Analysis of Penelope, Ulysses, James Joyce

The title of the extract that I have to analyze is Penelope and it belongs to Ulysses, a novel written by James Joyce. In particular it belongs to the part of the novel called nostos.

Just considering the title and the structure of the novel the intelligent reader can notice the strictly connection between the title, the novel and the part of the novel called nostos; indeed they remind the idea of Homer’s Odyssey because Ulysses is Odyssey’s main character, Penelope is his wife and the epic poem belongs to the cycle of nostos.

But what makes the extract and also the novel very particular is that there is no Ulysses, no Penelope and no voyage; indeed James Joyce wrote an experimental novel in which he had studied the epic poem in order to turn it upside down and create something new. For example the brave of the epic poem becomes the anti-hero Leopold Bloom, the faithful Penelope becomes Molly Bloom, the emblem of infidelity.

However the extract is about Molly’s interior monologue. The scene is also called The Bed, indeed Molly is in a bed and starts thinking through free association and so the narrative technique used is the stream of consciousness that allows to report Molly’s thoughts in the illogical disorder of the mind: from the thought about China to the thought about the wallpaper of Lombard Street. The disorder of the mind is represented by different features: indeed there is no paragraph, no punctuation, coordination is predominant, the associations are created by similar sounds of words (with, whattl, wear, white) and the language used appeals to sense impression: sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch (sunset, flowers’ perfume, the wheels, cakes). It goes without saying that the association are totally clear only for Molly because the reader cannot be sure about the connection because he does not have her mind.

To conclude the narrator is totally eclipsed, according to Modernists’ need to put character’s inner thoughts at the centre of the investigation, there is no plot, no story, past, present and future are blended in a time called psyche time and the whole narration seems to focus its attention to the image of flowers (the word flowers is repeated lots of times within the extract), which allow to create the atmosphere of Gibraltar.