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.
