Ulysses by James Joyce

 James Joyce

James Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet considered to be one of the most important writers of the 20th century. He pushed the boundaries of literature with his inventive and innovative stream of consciousness writing style.
James Joyce stirred up society in his time, which contributed in no small part to his fame. Apart from being outspoken on the topic of religion, he supported several other controversial views. There are relationships in some of his stories perceived to be same sex by an Irish society that was highly intolerant of such things at the time. Joyce’s tendency to present an unfiltered perspective on life also lead to several arguments about the topic of obscenity and the degree of censorship in literature. Ulysses brought about controversy. 

Film adaptation of Molly Bloom’s final soliloquy in Ulysses 
 https://youtu.be/ii_aZ6djNkM

 Transcript

God of heaven theres nothing like nature the wild mountains then the sea and the waves rushing then the beautiful country with the fields of oats and wheat and all kinds of things and all the fine cattle going about that would do your heart good to see rivers and lakes and flowers all sorts of shapes and smells and colours springing up even out of the ditches primroses and violets nature it is as for them saying theres no God I wouldnt give a snap of my two fingers for all their learning why dont they go and create something I often asked him atheists or whatever they call themselves go and wash the cobbles off themselves first then they go howling for the priest and they dying and why why because theyre afraid of hell on account of their bad conscience ah yes I know them well who was the first person in the universe before there was anybody that made it all who ah that they dont know neither do I so there you are they might as well try to stop the sun from rising tomorrow the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to propose to me yes first I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said I was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I wouldnt answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas 2 glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

Comment

              Considered by many the key example of modernism. Ulysses is also one of the key works by Joyce. In this case we will be dealing with the very last part of the book, which is no other than Molly Bloom’s final soliloquy and we will also discuss its significance within the whole novel.

           In this case we will be dealing with the very last part of the book, which is no other than Molly Bloom’s final soliloquy in “Penelope,” the eighteenth and final episode of the book, and we will also discuss its significance within the whole novel. There are plenty of intertextuality references in modernist works and in Ulysses in particular and in the case of Molly, the fictional wife of Leopold Bloom, the central character of the book, she corresponds to the character Penelope in Homer’s Odyssey.

                  As for the form of this particular soliloquy, Joyce uses the “stream of consciousness” technique which he, as well as other modernists like Virginia Woolf, were so fond of. Thus, we follow Molly’s thoughts before she falls asleep as she is lying in bed next to her husband Leopold. There is no punctuation at all, so it is quite difficult to follow Molly`s words as she wanders from Ireland’s countryside (“the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth”) to Spanish landscapes (“the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens”)

                  As Molly goes from Ireland to Spain, she also goes through a long list of sexual encounters with different men, one of the reasons why Joyce’s works were always controversial, being this particular excerpt a good example of that. Sexuality is explicit in Ulysses, which we can particularly see in this last soliloquy. When Molly refers to her sexual encounter with Leopold she does it in a totally open way when she says: “and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes”. What is more, before she starts to go through a whole list of lovers, she openly declares her husband is not aware of it when she says: “I was thinking of so many things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly”. The last lines of this excerpt, which are also the last lines of the book itself, refer to Molly’s first sexual intercourse when she says that “I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes”.

 

                   There are also other relevant references in this particular excerpt like the mention of religion which was also a recurrent topic in Joyce’s works and which he expresses here in Molly’s words or thoughts: “theyre afraid of hell on account of their bad conscience ah yes I know them well who was the first person in the universe before there was anybody that made it all who ah that they dont know neither do I”

 

                  The word yes appears eighteen times in this soliloquy and Joyce himself highlighted his importance in a letter in 1921 when he said :“The last word (human, all too human) is left to Penelope." He noted that the last word of the episode, as well as the first word, is "yes, a word that Joyce described as "the female word" and that he said indicated "acquiescence, self-abandon, relaxation, the end of all resistance.”However, as I see it, the word yes in this excerpt might also be seen in a more subversive way. The eighteen times in which Molly uses the word “yes”, she might be making a statement of assertiveness more than one of acquiescence. In Molly’s words: “a womans body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is”, in which she is explicitly even mentioning the woman body in a sexual context, I see an assertive statement of woman freedom and liberation rather than woman weakness.

                    Considering all of the above, in my opinion, Ulysses is one of the most brilliant works of universal literature and this is undoubtedly one of the most innovative literary excerpts which, as I see it, can be viewed as a strong claim for women’s liberation. So, to the question: "Is Molly Bloom's solyloquy a feminist vindication?", my personal answer would be a clear and loud YES!