Cast 68. Page 454, line 3564
STEPHEN: (At the pianola, making a gesture of abhorrence.) No bottles! What, eleven? A riddle!
ZOE: (Lifting up her pettigown and folding a half sovereign into the top of her stocking.) Hard earned on the flat of my back.
LYNCH: (Lifting Kitty from the table.) Come!
KITTY: Wait. (She clutches the two crowns.)
FLORRY: And me?
LYNCH: Hoopla!
(He lifts her, carries her and bumps her down on the sofa.)
This is from Episode 15. In one room of Bella Cohen’s brothel are the prostitutes Zoe, Kitty, and Florry, together with Bloom, Stephen, and Stephen’s friend Lynch.
A Pianola was a brand name for the player piano. It was developed in 1895 by the American businessman and inventor Edwin Scott Votey (1856–1931) and marketed in 1898 by the Aeolian Company. It operated by means of air pressure from pedals and a perforated music roll.
Since the novel’s present is 1904, it would have been quite a new piece of technology at the time.
When the prostitutes tell Stephen that it is already past eleven, he says, “No bottles!” The significance of eleven is that, under the law, it was illegal to serve alcohol after 11 p.m.
Stephen is remembering the riddle he gave in class at school that morning.
—This is the riddle, Stephen said:
The cock crew,
The sky was blue:
The bells in heaven
Were striking eleven.
’Tis time for this poor soul
To go to heaven.（U22.102）
I could not determine exactly what “pettigown” means. It seems to be a blend of petticoat and gown. Since gown has many meanings, here I take it to mean a kind of nightdress.
“gown: lingerie consisting of a loose dress designed to be worn in bed by women”
The phrase “be flat on one’s back” means to be lying down, unable to get up.
The three prostitutes demand ten shillings each. Stephen pays a total of forty shillings: one one-pound note (worth 20 shillings), one half-sovereign gold coin (worth 10 shillings), and two crown coins (together worth 10 shillings). (Bloom later manages to recover ten shillings.)
Zoe takes the half-sovereign, and Kitty grabs the two crowns.
For reference, ten shillings in 1904 would be worth about £40 today.
“Hoopla” means a ring-toss game. Lynch throws Kitty onto the sofa as if tossing a hoop.
Now then, the real point of interest in this scene is the act of lifting up.
Throughout Ulysses, the gesture of lifting a petticoat or skirt appears again and again.
First, in Episode 1, when the old milk woman brings milk to Stephen’s dwelling, Mulligan sings a teasing little song.
—For old Mary Ann
She doesn’t care a damn.
But, hising up her petticoats...（U18.384）
In Episode 3, in Stephen’s thoughts on the strand, he recalls Mulligan’s song as he watches the seaweed by the shore.
Under the upswelling tide he saw the writhing weeds lift languidly and sway reluctant arms, hising up their petticoats, in whispering water swaying and upturning coy silver fronds.
（U41.462）
In Episode 7, in the parable Stephen tells to the editor and others after leaving the newspaper office, two old women climb Nelson’s Pillar and hitch up their skirts.
But it makes them giddy to look so they pull up their skirts...
・・・
—And settle down on their striped petticoats, peering up at the statue of the onehandled adulterer.
（U121.1013）
In Episode 8, Bloom remembers the night of Professor Goodwin’s concert, when a gust of wind blew Molly’s skirts up.
Corner of Harcourt road remember that gust. Brrfoo! Blew up all her skirts and her boa nearly smothered old Goodwin.
（U128.193）
In Episode 9, Mulligan says to Stephen that at Camden Hall, the women playing the Daughters of Erin had to lift their skirts to step over him.
—O, the night in the Camden hall when the daughters of Erin had to lift their skirts to step over you as you lay in your mulberrycoloured, multicoloured, multitudinous vomit!
（U178.1192）
In the hallucination scene of Episode 15, Bloom’s mother Ellen searches for smelling salts, lifting her skirt and rummaging in the pouch inside her petticoat.
ELLEN BLOOM: ・・・O blessed Redeemer, what have they done to him! My smelling salts! (She hauls up a reef of skirt and ransacks the pouch of her striped blay petticoat. A phial, an Agnus Dei, a shrivelled potato and a celluloid doll fall out.) Sacred Heart of Mary, where were you at all at all?
（U358.288）
Also in Episode 15, in the brothel scene, Lynch lifts Kitty’s skirt and white petticoat with his wand.
KITTY:・・・ (Lynch lifts up her skirt and white petticoat with the wand. She settles them down quickly.) Respect yourself. (She hiccups, then bends quickly her sailor hat under which her hair glows, red with henna.) O, excuse!
（U410.2059）
In Episode 15 again, Bella the madam lifts her gown slightly and strikes a pose.
(Bella raises her gown slightly and, steadying her pose, lifts to the edge of a chair a plump buskined hoof and a full pastern, silksocked. Bloom, stifflegged, aging, bends over her hoof and with gentle fingers draws out and in her laces.)
（U431.2909）
Still in Episode 15, Zoe lifts her slip and shows Stephen her thigh. She takes from the top of her stocking the potato she earlier took from Bloom.
ZOE: Here. (She hauls up a reef of her slip, revealing her bare thigh, and unrolls the potato from the top of her stocking.) Those that hides knows where to find.
（U453.3524）
Then comes the present scene. (U454.3564) Zoe tucks the coin into her stocking.
In Episode 15, in the hallucination where Dublin is on fire and people are fleeing, society ladies lift up their skirts.
Society ladies lift their skirts above their heads to protect themselves.
（U488.4697）
In Episode 15 again, in the black mass scene, the Protestant clergyman Love, who studies the Fitzgerald family, lifts Father O’Flynn’s petticoat.
THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE: (Raises high behind the celebrant’s petticoat, revealing his grey bare hairy buttocks between which a carrot is stuck.) My body.
（U489.4705）
In Episode 18, in Molly’s drifting consciousness, she recalls that Bloom was fascinated by the skirts of girls on bicycles blowing upward.
hes mad on the subject of drawers thats plain to be seen always skeezing at those brazenfaced things on the bicycles with their skirts blowing up to their navels
（U614.290）
Also in Episode 18, Molly remembers Bloom begging her to lift up her petticoat.
he had made me hungry to look at them and beseeched of me to lift the orange petticoat I had on with the sunray pleats
（U615308）
For Stephen, this gesture is associated with old women; for Bloom, it is tied to his erotic tastes.
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