that both men exemplify two distinct sexual impulses governed by different sets of foundational principles that never meet on the same terms: “a genuine sadist could never tolerate a masochistic victim. [ … ] Neither would the masochist tolerate a truly sadistic torturer” (40–41). For the sadist, the sexual pleasure inherent in sadistic behavior lies in the complete absence of pleasure for the victim, just as the torturer who satisfies the masochist must be molded, educated, and coerced into such a position of authority. (p.178) Despite the impulse to believe that sadism is active and masochism passive, both the sadist and the masochist are active participants in their own distinct fantasies. Accordingly, the masochistic complex and the sadistic complex are complete unto themselves.

Even after their forty-year tenure, Deleuze’s theories are still powerfully resonant, and there are many Deleuzian echoes in contemporary theory. For example, in Homos, Leo Bersani relies on the broad term “S/M,” which breaks down the boundary between sadism and masochism. Yet he still accedes to “primacy of masochism” and the “appeal of powerlessness” within said “S/M” relationship, revealing the Deleuzian roots of his argument (95). Also using the theoretical groundwork laid by Deleuze, Slavoj Žižek further emphasizes the primary distinctions between sadism and masochism: it is the masochist who “stages his own servitude” (92). The apparent reluctance to move beyond Deleuze’s compelling framework speaks to its critical acuity. By embracing this approach to masochism, we consider the way in which Lawrence’s and Joyce’s masochists create the situations in which their masochistic fantasies are fulfilled. Moving beyond Deleuze, we contend that masochism does not exclusively find its full expression in explicitly sexual power dynamics; rather, the masochism inherent in ordinary relationships and everyday life is not only of equal intensity and satisfaction but can also be a vital element within a successful marriage.

Marriage as Masochism: Anna and Will Brangwen

Surveying the body of gender- and sexuality-focused criticism about D. H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow (1915), Marianna Torgovnick argues that there is a “time warp” in which critics make little or no reference to the development and influence of potentially relevant theories including structuralism, psychoanalysis, and feminism (33). Remarkably, she finds that the overabundance of explicit sex and sexual philosophizing that appears in the novel has led to few sexually focused readings. Torgovnick, in an effort to reposition Lawrence within this discourse on sexuality, recuperates the contextual discourses about sexuality in circulation while he was writing The Rainbow. By citing the groundbreaking work of Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Havelock Ellis, and Sigmund Freud as “possible model[s]” for Lawrence (45), Torgovnick usefully establishes connections between Lawrence’s work and contemporaneous theories about sex that undoubtedly inform his writing.

More interested in the intersections between Lawrence and Ellis, Torgovnick (p.179) does not fully unpack the full potential of her mention of Sacher-Masoch’s Venus in Furs (1870) in relation to Lawrence. This is, in fact, something that had earlier been fleshed out by Emile Delavenay, who admits that while Lawrence never directly references Sacher-Masoch, there are deep “psychological similarities between the two authors,” suggesting that it might be possible to trace a “direct line of literary descent” from Masoch to Lawrence (121, 143). Indeed, the boudoir novel salaciously and meticulously documents Severin constructing his own punishment through the erstwhile innocent Wanda. The active role of the masochist echoes throughout Lawrence and especially the Rainbow. In many cases, the masochistic elements that Lawrence appropriates—the tendencies on behalf of his characters to gain pleasure from the pain they experience—become the cornerstones of the relationships that comprise the narrative. Importantly, these masochistic elements exist in the everyday lives and interactions of Lawrence’s characters. They have, accordingly, been difficult for critics to negotiate, even though they are ripe for inventive analysis. To this end, we follow the path laid by Deleuze in his return to masochism’s literary origins and use Sacher-Masoch’s text as a lens through which to explore The Rainbow and its pioneering, reactionary model of masochism.

The novel focuses primarily on the differences in courtship, flirtation, marriage, and love over the course of three generations of Brangwens. Initially, Tom Brangwen marries a mysterious foreigner, Lydia. As the novel progresses, Lydia’s daughter from a previous marriage, Anna, marries her cousin Will. Finally, Will and Anna’s daughter Ursula experiments romantically but refrains from settling down. The frank and tumultuous sexual haven that Anna and Will Brangwen experience within the confines of their marriage appears to pose an interpretive problem for critics determined to see Lawrence as conservative, as misogynist, as queer, as homophobic, and as fascist.² As a couple, Anna and Will are rarely mentioned in Rainbow scholarship if at all. James Twitchell, focusing predominantly on the vampiric characteristics often ascribed to Lawrentian women, groups Anna and Will in a bevy of other couples: Gudrun and Gerald, Ursula and Anton, Tom and Lydia. Twitchell views Tom and Lydia’s marriage as the only relationship that comes to some semblance of long-lasting fruition, citing their inaction and stability as distinct from the other ultimately destructive pairings. This reading of The Rainbow does Anna and Will a disservice by prioritizing the least exciting relationship in the text. Yet Twitchell is following a longer tradition in his reading of the novel. In his early 1931 review, John Middleton Murry argues that in the first generation (p.180) (Tom and Lydia), “man is really man,” while in the next generation (Will and Anna) “woman begins to establish the mastery” (74).

Despite Murry’s reservations, Anna and Will are arguably evenly matched partners. They experience the same sets of problematic emotions and impulses, thereby complicating the gendered prioritization that critics often ascribe to Lawrence. In fact, the creation of this perpetually shifting balance is a substantial part of Lawrence’s experimentation with Sacher-Masoch. By applying his innovative and often shocking fantasies to women as well as men, Lawrence creates a heterosexual masochistic complex in which both participants play a variety of roles to satiate themselves and their partners. For Lawrence, love and marriage are inextricably tied to masochism, which he sees as part of the consistent foundation upon which all human relationships are built. In “Love,” he asks the pivotal question facing his characters: “What worse bondage can we conceive than the bond of love?” (1P 151–52). Viewing love in terms of bondage—perhaps taking his cue from Ellis’ conception of courtship—enables Lawrence to establish equivalence between the two; that equivalence reveals masochism and love as mutually inflected, mutually dependent, and mutually influential in the world of romance. In his theoretical approach to love, Lawrence’s discourse speaks directly to the language of masochism as, of course, distinct from sadism.

Lawrence moves beyond the whip-possessing, fur-clad dominatrix of Sacher-Masoch’s Venus in Furs to less obvious and more ordinary, even inescapable, forms of masochism. By using variations of the surprisingly flexible masochistic contract, a literal set of “laws that regulate the partnership” (Smirnoff 65), Lawrence identifies the pervasive presence of masochism in marriage. These rules establish a set of guidelines and conditions that, by virtue of the weight given to them by those entering into the contract, create a specific role each participant must play. In Sacher-Masoch’s own contract with Wanda, his wife, she is set up to demand the following of her servant: “My Slave [ … ] You shall renounce your identity completely. You shall submit totally to my will. [ … ] You shall be neither a son nor a brother nor a friend; you shall be no more than my slave groveling in the dust. [ … ] You have nothing save me; for you I am everything, your life, your future, your happiness, your unhappiness, your torment and your joy” (278–79). Masochism, for Sacher-Masoch, necessitates a power hierarchy in which one partner appears to be wholly in control and the other wholly subjected. Severin, the theoretical victim of Venus in Furs, constantly places himself at the mercy of a woman he coerces into a position of physical and emotional tortures.³ Not only is Severin subject to the whims (p.181) and fancies of the cruel women he creates, but he stops being called “Severin” so that his own identity can be broken down, reshaped, and reconstructed within the confines of the contract. Both participants in the contract undergo a revision of their respective identities. In similar fashion, Will and Anna experience a redefinition of their identity from complete individual to lover, spouse, and dependent as they become husband and wife. Marriage for the duo reveals secrets, emotions, concerns, and confusion. Early in their marriage, Will discovers a new woman in Anna, one who is “reckless,” “independent,” and “indifferent” (R 177, 126, 96), while Anna finds Will “hard,” “evil,” and “cruel” (R 118, 141, 164). Both see the revelation of these frightening new characteristics as directly related to their newly attained marital status—an indication of the immediacy of identity shifts within marriage. These sudden realizations spawn Will’s moment of clarity about the condition of marriage: “When he was a child, he had thought a woman was a woman merely by virtue of her skirts and petticoats. And now, lo, the whole world could be divested of its garment, the garment could lie there shed away intact, and one could stand in a new world, a new earth, naked in a new, naked universe. It was too astounding and miraculous. This then was marriage!” (R 139–40). Here, Will faces the shedding of the external signifiers that both he and Anna possessed before their marriage. Will, much like Severin, comes to the realization that external signifiers, like the garment, are symptomatic of the complicated relationship between the two spouses. Although identity for Severin is tied to adornments, for Will those adornments are simply masks that dissolve within marriage. Interested more in what this dissolution yields, the removed-garment metaphor is a recurring one that enables Lawrence to genuinely locate his concerns in commonplace trivialities.

While not nearly as explicit, formal, or rigid as Sacher-Masoch’s contracts, Lawrence sees the marriage contract as something that just as necessarily gives birth to new individuals who are bound and subject to each other. Furthermore, the rebirth of Anna and Will within their relationship is a direct result of the institution of marriage and the contract that it entails. Consequently, the marriage contract is the primary form of the masochistic contract as it can be found in ordinary lives. As Tom Brangwen so hesitantly states in his toast to the couple, the definition of man and woman, of husband and wife, exists in and of marriage: “for a man to be a man, it takes a woman—. [ … ] And for a woman to be a woman it takes a man—. [ … ] Therefore we have marriage” (R 128).⁴ The exchange of vows, for Lawrence, implies an exchange of identities, in which the real self will be revealed within the marriage contract, just as the (p.182) masochistic contract claims to reveal the inner selves of its participants. These respectively undiscovered selves need the formality of marriage and of the masochistic contract in order to shed their guises and come into themselves. Within the contract (marital and masochistic) Lawrence locates the often painful and shocking transformation of individuality that productive relationships tend to demand. In his attitudes toward marriage, Lawrence is deliberately engaged with issues of bondage and love, masochism and coupling, all in order to rework some of the underlying principles that govern Sacher-Masoch’s masochism into the less rigid, more fluid, and much more ordinary masochisms that exist in everyday institutions.

Focusing more heavily on what he sees as the emotional victimization and torture experienced by both partners in any love-based relationship, Lawrence is overtly engaged with the overlaps between pleasure and pain. Most obviously, that emotional torture appears in The Rainbow vis-à-vis the experience of a frustrating combination of opposing and consuming emotions, described as bliss, joy, misery, and repulsion; it is within that realm of binaries that Lawrence situates all important romantic relationships. Lawrence’s philosophy on love emphasizes union through an embracing of polarity: “There must be two in one, always two in one—the sweet love of communion and the fierce, proud love of sensual fulfillment, both together in one love” (1P 154–55). This “one love” manifests itself, for Lawrence’s characters, in conflicting and competing emotions and impulses, and what seem like their catastrophic consequences. The “gladness” that Will feels upon his possession of Anna is perpetually countered by his “hatred” of her. Will cannot manage his role in their relationship until he accepts this problematic duality and its accompanying feelings of isolation, victimization, anger, and hurt as unavoidable, even natural.⁵ Much more importantly, however, Will’s experience is not an exclusively male one because Anna, too, faces the mix of fear, sadness, bitterness, magnetism, and love. Here, Lawrence innovatively suggests that the masochistic complex exists in precisely the same form in women as in men—a drastic deviation from the misogynistic diagnoses of sexology and psychoanalysis.

Much like Severin, who is perpetually “condemned” (238) by competing feelings of terror, shame, fear, love, attraction, and hatred, both Will and Anna find themselves constantly torn between their feelings of extreme adulation and severe loathing. At the mercy of the mistress that he himself creates, Severin craves the complex impossibility of such emotions coexisting. Initially overwhelmed by that impossibility, both Will and Anna fear for their future, individually and as a couple. Yet, just as Severin finds himself overstimulated (p.183) and sexually satisfied, and deliberately dissatisfied, so, too, Will and Anna grow into their rocky feelings. They constantly torment one another and themselves by reading into gestures, expressions, and circumstances. Lawrence uses bodily and religious language and imagery to capture the enormity of their coexisting animosity and adoration. Seeing Anna cry, Will’s “eyes glittered [ … ] as if with malignant desire,” upon which he was “possessed by the evil spirit [ … ] [which] tortured him and wracked him, and fought in him” (R 143). The coexistence and interrelatedness of Will’s glittering eyes and the cruelty that Anna sees in him in conjunction with the desire that Anna feels as a result of this insight are part and parcel of the masochistic complex as it exists for Lawrence in everyday life. In case the reader misses Lawrence’s deliberate highlighting of the ordinariness of that complex, he uses simple imagery that captures the cyclical give-and-take of day and night to represent precisely the same cycle that Anna and Will perpetuate: “So they remained as separate in the light, and in the thick darkness, married. He supported her daytime authority, kept it inviolable at last. And she, in all the darkness, belonged to him, to his close, insinuating, hypnotic familiarity” (R 201). For Lawrence, the ups and downs of Will and Anna’s marriage are as natural, and as inevitable, as the transition from day into night and back into day again. The constantly shifting power balance that allows Anna and Will to exist, and more importantly, to thrive, enables them to channel the inner turmoil that they experience on a daily basis into the fuel for their lustful relationship, thereby virtually destroying the boundary that separates pleasure and pain. Will and Anna, then, become representatives of Lawrence’s doctrine on marriage and masochism; in their embracing of the paradoxically painful and pleasurable polarities within marriage, Will and Anna prove their equality. Notably, it is not an equality based on romantic notions of two equal and complementary forces. Rather, it is an equality achieved when two oppositional forces meet on unequal terms and are able to harmonize through mutual submission, an equality part and parcel to the everyday tug and pull of the masochism inherent in the marriage contract.

Bondage on the Island of Calypso

There can be little doubt that James Joyce was also influenced by the works of Sacher-Masoch. Not only did the Austrian stimulate the Irishman on an intellectual level, but Joyce also used Venus in Furs as a personal sex guide. In one letter to Nora, Jim pleads, “I would like to be flogged by you” (Letters II 243). In another missive, he has it in mind to dress her up as his own Venus in (p.184) Furs, buying for her “a splendid set of sable furs, cap, stole, and muff” (Letters II 254). Due to this overt predilection for masochism on Joyce’s part, and the whipping and fisting Bella/Bello metes out on the obliging Bloom in “Circe,” it is no surprise that there is an extensive body of research on Joyce and sexuality generally, and masochism in particular. Indeed, as early as 1954, Richard Ellmann fleshed out the parallels between Venus in Furs and the “Circe” episode in Ulysses (JJII 371–73).

Since that moment, and in contrast to Lawrentian scholarship, there has been a rich tradition of fruitful readings of Ulysses through the lens of sexuality. Two distinct, although not necessarily mutually exclusive, genealogies of research have emerged: one follows heavily in the footsteps of the textual, biographical, and historical tradition of Joyce studies, while the other tends to approach the text through a theoretical, largely psychoanalytic, lens. The former school is best exemplified by Richard Brown’s comprehensive study Joyce and Sexuality (1985).⁶ These works put Ulysses in conversation with contemporaneous sexological literature and controversies. Alternatively, the theoretical school understands masochism through a host of different psychoanalytic models.⁷ The theoretical school has provided useful insight into the intersections of textuality, sexuality, and aesthetics, especially in showing that sexuality is integral to the form of the novel.

Curiously, despite the sometimes vast differences in approach, the use of masochism as a point of entry into Ulysses has focused almost exclusively on two episodes: Bloom’s masturbation in “Nausicaa” and his domination by Bella/Bello in “Circe.” Of these two episodes, the latter receives the overwhelming amount of attention. There are three reasons for this uneven distribution. First, “Circe” deals extensively with masochism and sadism. Second, as Leo Bersani has pointed out, the scene lends itself well to psychoanalysis while at the same time, interestingly, resisting such a reading (166). Third, “Circe” is one of the most experimental episodes in Ulysses and, therefore, interesting for its aesthetic treatment of perversion.

This is not to say that critics have unilaterally focused their attention on “Circe” without contextualizing it within the rest of the work. Nevertheless, there is room for more exploration in other chapters. Doing so reveals that masochism in Ulysses does not exclusively hinge on explicit sexual acts. Our reading, therefore, takes as a starting point other scholars who argue that Joyce conceived of sexuality as a broad spectrum of power dynamics between men and women. Indeed, he believed a wide variety of sexual tastes are intrinsic to human psychology (Brown 83). Bloom’s masochistic desire, which is expressed (p.185) through textual experimentation in “Circe,” is not separate from but is complementary to the more pervasive and sustained masochistic drive that structures his interactions throughout the day.

The finest examples of this everyday masochism permeate the “Calypso” episode, in which Bloom and Molly are first introduced. Perhaps the most easily readable episode in Ulysses, it is often overlooked because so little seems to happen in terms of both style and plot development. Yet it is the only episode in which there is direct dialogue between husband and wife.⁸ The scene, then, becomes a productive site for investigating the way Bloom’s masochism articulates itself through ordinary relational power dynamics. The episode opens with the couple’s morning routine: Molly lies in bed while Bloom makes her breakfast, steps out to the butcher, serves her breakfast, catches up with her, eats his own breakfast, and finally defecates. Complementing Bloom’s ironic Odysseus, Molly functions as an ironic Penelope. Consequently, she appears more like Calypso, the nymph who keeps Odysseus on her island, in this chapter than Penelope. Molly’s demands also hold Bloom in bondage. Yet it is a willing bondage, and he serves her with subservient satisfaction (Boone 70–71).

As Bloom prepares her food, he anticipates her desires in detail: “Another slice of bread and butter: three, four: right. She didn’t like her plate full. Right” (U 4.11–12). The repetition of “right” indicates not only that he is actively thinking about her but that he is checking himself in his thoughts about her, as though arriving with a full plate would incur punishment. A similar type of obsequiousness is visible when he goes up to ask her if she wants anything for breakfast. Rather than entering the room, he “paused by the bedroom door,” hearing his own voice “softly” in the “bare hall” (U 4.49–52). The extreme awareness of his actions—pausing, speaking softly, monitoring the volume of the sound, and standing in the empty hallway outside the bedroom—all speak to a level of consideration beyond mere uxoriousness and much closer to more formal submission. Bloom is thereby casting himself as a potential victim of Molly’s wrath, even though the sleeping Molly is most likely unaware of this.

Molly’s obliviousness to Bloom’s fantasy adheres to the essentially active and surreptitious nature of masochism. As Deleuze points out, the masochist has to educate and persuade the woman dominating him “in accordance with his secret project” (41). Molly becomes dominant in the relationship despite herself because Bloom endows her with an exaggerated power and vindictiveness. On the surface, though, Molly has a very limited set of punishments to dole out. She cannot withhold sex from him because it is he who refrains from sex with her. She has no desire to beat him because, as her reading habits reveal, (p.186) she is not into books about bondage but only books about sex. Even her last act of punishing Bloom, sleeping with Blazes Boylan, is a fulfillment of Bloom’s desire. The elaborate rituals he goes through on her behalf are of no consequence to her, which emphasizes Bloom’s control of the situation. Bloom thus imagines Molly hurting him though she has no intention of doing so. In a slightly different theoretical context, Tonya Krouse explains that “Bloom’s masochistic pleasure depends upon the women performing the dominant role in the sado-masochistic scene as if they will, in fact, cause Bloom real harm” (127). For the most part the satisfaction in masochism for Bloom is based on an imaginary wrong that will be perpetrated against him.

Admittedly, one could offer that the most hurtful wrong meted out to Bloom, his cuckolding by Boylan, is very much real. While the physical act is certainly real, the importance of the act is entirely dependent on how Bloom frames this wrong within marital and social convention. He posits it as a grave misdeed exactly because this enhances his pleasure. Even his cuckolding by Boylan is an imaginary wrong because it is not inherently wrong, only wrong with regard to traditional marital conventions.

This initially jarring captive behavior early on in the episode is explained later through the insinuation of masochism in Dlugacz’s pork butcher shop. Here Bloom runs into the servant girl from next door with “vigorous hips” and a “[s]trong pair of arms,” who he fondly recalls “[w]hacking a carpet on the clothesline” (U 4.148–50). The image of a robust woman flogging foreshadows the masochistic phantasmagoria he experiences later in the day. He is afraid that she might take the last kidney but is happy that she only wants “Denny’s sausages” (U 4.147). Bloom intends to follow her furtively out of the store but is thwarted by the butcher who is too slow when helping him. The missed chance to walk behind her “moving hams” (U 4.172) instead turns into masochistic pleasure: “The sting of disregard glowed to weak pleasure within his breast” (U 4.176–77). To add to the sensation of rejection, he postulates that she will go and sleep with someone else, “a constable off duty cuddling her in Eccles lane. They like them sizeable. Prime sausage. O please, Mr Policeman, I’m lost in the wood” (U 4.177–79). Bloom gets sexual pleasure through her imagined infidelity (Brivic, Freud and Jung 154). His complete humiliation and emasculation through being cuckolded by a stronger, more commanding male authority is one of the central themes of his day. In no uncertain terms it is, for Bloom, the mental foreplay to the actual infidelity later in the day.

A similar power dynamic is visible when he returns to Molly. Upon arriving home, he finds two letters, one from Milly, the other from Boylan, which (p.187) he recognizes by the homophonic “Bold hand” addressed to “Mrs. Marion Bloom” (U 4.244). The bold hand highlights both Blazes’ masculinity and the confidence with which he approaches Molly.⁹ A “conquering hero” (U 11.340), Boylan is the most stereotypical representation of male virility in the novel (Boone 69). He stands in direct contrast to Bloom, who writes secretly to Martha Clifford as Henry Flower in “Sirens” and masks his handwriting by using “Greek ees” (U 11.860). Accordingly, he treats Boylan’s letter as a cherished symbol of his emasculation. What he does with the letter, therefore, is particularly important. Rather than leave it for Molly to find in his absence, and thereby avoid confronting the imminent cuckoldry, he brings the letter and its humiliating consequences to her.

Bringing her the plans for her infidelity betrays Bloom’s actual position as submissive. When Bloom enters the room, the narrative establishes Molly’s spatial dominance. She sits propped up in the bed while Bloom shuffles about her. He opens the blinds at her request and tidies up the room. When he goes down to grab her breakfast after she tells him to “[h]urry up with that tea” (U 4.263), he comes back with his arms laden with her food and drink and is forced to “[n]udg[e] the door open with his knee” (U 4.300). In so many ways, Bloom is manacled in and by his service to Molly. Her “bulk” (U 4.304), “large soft bubs” (U 4.304–5), and her fragrance that inundates the “air” (U 4.306) are all indicative of her dominance. In short, Molly is ubiquitous, and Bloom willingly swims within and about her.

This dynamic consistently demonstrates Bloom’s submissiveness to Molly. Importantly, he himself desires and creates this submission. As Krouse aptly points out, “Bloom in fact has the power, and those who dominate him submit to that power” (127). Even though he sees Molly hide the letter from Blazes under her pillow, clearly wanting to disguise her tryst, he prods her about it, asking, “Who was the letter from?” and thinking immediately, “Bold hand. Marion” (U 4.310–11). He knows the answers to his own questions, yet he persists. Upon his inquiries, she reveals that she will sing “Là ci darem la mano” from Mozart’s Don Giovanni with Boylan for the music recital. The song—in which Don Giovanni tries to seduce the innocent peasant girl Zerlina away from her fiancé—will be particularly important for Bloom throughout the day. In the song, Zerlina’s first lines are “vorrei e non vorrei,” meaning “I would like to and I would not like to.” However, Bloom misremembers the line as stating “voglio e non vorrei,” which means “I want to and would not like to.” Traditionally, this has been read as foreshadowing of Molly’s behavior because the indicative “want” is stronger than the modality of the conditional “would not (p.188) like to” (Hall 80). That is, she wants to have sex with Boylan even though she would not like to. Bloom thinks about this phrase at key moments throughout the day: when he is about to read the letter from Martha Clifford (U 5.224), as he is ostracized during the funeral cortege (U 6.238), at his work (U 7.152), when he’s confronted by the imaginary Molly and Mrs. Breen in Bella Cohen’s brothel (U 15.355, 473), and when he tries to start a friendship with Stephen (U 16.342). He constantly wonders if he is pronouncing it correctly, but in doing so he is actually replicating the paradoxical dynamic of his masochistic complex. After all, the definite feeling of “want” is caused by the hypothetical notion of “I would not like to.” Bloom wants Molly to cheat on him in actuality precisely because he would not like it theoretically. That is, he wants real punishments because he imagines them to be wrong.

This linguistic tension replicates what Žižek identifies as the theatricality within masochism: “masochism [ … ] is inherently theatrical: violence is for the most part feigned, and even when it is ‘real,’ it functions as a component of a scene, as part of a theatrical performance” (92). In relation to Bloom and Molly, it is clear that his masochistic fantasies rely on an imagined ideal of her. In his mind this idea is performing a certain role even though Molly herself is not aware of it. It is not simply actualized physical or emotional abuse that Bloom finds pleasurable, but the drama of the assumed abuse—of which he is the author, director, and actor.

This mutually reinforcing circuit and Molly’s unwitting participation in it is underscored when Bloom picks up one of the pulp novels he gave Molly, Ruby: The Pride of the Ring. The image on the flipped-open page depicts Ruby lying on the floor and a “Fierce Italian with a carriagewhip” (U 4.346–47). The picture awakens Bloom’s masochistic desire but fails to thrill Molly because she does not find “anything smutty in it” (U 4.355). She would rather have a book by Paul de Kock because she likes his name. The books do not serve the purpose of educating Molly as Bloom hopes.

In fact, Molly is apprehensive about Bloom’s masochistic overtures; like Severin’s Wanda, she needs to be coaxed and coerced into fulfilling the role of a dominatrix. This is visible in her adultery with Boylan. While Molly does achieve multiple orgasms during their encounter, it does not lead to a happy memory for her. For one, he is too stereotypically masculine for her. Her description of intercourse with him is hardly enticing; he is like, “a Stallion driving it up into you because thats all they want out of you with that determined vicious look in his eye” (U 18.152–53). She even confesses that, “I had to half shut my eyes” (U 18.153–54), a reaction that is closer to agony than ecstasy. (p.189) She ultimately does not want him to be part of her and says she “made him pull out and do it on me” (U 18.154–55). In not allowing Boylan to perform eiaculatio seminis inter vas naturale mulieris (U 10.168), she does not officially commit adultery fully according to Catholic doctrine.¹⁰ Interestingly, she does reveal that she let Boylan ejaculate inside of her on a previous occasion. This increased distancing from him speaks to a rejection of the sexual fantasy as it becomes a reality. Once she realizes what she is doing, she feels regretful. It is hardly the sordid sexual tryst Bloom imagines himself watching through a keyhole and masturbating to in “Circe.” Indeed, it is Bloom’s imagined fantasy of infidelity that is far more damning than the actual engagement suggests.

At the end of the day, it is Bloom she prefers, even if she has a hard time enjoying his penchant for analingus and coprophilia. The desire for analingus has been read as masochistic (Kleinberg 177).¹¹ The humiliation involved in tasting excrement is exciting to Bloom. When he “kissed the plum mellow yellow smellow melons of her rump” (U 17.2241), it evokes in him a “silent contemplation: a tentative velation: a gradual abasement: a solicitious aversion: a proximate erection” (U 17.2245–46). The process of licking her anus is so humiliating and degrading that it unlocks Bloom’s deepest masochistic satisfactions. Molly, conversely, does not enjoy it. In a fit of irritation she fantasizes that “he can stick his tongue 7 miles up my hole as hes there my brown part then Ill tell him I want £1” (U 18.1521–23). For her the only possible pleasure she might receive from analingus is remuneration. Yet in the end she accepts his submission: “I know every turn in him Ill tighten my bottom well and let out a few smutty words smellrump or lick my shit. [ … ] Ill be quite gay and friendly over it” (U 18.1530–33). She resigns herself to sex acts that give her absolutely no physical pleasure because they are pleasurable to Bloom. She is not, as it might appear on the surface, dominating him; rather, he is pulling the strings of her apparent domination. It is at this moment that Molly actually most closely resembles Severin’s Wanda and Deleuze’s understanding of the coerced dominatrix. Molly, like Wanda, gives into desires that do not arouse her in any way and becomes Bloom’s ideal. She loses physical interest in Bloom, as Wanda loses interest in Severin.

Ultimately, a mutually accepted masochism is the basis of their complicated if happy relationship. Despite the infidelity he foisted upon her and the infidelity she committed, Molly submits to Bloom and Bloom submits to Molly. It is significant that their marriage is reaffirmed in the last lines of the novel, as Molly imagines the moment Bloom asked her to marry him. She recounts: “I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to (p.190) say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes” (U 18.1605–9). The initial rejection on the part of Molly—“I asked him with my eyes to ask again”—shows perhaps an understanding that Bloom needs to be rejected in order to feel accepted. When he is accepted, she draws him down, physically dominating him. This power of hers over Bloom, his willingness to submit, forms the basis of her trust in him. Yet, Molly’s submission to Bloom’s submissiveness also allows him to trust her. By returning to the moment of their engagement, Joyce demonstrates that the power dynamic has not essentially changed over the course of the day (Siegel 67). Bloom, as a masochist, begins the day in control and ends the day in control; the illusion that Molly is in charge is symptomatic of her adherence to Bloom’s masochistic ideal.

This common trust and submission enables us to reconcile infidelity with constancy, coprophilia with loving embrace, and degradation with ecstasy. It is a contradiction that Joyce himself lived. In one letter, he tells Nora, “Every coarse word in speech offends me now for I feel that it would offend you,” while later he writes, “I am delighted to see you do like being fucked arseways” (SL 165, 184). This game of dominance and submission becomes central to Joyce’s conception and representation of marriage. Indeed, Leopold and Molly also continuously perform this very same tug and pull of mutual submission. What is more, even though we are privy to their marriage for only one long day, arguably their masochism is experienced as everyday.

D. H. Lawrence and James Joyce are strikingly different authors—with different styles, aesthetics, and priorities. They were, in fact, so different that their mutual animosity is well known and chronicled. Yet, sometime during the early part of the twentieth century, both novelists started to cultivate their own responses to the sexological and psychoanalytical debate about masochism. Those responses, for both men, include an attempt to remove masochism from the realm of clinical aberration and reinvent it as a far more ordinary experiential model. Such an impulse, though, is still constrained by the contemporaneous dialogue about masochism to which both men are contributing. As Lawrence writes The Rainbow, masochism is a peripheral subject of interest for a public first being introduced to sexology. When Joyce is finishing Ulysses, however, masochism is a term with far greater scope. Indeed, the public’s reception to and involvement in the discourses about masochism may become the delineating factor in the authors’ approach to the subject.

Both Joyce and Lawrence are deliberately engaged in broadening cultural (p.191) approaches to masochism. Will and Anna’s masochistic complex suggests that Lawrence is reacting directly to the gender distinctions laid out by sexologists. Both Krafft-Ebing and Ellis locate the masochistic perversion primarily in men as a direct result of woman’s seemingly innate masochistic position. Ellis explains that “in women a certain degree of sexual subjection, the primary stage of masochism, may fairly be regarded as almost normal” (207). By presenting readers with representations of masochism that both men and women experience, Lawrence denounces the gender specificity of sexological classifications of masochism, instead celebrating the potential for gender equality that masochism could and should represent to its participants.

Although Joyce incorporates more explicit sexualized representations of masochism, he still uses marriage as the site through which the most ordinary masochisms are experienced and expressed. Indeed, it is Joyce’s experimentation with the power dynamics explicit and implicit in marriage that allows readers to understand the remarkable dynamic between Molly and Bloom.

Anita Phillips argues that masochism “has signally failed to defend itself as a human tendency” (7). The writings of Lawrence and Joyce directly contradict such sweeping generalizations. To be sure, it is vital for our understanding of the history of masochism to recognize the ways in which modernists, including Joyce and Lawrence, were actively defending masochism by relocating it within the confines of ordinary marriage. They were thereby not only speaking back to the scientific language that diagnosed masochism but at the same time attempting to reveal its existence in daily trivialities. It is perhaps one of the few moments where Lawrence and Joyce were having the same conversation.