Quote 5
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. . and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower
and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so
he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going
like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
Molly’s final words seem to refer immediately
to her memory of accepting Bloom’s proposition of marriage during
their day spent on Howth. However, the ambiguity of the many masculine
pronouns in Molly’s monologue also exists here—in the same paragraph,
she remembers a similar outdoor scene of love with Lt. Mulvey, and
the ambiguity of this seeming affirmation of the Blooms’ marriage
is typical of Joyce’s endings. However, the looseness of Molly’s
language in these final lines also enacts a combination of the immediate
realistic level of the text with the idealistic, symbolic level—Molly’s
“Yes” here is an unqualified affirmative of natural life and of
physical and emotional love.
