바쓰 부인(The Wife of Bath)을 통해서 몰리 블룸(Molly Bloom) 다시 읽기

Rereading Molly Bloom through the Wife of Bath

In Ulysses, the relationship of Bloom and Molly, which is a different version of that of Odysseus and Penelope, is the negation of the traditionally established woman’s image of being submissive to her husband in the Western Society. Through Molly, who is a kind of Anti-Penelope, Joyce criticizes the constructed patriarchal system of Western History in which since Homer’s era, without mentioning husband’s adultery, the problem regarding wife’s adultery has been emphasized whenever the adultery issue is raised in the Western History. This dialogic relationship between the patriarchal discourse and anti-patriarchal one derives from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in which Griselda who is the icon of the submissive wife of dominant authority powers confronts the Wife of Bath who is the symbol of anti-patriarchal view point. The wife of Bath confutes the attitude of Griselda, who accepts Walter’s request that she should submit to him under all circumstances and thus represents the ideal wife established by male powers throughout western history. Likewise, Molly Bloom escapes from the frame of Penelope, who has been consolidated as a model of idea woman and wife in the western society. Both in Canterbury Tales and Ulysses there exists the active and intense dialogic relation between the patriarchal discourse and anti-patriarchal one by means of confrontation of woman characters: the wife of Bath versus Griselda, Molly Bloom versus Penelope.