The GODDESS, the MATERNAL WHORE and the VINDICTIVE VIRGIN Powerful Women in One Hundred Years of Solitude and Ulysses - Literature Essay Samples

Families in Ulysses and One Hundred Years of Solitude are often breeding grounds for distortion and curses, not of the stability and progress expected of most kin relations. Genealogies are either perverted or unsuccessful: The BuendÃÆ'Â ­a line, with its unrelenting spawning of repetitive names and its replicating, incestuous procreative urges, creates freaks like the final pig-tailed infant, doomed clones like the 17 Aurelianos and insanity in JosÃÆ'Â © Arcadio BuendÃÆ'Â ­a and Colonel Aureliano BuendÃÆ'Â ­a. Even the opposite situation in Ulysses, with the stunted pseudo- family left by May Dedalus death and Blooms futile fatherly fantasies, suggest that relationships lead to regression and failure. Yet everyone is drawn inexorably back to this original source, this maelstrom of disruption. The family fold is so insular, inescapable magical intervention lures Aureliano Segundo back to his home after he miraculously survives the plantation massacre, Bloom returns to Molly and their unhappy bed after an epic jaunt around Dublin that it is a wonder how these families persevered for as long as they did.It is clear, at least, that fatherly guidance and paternal strength is not the sustaining force here. As Patricia Tobin describes the BuendÃÆ'Â ­as, wherefatherhood is never more than a biological accident, in such a family one can hardly expect the triumph of the paternal promise that the present progeny will be identified as the continuation of past generations Paternity confers neither legitimacy nor legacy upon the BuendÃÆ'Â ­as (53). In fact, it is the women, an unconventional group of Atlases indeed, who simultaneously support yet continue to ruin the crumbling familial bedrock of One Hundred Years of Solitude and Ulysses. Neither the chaste innocents nor dutiful mothers of traditional epics, these women are the true origin and continuation of power the maternal whores, the eternal (both living and dead) goddesses and the vindictive virgins. Feminine presence and will dominates these novels, driven by womens unusual allure and control. ÃÆ'šrsula, along with a coterie of distinctive females, rules Macondo with an iron matriarchal fist. Her apparently supernatural powers are reminiscent of the constant ghostly whisper of May Dedalus and bewitching attractiveness of prostitutes in Ulysses. However, before exploring these potent characters individually, it is crucial to examine them in comparison with their curiously incapacitated male counterparts, including the complacently cuckolded Bloom and the lovelorn, shuttered Aureliano BuendÃÆ'Â ­a. Carol Siegel proposes that Bloom is convinced of his inability to do a mans job', especially considering his decade-long sexual dry spell with Molly (181). When Bloom hallucinates in Circe, he imagines himself anointed as the new womanly man, about to give birth, and, as Brenda Oded points out, Bloom continues playing the role of motherly father in the closing sections of the no vel (Joyce 403, Oded 44). The recurring infantile, feminized weak man with vagina envy only lends greater power to the women, who must overcompensate and diversify to make up for male inadequacy. For example, Bella Cohen retains her femininity while dominating Bloom, making her a doubly intimidating hybrid of hyper-gendered strength. Siegel furthers: Bello, the suckeress threatens Bloom with a phallic but femininely high heels, glistening in their proud erectness (Joyce 433). She refers to herself as a lady and tells Bloom to call her mistress although the stage directions assign Bella the male pronouns (Joyce 436) Bello taunts Bloom for urinating sitting down and commands him to Do it standing, sir! (Joyce 438) Blooms relationship to Bella is as changeable as their respective genders (183).Bella/Bellos ability to transcend gender boundaries, as well as evidence of Ursulas and Pilars existence outside of time and May Dedalus return from the dead suggest a paranormal power, as if women in these novels are invincible goddesses. In almost every way, these women exhibit traits that show them to be superior to men. Mollys sexual appetite far exceeds Blooms (and he is literally besieged by women in Circe, a chapter named after a legendary, mind-controlling witch), and even tiny, newt-like Rebeca can match JosÃÆ'Â © Arcadios infamously lusty habits. Amaranta is just as ruthless as manly Arcadio (who, incidentally, is deposed by ÃÆ'šrsula, who becomes a despot who ruled the town (116)) and Meme easily tops her fathers gluttonous exploits. These women reach the mythical excesses of classical gods while exerting total control over surrounding men. In much the same way that Bella lorded over Bloom, Ursula had found the route that her husband had been unable to discover and Amaranta ÃÆ'šrsula re-entered Macondo leading her husband by a silk rope tied around his neck (40, 405). Returning to Bella, Jonathan Quick claims her power to be the greatest of all. She is a potent figure of female ascendancy, breaking out of Carmens role as victimized free spirit and overwhelming men out of her deep knowledge of her sexual vulnerability (236).But even without the contrast to men, the women of these novels are still idol-like in their omnipotence and mystery. From Stephens musings on a midwife and how one of her sisterhood lugged me squealing into life. Creation from nothing this is why mystic monks. Will you be as gods? to the association of Miss Kennedy and Miss Douce with the legendary Sirens to ÃÆ'šrsula looking like a newborn old woman at her death, women are portrayed as the harbingers of life and destruction, who can even decide when they die (Joyce 32, Marquez 368). They are the end-all and be-all of the universe, directed with a wave of Ursulas archangelic arm or her presence in so many places at the same time or even her improved clairvoyance (359, 266). According to Arnold M. Penuel, ÃÆ'šrsula, who loses her sight in her final y ears, becomes something of a seer, commenting on the lives of the other characters as if she were a composite Greek chorus (552). However, these marvelous or magical powers are limited, almost ironically so. Pilar lives to age 145, not forever. The bevy of prostitutes can insinuate themselves in Blooms dreams, but he easily avoids them when they pass on the street. ÃÆ'šrsula can predict the future, but cannot prevent her familys demise. Its as if women are demigoddesses nearly almighty but equipped with an escape clause. These defects are kinks in these womens plans to resurrect their families using superhuman methods.Regardless, if the women of these novels have divine origins or skills, then their temple is the brothel. All roads lead to the whorehouse in both Ulysses and One Hundred Years of Solitude because prostitutes are necessary to hereditary survival. The bastardizing of genealogy, normally a sign of sexual wantonness and pleasure being prioritized over familial yield, is here represented as an injection of innovation in an increasingly stagnant and doomed lineage. But promiscuity and productivity are an uncomfortable pair, as evidenced in Mollys mother Lunita Laredo, who is a vessel for painfully contradictory images that emerge with the idea of her mother, both a common whore and a sexual adventuress, an ethnic exotic and a racial outcast, a woman whose body alternately evokes shame and pride in her daughter (Quick 226).The enormous role of the prostitute in the generative faculties of the families is also meant partly as a parody of the paternal epics of the Gilgamesh or Beowulf variety and partly as a celebration of the sexually liberated pagan mother figure. Siegel mentions a passage in which, in his drunken babble of Circe or, what am I saying, Ceres altar, Stephen confuses, as Bloom does, the laughing witch with the fertile mother (183). Rather than a blood network extrapolating from a heroic male epicenter, these novels flout epic traditi on by giving ultimate power to prostitutes, who consider men to be transitory and peripheral. Throughout One Hundred Years of Solitude, the fate of the BuendÃÆ'Â ­as hinges on prostitute and fortune-teller Pilar Teneras ability to give birth and the unmarried Petra Cotes fruitful influence on livestock. In similar language, immediately following insinuations of Mollys 25-plus whorish affairs, she is described as Gea-Tellus, or Earth Mother, big with seed (592, 606). Even the actual prostitutes a necessary evil, are invested with maternal tendencies and the promise of maternal abilities. Even Zoe, urging Bloom to follow her up the stairs, is both whore and mother with the hand that rocks the cradle and at a touch reduces Bloom to his baby-self (Joyce 408) (Siegel, 182). In other cases, however, rather than the prostitute taking on maternal characteristics, mothers are instead re-identified as licentious whores. May Dedalus is the most visible example according to Oded, who claims that May is cast in two roles, that of the ghost of the murdered parent and that of the guilty queen (43). She is both Gertrude and Ann Hathaway, filled with doubly-defined amor matris for Stephen, someone who had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart (23). Her character reverses the role of the prostitute in much the same way that Pilar Tenera does: They spark incestuous lust while leeching thoughts and passion from those who guiltily desire them, in order to become unbreakable links in the evolutionary, genealogical chain. While Arcadio is literally sexually attracted to his mother Pilar, Stephen is intensely affected by his mother Mays spirit. Oded argues that though she is physically absent, the ghostwoman with ashes on her breath haunts Stephen and does not let him create The surrogate mothers Ellen Bloom, May Dedalus, Molly Bloom, Old Gummy Granny and Mina Purefoy make up a maternal hell that must be conquered (43). Ultimately, prostitutes help save and expand f amilies in these novels, but at what costs? Their presence, however powerful, is unhealthy because it dilutes the purity of the genetic pool and encourages the kind of sexual deviancy that ÃÆ'šrsula tried to avoid with her futile chastity garment. With whores who are inevitably mothers and vice versa, deified women who have the prophecy but not the will to prevent genealogical curses and virgins who are either so barren or so vituperative that they cannot be expected to produce, its as if the maternal prostitute serves the pointless function of prolonging and perverting lineages that are already fated to die out. The prevalence of morbidly dangerous virgins in these novels questions the extent to which poisonous sexuality can determine a womans power. Joyce and MÃÆ'Â ¡rquezs examples are nothing like Spensers religiously chaste Faerie Queen or the sweetly innocent Eve. Without requiring technical virginity, these women are the black widows of the families, filled with malicio us antipathy toward love, sex and reproduction. Men die to obtain Remedios the Beauty while Amaranta prefers to weave her own funeral shroud rather than accept suitors. In a way, this ability to enforce abstinence, with Amaranta and Remedios the Beauty remaining pure while none of the men can resist sex, adds to womens power. For example, Remedios, la bellas virginity was sterile and perhaps even more destructive than Amarantas the productive human relationships of the two bad women, Pilar Tenera and Petra Cotes, also lend credence to the validity of the thesis of this study that a major, if not principal, thrust of Garcia MÃÆ'Â ¡rquezs portrayal of Amaranta is the demythologization of virginity (Penuel, 558-9). Virginity is not a perfect state to aspire to; rather, it reeks of death and inhibited growth. Childlike Remedios dies painfully of a laudanum dose while prudish Fernanda del Carpio constructs funeral wreaths and sabotages the consummation of her marriage. In the Nausicaa episode, lame-footed Gerty MacDowell is plagued by a strained look on her face! A gnawing sorrow is there all the time because she has been promised into a loveless marriage (288). These virgins are united by similar auras of tragic abnormality, of desiccated hope rather than blooming potential.Siegel, when describing Blooms mental adventures in Circe, demonstrates the womanly reinvention at work in these two novels as Blooms consciousness forms an even more elaborate knot as his hallucination ties together mismatched twins, the Virgin mother, diseased whore, and happy male-violated male in one identity (184). Each of these feminine archetypes the all-seeing but ineffectual goddess, the lewd mother and the vicious virgin helps in reconfiguring preconceptions of gender and, consequently, of family. Using these experimental figures, MÃÆ'Â ¡rquez and Joyce attempt to preserve flawed lineages by shifting the balance of power to women and then opening up their confined roles to allo w more movement and unexpectedness. While they help facilitate the epic journeys of the obvious male protagonists, the Blooms and the Arcadios, by ensuring their reincarnation despite their troubled families, these unusual women are also completing epic journeys of their own. By being equally responsible as men for the preservation and destruction of genealogy, they reserve a significant position for themselves and all other women in future epics.WORKS CITEDOded, Brenda. The Maternal Ghost in Joyce. Modern Language Studies, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Autumn 1985). Pp. 40-47.Penuel, Arnold M. Death and the Maiden: Demythologization of Virginity in GarcÃÆ'Â ­a Marquezs Cien anos de soledad. Hispania, Vol. 66, No. 4 (Dec. 1983). Pp. 552-560.Quick, Jonathan. Molly Blooms Mother. ELH, Vol. 57, No. 1 (Spring 1990). Pp. 223-240.Siegel, Carol. Venus Metempsychosis and Venus in Furs: Masochism and Fertility in Ulysses. Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 33, No. 2 (Summer 1987). Pp. 179-195.Tobin, Pat ricia. Response: GarcÃÆ'Â ­a MÃÆ'Â ¡rquez and the Genealogical Imperative. Diacritics, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Summer 1974). Pp. 52-55.