Analysis of J. Joyce’s Penelope 

The extract belong to the last part of J. Joyce’s novel Ulysses calls Penelope. It also belongs to part three o the structure call Nostos. The extract consist of the last pages of Molly’s interior monologue and it is the end of the novel.

The title Penelope remained to the wife of Ulysses who waited her husband twenty years. The intelligent reader understand the opposition between Penelope and Molly and also the similarities between the to wife who waited their husbands come back (nostos).

Looking the text the narrative technique is the stream of consciousness, there is punctuation or paragraph. It is the most relevant deviation from the convention of reading. This narrative technique permits the reader to go on deep in the character mind.

In this scene the setting is Bloom’s bedroom, Leopold sleeping at the contrary Molly has a fantastic sexual dream.

Molly’s stream of consciousness shift from the present (1-9 line : people getting up in china, nouns shingling the angelus; the alarm clock of the newborns, try to for a sleep; the flowers of the wallpaper, next day shopping); to the next day: future (10-15: parlous to adorn the house for Stephan visit). Then her thought come beck to the present again (16-33 : consideration about the price of some icons, appreciation of nature, lit cache landscape  and animals, criticism of atheist). to concluding with a specify episode in the past, her past in Gibraltar (34-63 : memory of her husband declaration of love, consideration about her husband 1. why she like them 2. her indecision on the answer; reflection of other people; description of the people and on the landscape of Gibraltar; memory of her decision to marry husband). The episode concludes with the description of different kind of people who lives in Gibraltar. This uses of time is called the simultaneous time of consciousness. The external time in linear but the interior time consist of a magma of association between present and past.

The association  between one thought to the other are created bysense impression and by similar sound and/or words. The language used by J. Joyce is the language of sense impression.

The most frequents connection between sentence is and (coordination).

The rhythm of the last line, south like a crescendo. There is the list of imagine of Gibraltar follow by vive recognition of the moment when she and Leopold had may the lover for the first time.

J. Joyce adopt the light motive to hold together the text. In this extract the motive is the word yes. The repetition of yes, in the last four line, culminates in the final yes which seems to sump Molly’s sensuality.

The concept of narrative time is overturn, in the text is the ordering principle is the mythical method. J. Joyce uses the structure of the mythical epic poem of Homer to give an order in his narration indeed the intelligent reader founds the structural element of mythical poem in Ulysses.

Molly’s thought apparently at random and form less, do have a form. Their begin with the word yes and end with the same word so that her though flow in a circus. The circle is the symbol of Molly’s perfection, but at the same time Molly represent the sexual part of women. That reveals the crisis of personage. Molly have a multiple face and she become the summa of female way of being.

Also in her thought all the men she has known become an only one man, her father, her lovers, her husband merge indistinctly in to the “he of her monologue”. Leopold become the summa of male way of being.