MOLLY BLOOM INTERIOR MONOLOGUE
Molly Blooms monologue differs from the previous monologue we have studied because it's a totally interior monologue: Joyce is trying to characterise the figure of Molly bloom through her stream of consciousness.
In order to do that he exploits a concept of time where memories, expectations, images, doubts and free associations of ideas collide. Differently from other interior monologues here the omniscient narrator makes a superb use of the language to record all that crosses Molly Bloom's mind. As a result the reader is asked for collaboration in order to make sense of a message that sounds as if he or she could listen to any motion and feeling of the female character's mind. So that the effect recalls more a listening experience that creates an intimate connection with the reader. He/She understands that Molly Bloom - whose surname reminds the blooming of flowers - is a middle aged woman since her thought goes back to sixteen years earlier, to a moment when in Gibraltar (Gibilterra) she consented / accepted to make love with Leopold, her husband.
The scene within which the character is presented is an unusual one since the woman is half-asleep in bed and the voice that reaches the reader is one that goes through different images and memories of which the reader is to make sense. This is a difficult task considered the total absence of punctuation, the insisted use of light motifs among which "yes" is the most important one, highlighting the total acceptation of life in all its aspects.
Molly Bloom's world is evoked by the chain of her thoughts that are frequently activated by external noises like the ring of a bell or an alarm clock that makes her mind fly to China, thinking of the different time and so it happens that Time becomes one of the semantic elements helping the text cohere. The absence of punctuation is replaced by a careful choice of lexical items very frequently in alliterative patterns that add cohesion as does repetition. The light motif is also functional to the aim of giving unity to her stream of consciousness which is rendered/conveyed by her chain of thoughts. From considerations about time in China her mind shifts to the singing of the Angelus and to the deafening alarm clock of Molly's neighbours and to her efforts to fall asleep. Watching the wall-paper her mind now shifts to tomorrows tasks: she wants to decorate her house and therefore her mind is inhabited by all the actions she has to take for Steven's visit. The narrator thus creates settlement and character at the same time, appealing to the language of sense impression and following the visual images of Molly's mind and therefore the reader travels in time (in Molly's different moments of life) and space (nature, landscapes, animals) as well as in the lady's reflections about religion and atheists to end up the journey with the most meaningful moment of her climatic memory: when Leopold declared his love and asked her to make love. The description unveils James Joyce's deep knowledge of the female nature when he has Molly expressed all the naïf games she used to bring Leopold desire to the highest tension.
The whole monologue follows a crescendo thanks to the language of sense impression that recalls the flow of a river or the energy of a volcano but one that Mr. Joyce is perfectly able to manage. Molly comes to surface as a woman, a mother, a welcoming person that it can be said that she turns out to be the quint essence of female nature. Despite giving more space to her musings as lover the Intelligent Reader cannot help realising Molly is set in a natural landscape that is multicoloured, multilingual (the Spanish, the Jude and many other) so that hers becomes a central position in the history of global world, very different from the simple border of Gibraltar.
The flow of her consciousness indeed does not know any boundary of border and shifts without any rational control, not even the one of censorship. Her female interior monologue includes the multiple aspects of an anthropological investigation and therefore one cannot be surprised the novel was banded on his first publishing. Penelope/Molly Bloom seems a really realistic knew character a middle aged one that exploits myth and turns it upside-down thus revealing the obsessive need of main characters and novelists all the same to investigate female nature. James Joyce as well as Sigmund Freud has expressed the curiosity to penetrate the mystery of a female nature that blossoms from her very first and second name. Her fertility is perfectly conveyed by the pronunciation of her name and, last but not least, James Joyce's image of what he calls his "flower of the mountain". It goes without saying that the expression is strictly connected to the symbol of the woman expresses by the image of a flower which is not devoid of sexual implications.
The flowers are very rare in the mountains and this is of course an additional means to underline the rule of women in life and especially in men’s life.