Young Boasthard

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Pilgrim's Progress uses simple personified abstractions to tell the story of an everyman named Christian who, with "a book in his hand" (the Bible) and "a great burden upon his back" (sin), attempts to journey from his home in "the City of Destruction" (this world) to "the Celestial City" (the other one). Encouraged by a man called Evangelist to get there via "the wicket-gate" ("narrow is the gate," Matthew 7.13-14), Christian's resolution is tested by two characters called Obstinate and Pliable. He convinces Pliable to go with him in search of Paradise, but the two sink into the Slough of Despond and Pliable, freeing himself, deserts Christian there. Helped by Help, Christian journeys on, only to find his course diverted again by Mr. Worldly Wiseman, who tells him that his problems can be solved by Mr. Legality and his son Civility. Evangelist reveals these three secularists to be frauds and shows him the way to the wicket gate, where Goodwill (Jesus) takes charge of his life and sets him on the "straight and narrow" King's Highway.

Christian's finding his way to the path of righteousness is only the beginning of a long story, but this brief summary of early events will suffice to give a sense of Bunyan's technique, and the beginning of the story is perhaps particularly relevant to Joyce's portrayal of men deceived by the false goods of worldy life. After Young Boasthard (the blasphemous Stephen) blanches at the sound of a thunderclap (the voice of God), Mr. Cautious Calmer (Bloom) solicitously tries to assure him that it was nothing but "a natural phenomenon." But Boasthard cannot be so easily comforted, because he has "a spike named Bitterness" (hatred of the Catholic church) in his heart. Could he not have found "the bottle Holiness" (pious belief) again, as in his youth? No, because Grace (divine intervention) is not there to show him the way.

This presentation of the contest between worldly and divine goods is entertaining, but the parody becomes truly delightful when the narrative introduces "a certain whore of an eyepleasing exterior whose name, she said, is Bird-in-the-Hand." She has called out to Boasthard, "Ho, you pretty man, turn aside hither and I will show you a brave place, and she lay at him so flatteringly that she had him in her grot which is named Two-in-the-Bush or, by some learned, Carnal Concupiscence." Joyce found the proverb in The Pilgrim's Progress: "Passion will have all now this year, that is to say, in this world; so are the men of this world, they must have all their good things now, they cannot stay till next year, that is until the next world, for their portion of good. That proverb, 'A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush', is of more authority with them than are all the Divine testimonies of the good of the world to come." The come-hither language was prompted by several sentences in Bunyan's work. A character called Wanton flatters Faithful, one of Christian's companions, and "lay at [him] hard to turn aside with her, promising...all manner of content" (75). Demas, a character seen standing next to a silver mine, says to Christian and a companion, "Ho, turn aside hither and I will show you a thing" (75). Faithful calls someone "a very pretty man."

All the men in the commons room know Bird-in-the-Hand and have found her arguments so persuasive that they have come to think of "Believe-on-Me" as "nought else but notion." The expression for Christian faith is used more than once in Pilgrim's Progress: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved"; "he told me he was the mighty God, and did what he did, and died the death also, not for himself, but for me; to whom his doings, and the worthiness of them, should be imputed, if I believed on him." So does the expression for disbelief: "I knew not that you had aught else but notion. Besides, to tell you all the truth, I have heard of you, that you are a man whose religion lies in talk." Joyce's revelers dismiss not only the existence of God but also notions of sexual propriety. They do not fear "that foul plague Allpox" because "Preservative had given them a stout shield of oxengut." The name of this condom is Killchild, and it promises them that they will take no harm from Offspring. Here too Joyce may have taken inspiration from Bunyan: "taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked" (75).

With the mention of contraception, the Bunyan section comes to the jocoserious proposition that informs every mention of divinity in Oxen of the Sun: God demands procreation. He wants human beings to value fertility and to direct every sexual impulse toward the sanctioned production of more human beings. Mr. Cautious Calmer and all the other men were deceived about the thunderclap, "for that was the voice of the god that was in a very grievous rage that he would presently lift his arm and spill their souls for their abuses and their spillings done by them contrariwise to his word which forth to bring brenningly biddeth." All of them are spilling their seed upon the ground, like Onan in Genesis, rather than bringing forth children. Several of the words and phrases here are taken directly from The Pilgrim's Progress: "at which he fell into a grievous rage, and told them that, seeing they had disobeyed his counsel, it should be worse with them than if they had never been born"; "prepare thyself to die; for I swear by my infernal den, that thou shalt go no further; here will I spill thy soul"; "the men being patient, and not rendering railing for railing, but contrariwise, blessing, and good words for bad, and kindness for injuries done."

(The sentence's close, however––"to bring brenningly biddeth"–– sounds like a return to the Anglo-Saxon alliterations of an earlier section, and it uses a Middle English variant of "burn," bren, that was obsolete by Bunyan's time. Joyce here closes his section of 17th century prose with a reprise of the Anglo-Saxon theme, just as does at the end of the Malory section.)

Throughout the chapter it remains difficult to know how to respond to purportedly divine pronouncements like those expressed in this final sentence. They are, in part, a mocking representation of the oppressive sexual teachings of the Catholic church, as surely as Joyce's prose is an uproariously funny send-up of Bunyan's Christian allegory. But the mockery and the uproarious fun bump up against the undeniable solemnity and worth of childbirth, just as the young medical students' laughter bumps up against the propriety of respecting Mrs. Purefoy's suffering rather than adding to it. In a March 1920 letter to Frank Budgen Joyce wrote that he was "Working hard at Oxen of the Sun, the idea being the crime committed against fecundity by sterilizing the act of coition." Whatever the tone implicit in the various narrative voices that advance this idea, and whatever the nuanced critical responses that readers may have to them, it is clear that the chapter never deviates from this plan.

Most of my examples of Joyce borrowing Bunyan's words can be found in Robert Janusko's The Sources and Structures of James Joyce's Oxen. Janusko notices yet one more such instance in the description of the thunderclap that immediately precedes the Bunyan section. That paragraph begins onomatopoeically, "A black crack of noise in the street here, alack, bawled back," showing the influence of a passage in The Pilgrim's Progress in which a man says that he has dreamed of the Last Judgment: "This night, as I was in my sleep, I dreamed, and behold the heavens grew exceeding black; also it thundered and lightened in most fearful wise, that it put me into an agony. So I looked up in my dream and saw the clouds rack at an unusual rate, upon which I heard a great sound of a trumpet and saw also a man sit upon a cloud, attended with the thousands of heaven.... I also sought to hide myself, but I could not, for the man that sat upon the cloud still kept his eye upon me; my sins also came into my mind, and my conscience did accuse me on every side" (75). Not only Joyce's "ack" sounds, but also his conceit of an angry God pronouncing judgment on human transgressions through the terrible voice of the thunder, came ready-made from this source.

Janusko wisely observes that the sense of offended righteousness that Joyce takes from Bunyan "was the voice of God thundering at the vices and snares of the Commonwealth and Restoration" (14). He notes that Joyce also took the Q&A format of this section from Bunyan, and he suggests that "Bunyan's hero is, like Stephen, a man on a quest. Christian has renounced home and family to search for the Celestial City, Stephen to become an artist. Along the way, both are subject to trials and temptations and both find consolations and safeguards" (75).