Given Mulligan’s penchant for bawdy profanity, "I'm melting,
as the candle remarked" should almost certainly be heard as a
dildo joke.
After this initial sally into the realm of female genitalia,
he quickly moves on to talk about the urination of Mother
Grogan and Mary
Ann. In Scylla and Charybdis he will gaily
introduce a dramatic script: “Everyman His own Wife or A
Honeymoon in the Hand (a national immorality in three
orgasms).” In Oxen of the Sun he proposes “a
national fertilising farm” marked by an obelisk where women hankering
after offspring can come for free insemination, and jokes
about the prodigious erections of Roman centurions.
