Obscenity trial of Ulysses in The Little Review

The scene culminates in Bloom's orgasm, which legal historian Edward de Grazia, in Girls Lean Back Everywhere, argues would have likely escaped the average reader's notice due to Joyce's metaphorical language.

[20] The first expert witness was Philip Moeller, of the Theatre Guild, who interpreted Ulysses using the Freudian method of unveiling the subconscious mind, which prompted one of the judges to ask him to "speak in a language that the court could understand".

[21] The final witness was English novelist, lecturer, and critic John Cowper Powys, who declared that Ulysses was a "beautiful piece of work in no way capable of corrupting the minds of young girls".

He made further arguments that one needed to be acquainted with the city of Dublin to truly understand the work and that the sporadic punctuation, and the perceived incomprehensibility of the novel, was due to Joyce's poor eyesight.

[22] At one point in the trial Quinn confessed that "I myself do not understand Ulysses—I think Joyce has carried his method too far," whereupon one of the presiding judges replied, "Yes, it sounds to me like the ravings of a disordered mind—I can't see why anyone would want to publish it".

Disheartened by the trial, the lack of support from the intellectual community, and the future outlook for art in America, Anderson considered ceasing to publish The Little Review, and eventually ceded control of the magazine to Heap.

In her article "Art and the Law," written after being served with obscenity allegations but before the ensuing trial, Heap pointed out the irony of being prosecuted for printing the thoughts of the character Gerty MacDowell, "an innocent, simple, childish girl," in attempts to protect the minds of young women.

Girls lean back everywhere, showing lace and silk stockings; wear low-cut sleeveless blouses, breathless bathing suits; men think thoughts and have emotions about these things everywhere—seldom as delicately and imaginatively as Mr. Bloom—and no one is corrupted.

[28]Although the trial was ostensibly concerned with the "Nausicaa" episode, a number of scholars, such as Holly Baggett, Jane Marek and Adam Parkes, argue that it was motivated against the iconoclastic character of the magazine and its "politically radical lesbian" editors.

In a letter from October 16, 1920 Quinn wrote, "I have no interest at all in defending people who are stupidly and brazenly and Sapphoistically and pederastically and urinally, and menstrually violat[ing] the law, and think they are courageous".

[33][30] In Baroness Elsa: Gender, Dada and Everyday Modernity: A Cultural Biography, Irene Gammel argues that the trial was ultimately a battle over women's issues and the paternalist functions of obscenity laws at the time .

[34] Gammel asserts that Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, a prolific contributor of poetry to The Little Review, became the magazine's figurehead in a fight for authority in determining the subject matter women should be able to write about and read.