"Is it not divinely deluscious? But in't it bafforyou?"

(146.26-148.32)  Today's reading brings us to the end of Isabel's answer to the tenth question of chapter six of Finnegans Wake.  By the end of yesterday's post, I was wondering where Isabel was going, if anywhere.  While the first part of her answer was cyclical (as I discussed in yesterday's post), she does end up in an interesting place.

The passage picks up with Isabel apologizing for the affront to the suitor she delivered at the end of yesterday's passage.  "Ever so sorry!" she says.  I think that at this point she takes a more positive turn away from the cycle of building up and tearing down her suitor.  She's a flawed, often self-centered young woman ("I beg your pardon, I was listening to every treasuried word I said fell from my dear mot's tongue . . . .  Only I wondered if I threw out my shaving water."), but she is, indeed, tender and loving.  She wants to be physically intimate with her beloved, but senses his distraction, first with a winged animal passing by, and then with an audience consisting of the 12 men and 28 young women we just encountered earlier in the chapter.  (The 28 women are here named alphabetically -- one for each letter of the alphabet, along with the Greek letters "Ph" and "Th" (as noted by McHugh) -- and Isabel names herself as the 29th young woman:  "And Mee!")

There's a lot going on here with innocence and experience (as Blake might term it) or purity and depravity.  Isabel often speaks as someone who is sexually experienced but sometimes lets hints drop that she might tend more toward the chaste end of the spectrum.  The nervous and distracted suitor seems inexperienced and says as much, but Isabel doesn't fully believe him:  "Of course I believe you, my own dear doting liest," she says.  Ultimately, all this doesn't matter, though, at least for the most part.  Isabel reaches the point where she's fully accepting of her suitor:  "As I'd live to, O, I'd love to!"  And, in the end, she pledges her devotion to him and brings the two of them into a union:  "With my whiteness I thee woo and bind my silk breasths I thee bound!  Till always, thou lovest!  Shshshsh!  So long as the lucksmith.  Laughs!"

At the end of Isabel's monologue, then, we can see that her answer is both very affirming and very Joycean.  In a way that turns traditional gender stereotypes on their heads, the man is the often-irrational, cripplingly-emotional wreck, while the woman is the sometimes-calculating, but strong and comforting pillar.  While the suitor passively looks to Isabel for security, Isabel makes the choices and is the force that binds the two together.  Much like previous chapter hinted at the ways in which Molly Bloom is a manifestation of ALP, this question establishes Isabel -- ALP's daughter -- as a kind of sister to Molly.  In many ways, Isabel's monologue parallels Molly's, and each ends with an affirmation.  I'll refrain from belaboring the point here, so I'll just say that, once again, it's impressive how much Joyce could pack into just a couple of pages.