Soliloquy as Love and Change: Molly Bloom and Ducks, Newburyport

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine two stream-of-consciousness soliloquies delivered by the heroines of James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) and Lucy Ellmann’s Ducks, Newburyport (2019) in order to underline the possibility of reidentification and change of one’s mindset by means of language. Firstly, the background for the significance of the two characters is outlined since both are presented as fleshed-out female characters that struggle with the reality of their lives. Then the two heroines are respectively positioned in a discourse outlined by Roland Barthes in his A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments (1978), which identifies solitude as the main obstacle in the act of loving. Thus, in the two soliloquies, elements of Barthes’s discourse, called ‘figures,’ are identified in order to outline and analyze each woman’s situation. Despite their differences, both everywomen prove, each in her own way, that the seeming overthinking about a given situation can lead to personal empowerment through an act of (self-)loving, reconciliation with and acceptance of one’s worries regardless of whether the struggle takes place in Dublin at the beginning of the 20^th century or in the 21^st-century America. The two women’s escape from the dissatisfying status quo suggests the universality of experience and shows that soliloquy may be deployed as a helpful tool in a moment of crisis in one’s personal life.