| “Penelope” has long been stigmatized as a voluptuous female narrator’s desultory reverie, which has nothing to do with history or politics. For sure, it is quite free from the constraints of orthodox historiography and demonstrates its own antihistorical narrative strategy. In this sense, accordingly, Molly’s monologue may be a good site for exploring Joyce’s alternative historicism. This essay examines how Molly’s monologue resists conventional, official historicism and constructs its own alternative history on the levels of both content and style. This discussion focuses on analyzing Molly’s peculiar concepts of time and history and examining how it critiques a conventional concept of time, that which official histories/ historiographies are based on. More importantly, this essay argues that Molly’s monologue as an exemplar form of “feminine writing” disrupts conventional male-oriented nationalism/historicism and envisions alternative nationalism/ historicism for a “postcolonial” Ireland. |
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