Ulysses Essay 7 (14:4-6): 

Chapter 1 (Telemachus) No. 7

 “Her woman’s unclean loins, of man’s flesh made not in God’s likeness, the serpent’s prey.”

Stephen bitterly resents the fact that the milk-woman, on learning that Mulligan is a medical student, treats the latter with great respect. Stephen inwardly mocks Mulligan that although he is nothing more than “her bonesetter, her medicineman” it is in Mulligan that the simple milk-woman places her trust, in contrast to Stephen’s awareness that – as he puts it to himself – “me she slights.” Dwelling on Mulligan’s parody of the Mass, Stephen transforms him in his mind from a physician of the body into a Catholic priest administering the sacrament of extreme unction to a critically ill parishioner. He deplores the milk-woman’s deference “to the voice that will shrive and oil all there is of her but her woman’s unclean loins,” referring to the fact that the extreme unction incorporates a ritual in which the priest dabs oil on the forehead, the hands, and (representing the genitalia) the loins of a male patient, these being the parts of the body which are considered to be the most prominent in sinning. In contrast, a woman’s loins are not anointed on the grounds that the female genitalia are considered “unclean” because of the blood of menstruation which, according to Leviticus 15:19-28, render a woman impure. In keeping with this perception, Jewish orthodox practice (“niddah”) prohibits sexual relations while a woman is menstruating and also for the following week. Marital sex can then be resumed on condition that the wife has “cleansed” herself in a ritual bath (a “mikveh”).

Except among orthodox Jews, the practice of niddah is not widespread in contemporary Jewry although there has been some “new age” movement towards re-adopting some form of niddah. Favoring this approach, there is some proof that cancer of the uterine cervix is scarce among women who observe niddah, and it is also contended that resumption of sexual relations at the end of the niddah period of sexual abstention (about the twelfth day of the menstrual cycle which is close to the time of ovulation in the majority of women) is conducive to fertility, although actually in some women with different ovulatory cycles this timing could have an anti-procreational effect. Other rationalizations for niddah include the arguments that sex after abstention is considered to be mutually more satisfying (and therefore contributes to marital harmony), and that the practice grants a woman an often appreciated period of freedom from unabated sexual demands on the part of her husband. Yet while it seems obvious that the biblical idea that the physiological process of menstruation makes a woman “impure” or “unclean” is outlandish in the extreme, I still remember my religiously orthodox mother periodically stating with pride that her three children were all born “in purity”.  

But Stephen does not restrict his contemplative denunciation of the church’s antifeminism to its perception that women have “unclean loins.” He sarcastically emphasizes the church’s anti-feminine stance in a threefold castigation (“unclean loins”…”not God’s likeness”…”the serpent’s prey”). Thus in the very first episode of Ulysses we see Stephen Dedalus, Joyce’s alter ego, mercilessly denigrating the repressive anti-womanism of the Catholic Church, perhaps anticipating the feminist crescendo that will bring the day to an end in Molly Bloom’s “Penelope” monologue. In Stephen’s mind, not only does the Church regard the female as organically “unclean” because of the menstrual blood that exudes from her vagina, but it stereotypes her as inferior to the male because (unlike Adam) she was not made “in God’s likeness” and also designates her as the prime cause of Original Sin and the Fall of Man by allowing herself to be tempted as “the serpent’s prey”.

It is Stephen’s third characterization of the female sex in the eyes of the Catholic Church which is his most telling blow: “The serpent’s prey” is both temptee and temptress. It is noteworthy that In Catholic theology only one woman, the Virgin Mary, is free of original sin because although she was born of sexual intercourse between her father and mother – traditionally St. Joachim and St. Agnes – she is considered to be the product of an Immaculate Conception (not to be confused with the Virgin Birth of her son Jesus).

The theological significance of the “Fall of Man” is foundational in Catholic thought. But Jewish philosophy sees the Adam and Eve story much less forbiddingly. Actually, what was their sin? Although the serpent is a classic Freudian symbol of the erect penis, it does not seem – at least in Jewish thought – that Adam and Eve were punished for having sex, since they were previously encouraged to “be fruitful .and multiply”. Rather their transgression, analogous to that of the builders of the Tower of Babel, is considered by the Rabbis to have been one of overweening hubris: in their case an attempt to emulate God by becoming omniscient. Indeed, the sexual act, if performed within the constraints of niddah, is considered in rabbinical thought to be the height of holiness. Hence rabbis, like Islamic imams and unlike Catholic clergy, do not take vows of chastity.

However Jewish folklore and Kabbalistic thought take the sexual significance of the Adam-Eve narrative in another direction altogether. Based on some abstruse references in the Talmud to a long-haired seductive female night demon named Lilith (“of the night” in Hebrew), a story grew up that before Eve was created from Adam’s rib, Adam had a first wife (Lilith) who was created along with him. Lilith is described as an outspoken feminist who refused to be subservient to Adam (literally: she refused to have sex in the missionary position) and was therefore replaced by the more tractable Eve. Lilith’s fate is not clear – one thesis is that she joined forces with Satan who is considered (in Catholic thought) to have induced the serpent to tempt Eve.

The source of the Lilith legend is probably the double account of the creation of man in the bible. In contrast to the fairly egalitarian statement in Genesis 1:27 that “God created man on his own image; in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them,” further on in Genesis 2:7 we are told that “Then the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.” This statement is followed somewhat later by the description of Eve’s creation from Adam’s rib while Adam was under divine anesthesia (Genesis 2:21-22). Over the ages biblical scholars have grappled with the apparent contradiction between the two accounts of the creation of man, and the Lilith legend may be a homiletic attempt to resolve the issue and it does seem to explain the more equal status afforded to Lilith (Adam’s first wife) in contrast her more famous successor – “the serpent’s prey”. Be that as it may Lilith has been adopted by some modern feminists as a symbol of the emancipation of women, and she features especially prominently in contemporary Jewish feminist thought. For instance among the morning blessings of gratitude to God to be recited every day by a male Jew there are three texts thanking God for not having created him as a gentile, a slave or a woman, whereas a woman is supposed to substitute in the last case, “for having created me according to his will,” a circumlocution which has always outraged liberal Jewish thinkers. The Conservative and Reform movements have dropped these patently discriminatory and misogynist texts (albeit the subject of endless rabbinical apologia) and have substituted instead the blessing “who made me in his image” to be recited by both men and women. But how does this formulation square with the ostensible origin of woman from “Adam’s rib” that we all remember from first grade and which Stephen reminds us is also part and parcel of Catholic dogma (“of man’s flesh made not in God’s likeness”)? We are led full circle back to the earlier creation story (Genesis 1:27) that “God created main his own image…male and female he created them.” Lilith anyone?