Molly Bloom in Bed

Molly Bloom is lying restlessly in bed, her head next to her husband's feet, counting the days until she will next be with her lover, Blazes Boylan: ‘Thursday Friday one Saturday two Sunday three O Lord I cant wait till Monday’ (Ulysses 18.594–5). The next item we see on the page – one can hardly call it a word – is a bizarre string of letters: ‘frseeeeeeeefronnnng’ (18.596). All in lower case, it begins the fourth of the so-called ‘sentences’ of the final episode of Ulysses. Its challenge to our reading of the episode is multiple: it is unpronounceable, at least according to the norms of the English language; it is meaningless; and it is hardly conceivable as part of Molly's thought processes in the way that everything in the chapter up to this point has been. Joyce does not leave us mystified for long, however: the verbalised thoughts that follow this strange irruption explain what it is doing here: ‘… train somewhere whistling the strength those engines have in them like big giants …’ (18.596–7). Distant train whistles may more usually evoke associations of travel, separation, nostalgia, or longing, but Molly's response is clearly coloured by her active desire for the man she has just called, with obvious relish, a ‘savage brute’ (18.594). This supposition is strengthened by the sudden change of tack in Molly's ruminations as her thought continues: ‘… like big giants and the water rolling all over and out of them all sides like the end of Loves old sweeeetsonnnng …’ (18.596–8).

What kind of experience does a moment like this offer to the reader? Are we to take this series of letters as representing the actual sound of a train whistle – perhaps on two notes, higher then lower – as it penetrates the bedroom of 7 Eccles Street? (The train is too distant, I think, for the double tone to be a product of the Doppler effect.) Would it be legitimate for an audio version of the book to substitute for the reader's voice at this point a recording of the real sound?