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Reading Penelope and Molly: an Intertextual Analysis

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Reading Penelope and Molly: an Intertextual Analysis Reading Penelope and Molly: An Intertextual Analysis A thesis submitted to the Miami University Honors Program in partial fulfillment of the requirements for University Honors By Michelle L. Mitchell May 2004 Oxford, OH ii Abstract Reading Penelope and Molly: An Intertextual Analysis by Michelle L. Mitchell This thesis takes an intertextual approach to Homer’s Odyssey and James Joyce’s Ulysses. Intertextual analysis goes beyond examining the ways Joyce adopts Homer’s themes and characters in his own modern epic to also consider the ways in which a reading of Ulysses can affect one’s understanding of the Odyssey. Examining the reader’s role in the production and consumption of texts allows for a more realistic examination of how texts are actually processed. The focus of my interetextual analysis of both works is on the representation of women, particularly Penelope and Molly Bloom. iii iv An Intertextual Analysis of the Representations of Women in Homer’s Odyssey and Joyce’s Ulysses by Michelle L. Mitchell Approved by: _____________________________________, Advisor Judith de Luce _____________________________________, Reader Madelyn Detloff _____________________________________, Reader Kathleen Johnson Accepted by: _____________________________________, Director, University Honors Program v vi Acknowledgements Many thanks to my advisor, Judith de Luce, for her encouragement and guidance. Thanks also to Madelyn Detloff and Kathleen Johnson, my readers, for their suggestions. I would also like to thank the Office for the Advancement of Scholarship and Research for the Summer Scholars Award that provided financial support. vii Table of Contents INTRODUCTION: INTERTEXTUAL READING__________________________________ 1 FAITHFULNESS _________________________________________________________ 4 The House of Atreus Story____________________________________________________ 4 Speaking of Helen ________________________________________________________ 10 Penelope Rich, Poor, Stayathome ______________________________________________ 15 Molly's Infidelity _________________________________________________________ 19 Background for Interpreting Penelope ___________________________________________ 22 INTELLIGENT WOMEN__________________________________________________ 29 Penelope: Faithful, Cunning, Or Both?___________________________________________ 29 Weaving Plans: Penelope and Athena ___________________________________________ 39 Molly ________________________________________________________________ 41 CONCLUSION _________________________________________________________ 53 WORKS CITED ________________________________________________________ 55 WORKS CONSULTED ___________________________________________________ 58 viii 1 Introduction: Intertextual Reading Literary theories attempt to explain how meaning is created with and within literary texts. Is meaning created within the text or does its construction take place in the readers’ minds? It is likely that neither extreme succeeds in wholly answering the question of how meaning is created. Intertextual theory, however, offers an exciting explanation of how texts and the reader interact to create new meaning. Intertextual theory is a literary theory that explains the reading process and argues that meaning is created within the reader. “The concept of intertextuality,” argues John Frow, “requires that we understand the concept of text not as a self-contained structure” (45). A text itself has no meaning, except when a reader interacts with it. This emphasis on the reader as constructor of meaning can be disconcerting to some who expect the meaning to be gleaned directly from a text. But in order for a text to be understood, it must be interpreted; a reader must construct meaning out of the words and phrases. Important to understanding intertextual theory is the idea that readers read many texts. Each reading of a text helps to build and recreate paradigms for understanding that a reader uses when interpreting later texts. Intertextual analysis explores the relationship between texts in the minds of readers and should be distinguished from influence study, “an author-centered and evaluative concept,” that seeks to explain the way a particular text influences an author’s writing of another text. Readers use this intertextual process, often unconsciously, every time they read. 2 A building metaphor in which the reader is described as a builder can be used to explain intertextual analysis. The reader will use the buidling blocks of two or more texts to create new meaning from both texts. Each text contributes blocks of different colors, shapes, and sizes to the new construction. From deconstructing each text, the new reader has also learned new ways of ordering and combining the pieces that s/he can apply to other texts; the reader has developed new paradigms to construct meaning. The pieces of both texts interlock in new ways to create meaning that could not be created from one text alone. The end result is a combination of many different blocks from both texts, with connections made by the reader cementing the structure. This thesis is an intertextual analysis that explores the representation of women in two texts. I have selected to study Homer’s The Odyssey and James Joyce’s Ulysses because both texts are continually cited in current literature and popular culture, though they were written many years ago. These mythic texts have become a large part of collective imagination and we often read these texts to help understand our world. Not only are the tales a part of our collective imagination, but so too are the characters. Odysseus is the glorious war hero on a long journey home and Leopold Bloom is the modern, perhaps less heroic, man on a journey home. But I am most interested in Homer’s Penelope and Joyce’s Molly Bloom and how these women shape our understanding of women even today. My analysis will focus on the way in which faithfulness and the intelligence of women is represented in both texts. I have selected these aspects of my focus because evaluating these characteristics of both women is central to developing an understanding 3 of both tales. Penelope’s faithfulness is one of The Odyssey’s central concerns, as is her role in Odysseus’ vanquishing the suitors. Molly Bloom’s faithfulness is also explored in Ulysses, though from a different perspective as her unfaithfulness to her husband is made clear. Evaluating her intelligence, as compared to her husband Leopold, also plays a part in understanding Joyce’s epic. Too often in the past, these women have been read as objects on the sidelines of the real action in the lives of men. I wish to reclaim for women a place within our mythic imagination that is liveable, one that allows them to be seen not as the mere pawns of men, but as capable subjects themselves. I will be consciously emphasizing the positive potential in the representation of both these women, in order to consciously emphasize the postive potential for all women. Patrocino Schweickart describes women’s relationship to much of our literature: Androcentric literature is all the more an efficient instrument of sexual politics because it does not allow the woman reader to seek refuge in her difference. Instead, it draws her into a process that uses her against herself. It solicits her complicitly in the elevation of male difference into universality and, accordingly, the denigration of female difference into otherness without reciprocity. (26) By reading in a way that empowers these two women, I am finding a place in our literary history for myself and other women. 4 Faithfulness The House of Atreus Story The House of Atreus story, in its many forms, has a prominent position as one of the frames of the Odyssey. It is told and retold by several characters and each retelling has a specific purpose within the epic depending on both the speaker and intended audience. The retellings serve two main ends within the narrative: to inspire Telemachus to challenge the suitors and to encourage Odysseus' caution as he returns home. In order to spur Telemachus' challenge of the suitors, the earlier tellings of this story focus on Aegisthus’ role in Agamemnon’s death. The later references, as told to and by Odysseus focus on Clytemnestra's role. Marilyn Katz notes that “discussions of the use of the House of Atreus story commonly distinguish between its use in the Telemachy, where it is understood to apply to the young hero, and its development in the nekyia and following, where it takes on the character of the bad wife theme” (48). The bad wife theme instills a misogynistic world view in the hearers and readers of the Odyssey. Much of the intertextual importance of the House of Atreus story and Clytemnestra, of particular interest in my study, depends on this effect. Before addressing the effects of the House of Atreus story on the readers, however, I will first address the narratological purposes of its retelling in order to establish a foundation of its function within the epic. The House of Atreus story appears early in Book 1, and is in fact the subject of the first dialogue. Homer describes Zeus' inability to "stop thinking about Aegisthus" (1:35). Though Telemachus is not present at this council of the gods and is therefore not 5 the intended audience of this particular retelling, this instance of the House of Atreus story fits with other uses in the Telemachy. Zeus condemns Aegisthus for not heeding the gods' warning “not to kill the man and marry his wife” and points to Orestes,
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