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/lit/ - Literature

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19507479 No.19507479 [Reply] [Original]

Okay, /lit/, I'm terribly confused. When I read Ulysses I was under the impression that Molly Bloom has been having affairs for quite some time, and Boylan is merely her latest lover. However, just today I saw in another thread a post stating Boylan is Molly's first extramarital affair ever. This doesn't make sense to me, as Molly is extremely horny and in ten years of no-good-sex with Bloom she would have cheated earlier. Plus if Molly wasn't cheating on him before I don't see why Mr Bloom would be so saddened and suspicious on seeing Boylan's letter in the morning. On the other hand, the book doesn't make any explicit mentions of previous affairs either, and possibly it's more poetic for this to be Molly's first affair. And then too there's a section in Ithaca:
>If he had smiled why would he have smiled?
>To reflect that each one who enters imagines himself to be the first to enter whereas he is always the last term of a preceding series even if the first term of a succeeding one, each imagining himself to be first, last, only and alone whereas he is neither first nor last nor only nor alone in a series originating in and repeated to infinity.
>What preceding series?
>Assuming Mulvey to be the first term of his series, Penrose, Bartell d’Arcy, professor Goodwin, Julius Mastiansky, John Henry Menton, Father Bernard Corrigan, a farmer at the Royal Dublin Society’s Horse Show, Maggot O’Reilly, Matthew Dillon, Valentine Blake Dillon (Lord Mayor of Dublin), Christopher Callinan, Lenehan, an Italian organgrinder, an unknown gentleman in the Gaiety Theatre, Benjamin Dollard, Simon Dedalus, Andrew (Pisser) Burke, Joseph Cuffe, Wisdom Hely, Alderman John Hooper, Dr Francis Brady, Father Sebastian of Mount Argus, a bootblack at the General Post Office, Hugh E. (Blazes) Boylan and so each and so on to no last term.
In which any one of these mentioned might have had sex with Molly.
Help me out here, /lit/. Is Boylan Molly's first affair?

>> No.19507486

Never gonna read this overrated pervert fecalpheliac fart sniffing freak!

>> No.19507753

bump

>> No.19507850

>>19507479
Who cares if someone else fucks her if I'm the one who gets to cuddle her at night? #winningatlife

>> No.19508150

no he obviously isn't her first affair for the reasons that you gave, that post was retarded

>> No.19508188

First affair, but she had fucked all those dudes in her life prior to marriage (or perhaps this is her first affair with an emotional component), while letting her husband believe he was the only. Joyce is illustrating that you’re not the first to fuck her, and very likely you won’t be the last.

Similarity to the cuck complex from Dubliner’s The Dead, wife falls asleep thinking of that good dick. Cuck boy staring at the snow ain’t the first.

>> No.19508196

>>19507850
Cuck

>> No.19508215

>>19508188
Gretta didn't fuck Michael Furey. It was clearly just child-like puppy love.

>> No.19509024

bump until /lit/ comes to an agreement

>> No.19509047

>>19509024
My assessment would be that Molly Bloom, based on subtext and metaphors throughout Ulysses, probably emotionally cheated on Poldy (through flirting and/or letters, like Poldy), but that Blazes is her first physical affair

>> No.19509499

bump

>> No.19509546

>>19507479
Was it me?
"Why do I imagine that was the first time Molly had cheated however Bloom thought she'd done it multiple times because he couldn't imagine such a beautiful woman to remain chaste for 9 years since the death of their daughter."

I'm not sure if I heard it on Frank Delaney podcast or just some nerd here.

>> No.19510228

>>19509546
I dunno if it was you

>> No.19510636

bump

>> No.19510776

>>19507479
Molly did not actually have an affair with many of the persons mentioned in that list. Bloom seemed to have a very loose definition of the word. Molly did not fuck Simon Dedalus, for example, he came on to her but she was not interested in him, but he's included in the list either way. In Penelope it is strongly hinted that she had extramarital sex with another guy, whom, if I remember correctly, Bloom did not even name in that list. Other than that I don't remember very much. He masturbated a boy when she was a girl, I think. Just read Penelope.

>> No.19511368

So we know that Bloom’s list is unreliable. For one, Lenehan brags about groping Molly, not more. I believe Richard Ellmann makes an argument that Boylan was the first consummated affair. For more discussion of both theories, read the chapter “The Female Word” from Martha Nussbaum’s Upheavals of Thought

>> No.19511815

>>19507479
i think the question here is infidelity in fantasy versus actuality