James Kelly

An Affirming Body: Mollys Sexuality, Fear, and Faithfulness

Mollys ruminations in bed are characterized by a fearless critical
orientation towards those who live with bad consciences in fear and a
steadfast faithfulness to Bloom even amidst her erotic exploration of
her memories of other men. This fearlessness in regards to bad
conscience and guilt allows Molly to integrate memories of male
authorial figures and their excesses and fears without having her
conscience poisoned by their weaknesses. She distances herself from
men not on basis of her moral virtue but through her hyperawareness
of all the reasons men would like to project their shared fallen state
exclusively on women. She subtly subverts these authorities and
affirms her conscience that can look at male-centric discourse from the
outside and criticize much that is not pleasurable in the economy of
male desire. This essay will not measure Mollys degree of agency or
constraint in her thoughts, her being trapped or dominated by male
discourse, but rather will illustrate her heightened sensitive awareness
of everyones fallen state, everyones being implicated and responsible
for the domination and excesses in the social and political world.
Mollys monologue gives us a conscience that is sensitive to faults
without being weighed down with fear1. Mollys critical awareness
1 Molly does have fears, like her repeated fear of growing old and
losing her desirability, but these fears arise from Mollys fearless
acceptance of the ways in which her body is stimulated.

comes her bodily awareness (organ: flesh) of human fallen-ness, which

she effortlessly maintains in her memory through the interplay of
bodily (usually erotic) feelings and memories. Mollys memories of
erotic stimulation are both sexual and political at the same time. The
new conscience that Joyce sought to uncover through vivisection is
here read as the culmination of Ulysses: in 8 eternal sentences ethical
strength is affirmed as requiring no coordinates of authority of
knowledge in the intellectual world, only a heightened bodily
sensitivity to the dangerous traps of self loathing and hegemonic
coercion that are always present in the social/sexual world.
Our singular encounter with Molly is written in a stream uninterrupted
by and unconcerned with conventions, with thoughts effortlessly
drifting through different registers of bodily awareness in language and
all of the associations between a body, language, and conscience. An
affirming female body that does not sever or separate itself from its
conscience gives testimony that is both sleepy and aroused in bed, an
ideal location for flowing with the current of language and not getting
snagged by fear or feelings of inauthenticity and guilt. Although this is
our only encounter inside of Mollys stream of consciousness, it seems
reminiscent of Stephens thoughts in the Proteus episode as thoughts
seem to wander and freely come and go. Mollys thinking is effortlessly
critical and productive: Molly does not need to guess at the sources of
our constraints and determinations (she feels them in her body)

because she can use an awareness of the consequences of her bodys

participation in male institutionalized desire to live ethically and affirm
her belief system.
In Molly we see the consequences of a conscience that accepts
its fear of death and is sensitive to how others allow fear and
excessive/imbalanced affect to determine their actions. Molly resents
the fearful howling for the priest that she sees men do, a sign of
excessive worry that some weakness will bring eternal judgment: 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
because theyre afraid of hell on account of their bad conscience ah
yes I know them well (782). Molly can think about all of her
promiscuous sexual explorations and still affirm the authenticity and
strength of her conscience because she finds her bodys desires to be
worth exploring while she still has time rather than condemning her
carnal appetite for being lustful. Molly sees the fear of falling and being
fallen as constraining so many mens ways of thinking because she is
aware that these male fears share something in common with hers: an
anxiety about growing old and dying. Molly affirms her sexuality by
thinking through her sexual escapades with a critical conscience rather
than guilt or fear. Mollys sexuality feeds her conscience with
particularly problematic male weaknesses and her primary fear is

losing the stimulation from male suitors that keep her feeling alive and
aware.
Molly has anger towards the father figures that want to make her
a sinner so that they can confidently pass judgment without reflecting
on their own consciences. Molly remembers being the priests naughty
little sinner and the absurdity of him passing any judgment on her
body:
I hate that confession when I used to go to father corrigan he touched
me rather and what harm if he did where and I said on the canal bank
like a your person fool but whereabouts on your person my child on the
leg behind high up was it yes rather high up was it yes rather high up
was it where you sit down yes O Lord I wonder did he know me in
the box I could see his face he couldnt see mine of course hed never
turn or let on. (74r)
Molly is honest about her sexual appetite and does not try to hide from
herself that she would like to have a new man to play with every year.
This leads her to the strange position of being guided through
repentance for a fallen-ness she has already come to terms with. Molly
has no guilt complex about pursuing the pleasure of being desired and
aroused, especially considering her awareness that her value on the
market of heterosexual desire will decline soon. Even as Molly explo1es
he1 sexual desi1es outside o2 marriage she thinks of Bloom with
unconditional love by accepting and living with the reality of
incomplete faithfulness while Bloom is haunted by Mollys infidelity.
They both are bothered by each others enjoyment outside (even when
its inside) their marriage bed but Molly is keen to a type of

scapegoating that Bloom is haunted by: making the woman the

unfaithful cheater and the man the p1iest who passes judgment.
Mollys relation to authority figures that she is seeking to
understand or excite o1 change is here understood as ideally balanced
and prudent, c1iticizing without passing judgment, affective without
being excessive. We are not sure whether or not Bloom and Molly will
reunite in any way but we do know that Molly knows the secret of the
construction and immovability of their marriage bed. She ends with the
telling of the tale of the construction of this bed: the Yes she gave to
Blooms proposal. That Molly holds this tale so dearly and it ends
Ulysses shows the stead2astness of her lo3e 2o1 Bloom and the
imm3ability o2 thei1 ma11aige bed. Blooms journey led him to fears
and hauntings and reminders of betraying and being betrayed, yet
Molly already is beyond these worries. She sits in the marriage bed and
she has entertained the suitors in the marriage bed. Molly does not
allow temporal constraints to lead her to a fallen conscience (a
conscience that hurts itself) but rather embodies productive
procreative ability of a critical reflection that effortlessly flows through
the body.