The Epic Fantasy Life of Molly Bloom: A Psychoanalytic Reading of Unconscious Desire in the Penelope Episode of James Joyce\u27s Ulyssess

Despite often being mislabeled as a \u27stream-of-consciousness\u27 narrative, recent archival discoveries and theoretical examinations have revealed the Penelope episode of James Joyce\u27s Ulysses to be as scrupulously arranged as the rest of the novel. Over the course of the day, Leopold Bloom\u27s fantasies recast the Odyssean homecoming as a modern epic. But they represent only half of the story, only half of the conflicted desires that have sundered the Bloom\u27s marriage bed. I propose that the unconscious desires that speak through the fantasy life of Molly Bloom engage in the same Odyssean process of reclaiming and rebuilding the home visible in the fantasies of her husband, and that the telos of this epic restoration centers, for Molly as well as Leopold, on the same fantastic subject: Stephen qua Rudy