George's church
George's church
In Brief
St. George's is a Protestant church a little southeast of the
Blooms' house on Eccles
Street, just across Dorset
Street. When Bloom crosses "to the bright side" of
Eccles in Calypso, he can see the sun "nearing
the steeple of George's church." At the end of the
chapter he hears the bells in the steeple winding up
to sound the time: "A creak and a dark whirr in the
air high up. The bells of George's church. They tolled the
hour: loud dark iron." (Determining "the hour" from
the tolling of the bells is a small enigma whose solution is
"Quarter to," or 8:45.) The
bells keep ringing in Circe, Ithaca, and
Penelope.
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As various Dubliners prepare to execute Bloom in Circe, "The bells of George's church toll slowly, loud dark iron," repeating not only the lovely description of their sound in Calypso but also the nursery-rhyme sense that Bloom heard in them: "Heigho! Heigho!" Later, when Bloom is apotheosized as Lord Mayor, monarch, and Savior, "Joybells ring in Christ church, Saint Patrick's, George's and gay Malahide."
Ithaca marks the approach of Stephen and Bloom to
Bloom's house by noting that "they crossed both the
circus before George's church"—the semicircular
plaza before the church's facade. As the two men bid each
other adieu midway through the episode, and as Molly lies in
bed in Penelope, the church's bells sound again,
announcing the times as, respectively, 1:30 and 2:00 AM.
