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Abstract: This essay challenges the critical consensus that "Penelope" identifies woman with the body. Pointing out that "Penelope" is more concerned with letters than with flesh, it argues that Molly's discourse represents a form of disembodiment, in which her flesh is rewoven into words. The final kiss melts away any commonsense conception of the body as gendered, individuated, self-contained, transuming both body and language into a "posthuman" topography of intensities.
Why should those lovers that no lovers miss
Dream, until God burn Nature with a kiss?
W. B. Yeats, "The Man who Dreamed of Faeryland"
"I am the flesh that always affirms." This statement, translated from Joyce's shaky German in a famous letter to Frank Budgen, has often been taken as the final verdict on "Penelope": "Ich bin der [sic] Fleisch der stets bejaht G As many commentators have pointed out, the German phrase recalls and reverses Mephistopheles's assertion in Goethe's Faust, "I am the spirit that always denies" ("Ich bin der Geist der stets beneinf). Assuming that Molly Bloom represents the flesh that always says yes, critics have understood her to be speaking on behalf of the entire female sex, epitomising what Joyce calls "perfectly sane full amoral fertilisable untrustworthy engaging shrewd limited prudent indifferent Weib" [woman].1
By associating the feminine with flesh [Fleisch], the masculine with spirit [Geist], Joyce seems to be endorsing one of the oldest and weariest clichés of Western thought. But it is strange that he mixes up his German genders, rendering "Fleisch " as masculine rather than neuter. If this is an error, it may also be a portal to discovery, disclosing Joyce's own uncertainty about the gender of the flesh. Furthermore, his letter to Budgen attributes greater importance both to affirmation and to flesh than "Penelope" itself bears out. It is true that Molly's rhapsody begins and ends with yeses, but these are separated by a sea of no's - not to mention O's, which are even more insistent. And far from saying yes to flesh, her monologue revolves around the theme of disembodiment, particularly in the form of shedding skins.
This paper therefore argues that Joyce's comments on "Penelope" have sent his critics on a wild goose chase for the flesh, obscuring the episode's preoccupation with...