ABSTRACT
Disgust is a feeling which animates, and is memorably represented in, a wide range of early twentieth-century writing. One of the emotions whose expression was analysed by Charles Darwin in a famous book on the subject was disgust: The term ‘disgust’, in its simplest sense, means something offensive to the taste. Disgust is a gut feeling, a dis-taste. The distinctions disgustedly insisted on in turn-of-the-century fiction are often class distinctions. In The Nether World the physical disgust Sidney Kirkwood feels at the ‘fume of frying’ emanating from a fish and chip shop is also a social disgust. Disgust has no truck with convention, with signs; it does not interpret or signify, but rejects. Disgust gave them a point of entry into the subconscious. Disgust, in short, could be conservative or radical in its effects. It could preserve class distinctions, or change someone’s life. To cope with disgust, and self-disgust, himself eaten and spewed, Bloom wanders.
