Bloom the Waterlover

“What in water did Bloom, waterlover, drawer of water, watercarrier,

returning to the range, admire?

Its universality: ...”

(Ulysses 549.183-228) 

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Bloom is a true water lover.  While filling the teakettle back at 7 Eccles Street to make cocoa, he muses on why he admires water.  His reasons seem almost endless, he admires it for its impartiality, its mercurial behaviors, its perfect science, its simplicity, its "preponderance of 3 to 1 over the dry land of the globe"
 (17.193), the buoyancy, its power in violent storms, its docility in factories which harness its energy, "its gradation of colours in the torrid and temperate and frigid zones" (17.201-2), the list goes on for over 40 lines.  The depth and breadth that go into his casual reflections are stunning, and not for the first time are we shown Bloom's natural curiosity and appreciation for the natural world.

Again we see the explicit link between femininity and water.  Unlike Stephen, the "hydrophobe" afraid of women, Leopold Bloom luxuriates in water and also greatly loves the female species.  Utterly comfortable with women, in the midst of his Turkish bath, Bloom reflects on his male virility.  

Sensitive to female presences, Bloom spends most of his day reflecting on and worrying about Molly's planned affair, missing and deciding to visit Milly, or fantasizing about any of the women (or even suggestions of women, such as the women's underclothes in the store window) he comes across throughout the day.  He writes a flirtatious letter to Martha, and masturbates while watching the young Gerty MacDowell in her natural 'female habitat' of the shoreline.  He even makes sure to stop by the hospital to ask after Mrs. Purefoy, a woman with whom it is unclear whether he is even acquainted, as he had asked after a Mrs. Beaufoy. 

Bloom's relationship with women gets even more intimate, as he is presented as the "new womanly man," and subsequently emasculated and raped in the "Circe" episode (403; 15.1798-99).  Thus it is not surprising that he is such a lover of water, which is the the novel's stand-in for the female incarnate which has been all but banned from the city; nor is it surprising that at the end of the day Molly reflects that the reason she was attracted to him in the first place was because she "saw he understood or felt what a woman is..." (643; 18.1578-79).