Henry Flower Writes a Story

This article examines the narrative perspective, voice, and style of episode 16 of Ulysses, "Eumaeus," and comes to the conclusion that it is narrated by a medium close to Leopold Bloom and his secret literary ambitions. Several aspects suggest that the narrator is no other than Henry Flower, Bloom's literary persona miraculously come to life: 1) the well-spoken third-person narrator does not give a neutral report but is heavily partial to Bloom, in particular, describing him as supremely circumspect, intelligent, and knowledgeable; 2) the narrator's authorial voice adopts recondite words and phrases that Bloom has heard from others during the past sixteen hours of his day; and 3) in one passage ("the Tweedy-Flower grand opera company"-U 16.525), the narrator blunders in giving the protagonist's name and thus reveals his fictitious identity. If the reader accepts the premise of Henry Flower's phantasmagoric authorship of "Eumaeus," the episode gains considerable significance and humor and proves to be one more instance of Joyce's stylistic virtuosity and narrative sophistication in the final sections of the novel.