"Salient points caused by foot pressure": The Language of Feet in Ulysses

Abstract:Ulysses is full of walkers. Leopold Bloom himself covers about eight miles on foot (and ten more by vehicles) on 16 June. This essay demonstrates how, throughout Ulysses, figures of feet are associated with figures of speech, primarily metonymy and synecdoche. The essay argues that the descriptions of characters' feet and shoes are frequently presented with a tropic and rhythmic sophistication that invokes another definition of "foot": a measurement of poetic syllabification. For both Bloom and Stephen, shoes and feet are significant metonyms that capture their current financial, sexual, and ontological conditions and encapsulate their histories. More broadly, the essay contends that in Joyce's Dublin, feet, along with their fetishes and coverings, represent not only the characters' failures, foibles, and feats, but also the larger social and political conditions that shackle them, as well as their attempts to overcome them. For example, the sexism and ableism that oppress Gerty MacDowell are embodied in her "lame" leg; Ireland's poverty and lack of social services are represented by minor characters such as the one-legged sailor and the neurodivergent Cashel Farrell. Training our critical eyes on feet and shoes is essential if we wish to grasp Joyce's perceptive depiction of the haptic, that system of non-linguistic communication, sensation, and behavior that conveys meanings through physical contact. Pedestrianism exposes subjects to both the dangers and delights of urban living. In a myriad of ways, feet speak in Ulysses.