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SMilan - Monologue of Molly Bloom - Analysis
[author: Sara Milan - postdate: 2008-01-02]

 

The monologue of Molly Bloom is the 18th episode of Joyce's Ulysses. This passage is the close of the novel, the end of a day like many other days (now know as Bloomsday). This extract is a 20000 word interior monologue. Molly, who has been unfaithful to her  husband Leopold that day conveys her inner thoughts in her soliloquy which consists of eight long "sentences," with only two marks of punctuation in the entire episode (periods after the fourth and eighth "sentences"). Molly accepts Leopold into her bed,  frets about his health and she remembers about their first meeting and about the moment when when she knew she was in love with him. This chapter is a long stream of consciousness passage including her thoughts as she lies in bed next to Bloom.

 

All the episodes are associated with specific parts of the Odyssey and she roughly corresponds to Penelope. The major difference between Molly and Penelope is that while Penelope is eternally faithful, Molly is not, having an affair with Hugh 'Blazes' Boylan after ten years of her celibacy within the marriage. It is setted in a bed and Molly has a fantastic sensual dream. Maybe it means that the past is sleeping. The parallel in Homer's work is the moment when Penelope welcomes Ulysses when he comes back. We don't know the precise hour but we suppose that is evening (the end of the day).

 

 

All the episodes of the novel also associated with an organ. The representative part of the body in this case in the Flesh.

Molly's interior monologue shows the most conspicuous deviation of written text:
- absence of paragraph
- absence of sections
- deviation from spelling.


Also important is the shift from the present to the immediate future. Besides Molly goes back to a specific past: her youth past.

 

Molly is an unfaithful wife. In this episode she represents the summary of all the women in the novel. She stands for the essence of the female: female nature. The expression of physicality and the absolute acceptance of the human condition.

"Yes" she pronounces at the end of the monologue such affirmation by a group of sensual images. Molly represents  salvation.