Learning Paths » 5A Interacting
The extract belongs to the last part of Molly’s monologue. It adopts the technique in a way different from Virginia Woolf in that is a total female monologue to record the most impressive moments of the female character, there are still close of the narrator’s presence as one can see in the first line: the narrator is Molly’s herself. She remembers the moment when her present husband and she were both lying in Howth. The woman seems to have kept a precise memory of the situation. She tells about the way her husband was dressed, so the reader can make up the idea of the scene. There seems to be a cinematic technique since it is possible to visualize it. The attention to detail, a typical feature of Joyce’s symbolic realism ads to the perception of what is going on in Molly’s mind and what really took place in Howth. This is due to the exploitation of a language that appeals to senses and colors (this make the scene visible and concrete). The suite made of tweed almost suggest touch and together with his straw hat, return a lively scene, one that seems to conjure it up in front of the reader eyes. The personality of the female character is conveyed by the extract, Molly is a sensual woman who apparently knows exactly how to relate to men. Differently from the classical faithful Penelope, she got him to propose to her and on attitude and on behavior which is opposite of what should happen according to the ordinary behavior of traditional women. It is a language that suddenly appeals to taste. It also leaves from the time. Molly thinks about the passing of time. Interesting is consider how memory finds his way in Molly’s mind and even more interesting is the technique Joyce adopts to have the reader access to the mind. To tell the truth is the word “leap wears” that allows the creation of a parallel between the past and the present making what Eliot called a “continuously” possible. It is leap here now as it was when Molly worked all her sex appeal to her present husband. Eliot’s definition of metical method provides the reader elements to understand what has happened of the traditional Penelope of Omer’s Odyssey. Disrupting syntax, giving up the use of punctuation in order to convey Molly’s thoughts and emotions, the reader is involved in a scene which marks the triumph of the senses. Joyce, better than any else before, experiments with the way of writing that was dumped to be rejected by the main stream of his times. Body and flash were both to be bound, to be left outside the room of literature. It was a revolutionary way to hint at a man-women relationship which involved mind, body, emotions and instinct all together. Joyce’s interest in the female nature is suggested in the exploitation of the metaphor of the flower to refer to Molly. The reader understands the flowers in all its dimensions. It isn’t a case that after resorting to the metaphor of the flower, Joyce starts with the affirmation Yes which will work as the leitmotiv that adds coherence to a disgorged syntax. Yes represents the acceptance of humanity devoid of previous attitude of heroism of the traditional characters of the Odyssey, the one’s that provided Joyce with the scaffolding for his summa anthropological. The men kind of contemporary world is weak and can’t show that stoic behavior you can see in the classical figure of Ulysses. Joyce adds to the dimension of the contemporary anti hero and the idea of women that he enjoyed shafting with the snubbed knows people of the main stream to make fun of them. You can see it in Molly’s words. Molly completely adheres to such an image of women of the female nature when she recognizes ”yes that I was one truth think”. Immediately after word, follows the image of the sun that seems to be symbol of male nature and that is why Joyce says “the sun shines for you today”. Molly knows if and why she liked Leopold. Molly declares that the reason why she liked Leopold is that he understands what a women is. In addition she understood how to get from him what she really wanted ”to have from him all the pleasure I could was Molly’s intent of that moment”. She gives herself clearly when she confesses “lading in love”. The expression “he asked me to say yes” shows what makes women interesting for men. That is why “yes” marks a leitmotiv, the ultimate of an interaction: Molly confesses how she played with Leopold’s hunger for reality. When Joyce writes “and I wouldn’t answer”, it is interesting to consider Molly’s thought just before she is going to say “yes”.